U.S. District Judge S. James Otero recent­ly halt­ed the penal­ty phase of a fed­er­al cap­i­tal case in Los Angeles and told pros­e­cu­tors that he believes the U.S. Justice Department should recon­sid­er its deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty for Petro ​“Peter” Krylov. Krylov is fac­ing the death penal­ty for his role in a kid­nap­ping and mur­der plot. Otero, the sec­ond fed­er­al judge this year to urge fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and the Justice Department to rethink their deci­sion to seek a death sen­tence, told pros­e­cu­tors that Krylov’s case is dif­fer­ent from the cas­es against his two co-con­spir­a­tors, who both received death sen­tences. ​“I would hope that the gov­ern­ment has enough flex­i­bil­i­ty that they can address these major sig­nif­i­cant life-and-death issues to han­dle cir­cum­stances such as what has occurred in this case,” Otero told lawyers for both par­ties while the jury was out of the court­room. Prosecutors respond­ed that they would share Otero’s com­ments with Justice Department offi­cials, but that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (pic­tured) had already made the deci­sion to seek death for Krylov.

Otero was appoint­ed to the fed­er­al bench by President George W. Bush and is regard­ed by some in the fed­er­al bar as a tough sen­tencer. His com­ments dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of Krylov’s tri­al echo sen­ti­ments voiced in January 2007 by Judge Frederick Block of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Block told fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors that pur­su­ing a death sen­tence for a con­vict­ed drug king­pin would be an ​“absurd” waste of time and mon­ey and pre­dict­ed that there was ​“no chance” a jury would return a death sen­tence in the case. After the Justice Department decid­ed to pro­ceed with its effort to win a death sen­tence in that case, the jury’s ver­dict result­ed in a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole.

​“There has been a sur­pris­ing amount of resis­tance to the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s Justice Department, under both John Ashcroft and Gonzales, in ramp­ing up the num­ber of cap­i­tal cas­es,” said Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, and an expert in death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing. There have been 95 fed­er­al death penal­ty tri­als dur­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, com­pared to 55 dur­ing the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion.
(L.A. Daily Journal, May 4, 2007). See Federal Death Penalty and New Voices.

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