Dismissed Federal Prosecutors Were Overridden on Death Penalty Recommendations

Prior to their dis­missals, three fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors whose fir­ings are under scruti­ny by Congress were engaged in a strug­gle with the Justice Department over its expand­ed pur­suit of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, and Kevin Ryan of California were all crit­i­cized by Justice offi­cials for fail­ing to seek death sen­tences as part of a broad­er use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty begun by for­mer Attorney General John Ashcroft and con­tin­ued by Alberto Gonzales. As part of the Department’s efforts, which includ­ed seek­ing the death penal­ty in juris­dic­tions with­out stat­ues of their own, the Attorney General would over­ride fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, and insist that they seek death sen­tences. Though this hap­pened to Charlton, Chiara and Ryan, it was not cit­ed as a rea­son for their dis­missals. The Justice Department did, how­ev­er, men­tion in at least one of their dis­missals that they had ​“no assur­ance that DOJ priorities/​policies [were] being carried out.”

Angela Davis, a law pro­fes­sor at American University, not­ed, ​“Federal pros­e­cu­tors are sup­posed to rep­re­sent ​‘the peo­ple,’ but they are nom­i­nat­ed by the President and con­firmed by the Senate. How do ​‘the peo­ple’ have any con­nec­tion to that? … The sys­tem as it stands is trou­bling enough. What’s going on now … is that these attor­neys are being removed not because they aren’t being account­able to the peo­ple; they’re being removed because they’re not being account­able to the Bush Administration.”

In 2000, pri­or to the Justice Department’s new push in seek­ing the death penal­ty, there was no one on the fed­er­al death row from a juris­dic­tion that did not have the death penal­ty. Today, there are six on the fed­er­al death row from such states. Though the size of death row attrib­ut­able to states has declined around the coun­try, the size of the fed­er­al death row has more than dou­bled dur­ing the past six years.
(The Nation, March 23, 2007 and Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2007). See Federal Death Penalty.