USA Today: Death Penalty Distorts the Judicial System

In an editorial published after a Virginia jury recommended a death sentence for John Muhammad, USA Today noted that the case of Muhammad and his juvenile co-defendant “undermines public confidence that the law is applied objectively.” The editorial criticized the manipulative placement of the case into Virginia courts and the stretching of Virginia’s law to achieve the death penalty. Usually, Virginia has required that the defendant be the actual shooter to be eligible for a death sentence. And Virginia’s new terrorism law may have been expanded considerably beyond its original intent for this case:

In this instance, the bending of the system began early. After the arrests of Muhammad and his teenage companion, Lee Malvo, Attorney General John Ashcroft seized control of the suspects. Though the pair had been caught in Maryland, where most of the killings occurred, federal authorities handed them over to Virginia for trial. One unvarnished reason was that Malvo was a juvenile. Maryland does not permit the execution of juvenile offenders. Virginia does.
…
Shopping for the most pro-death judicial venue and then custom-fitting new and existing laws to ensure what Ashcroft calls the “ultimate sanction” make prosecutors and law enforcement officials look as if they were willing to go to great lengths — and even stretch the law — to achieve a death-penalty conviction.
…
But twisting justice wasn’t necessary to protect the nation and punish the criminal. Life without parole would have served equally well.

The overzealous application of Virginia’s death penalty laws means that Muhammad’s case is likely to command the nation’s attention through years of appellate maneuvering. Life without parole would have forestalled that tedious endgame without ever calling into question the integrity of the judicial establishment.