Federal prosecutors dropped charges against Darrell Rice shortly before he was to face capital charges for two murders in Shenandoah National Park. New forensic evidence cast doubt on the case against Rice, despite the fact that Attorney General John Ashcroft had made a public announcement of Rice’s indictment employing a new law in 2002. (Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2004).
  • A federal judge threw out a jury’s (July 2003) verdict of guilt in the capital case of Jay Lentz, accused of murdering his wife. Lentz has been granted a new trial and the judge’s ruling accused the prosecutors of deliberately and recklessly placing improper evidence before the jury. The prosecutors are appealing the judge’s ruling. (Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2004).
  • On the grounds that his federal indictment did not include the aggravating factors necessary to support his execution, the Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reduced Billie Jerome Allen’s death sentence to life in prison in February 2004. Allen was sentenced to death by a jury on in 1998 following his conviction for murder in the course of a bank robbery. In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Allen’s death sentence and remanded the case back to the Eighth Circuit for reconsideration in light of the Court’s ruling in Ring v. Arizona. (February 5, 2004, St Louis Post Dispatch).
  • Gary Sampson pleaded guilty to the carjacking and murder of two Massachusetts men. A jury returned a death verdict for Sampson on December 23, 2003. U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf formally sentenced Sampson to death, but ordered that the execution be carried out in New Hampshire, which has not held an execution since 1939. (Boston Globe, January 30, 2004).
  • The federal government has set June 8 as the execution date for David Paul Hammer. Hammer pleaded guilty in 1998 to the murder of his prison cellmate in 1996. He has vacillated back and forth about waiving his appeals and this is his third execution date. (Terre Haute Tribune Star, Feb. 12, 2004).
See Federal Death Penalty.