Juries have recently been regularly disagreeing with the attorney general's contention that the death penalty is justified in the most egregious federal cases involving murder....These recent verdicts...raise the question of whether the Department of Justice is properly employing its stated standards in deciding to seek the death penalty.

The Judge said the day may be coming when evolving standards of decency in civilized society preclude application of the death penalty:

The acquittals and life sentences are evidence, Judge Wolf continued, of an evolving societal consensus against the death penalty that courts may take account of in deciding whether capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

"If juries continue to reject the death penalty in the most egregious federal cases," he wrote, "the courts will have significant objective evidence that the ultimate sanction is not compatible with contemporary standards of decency."

The Judge was also critical of Ashcroft's bringing of death penalty actions in states that don't have the death penalty.

He also noted that the department's policies about whether to take into account local opposition to the death penalty have changed. Until 2001, the policies said that the absence of a local death penalty did not by itself justify a federal capital prosecution. That has changed.

"It appears," Judge Wolf wrote, "that the fact that a state's laws do not authorize capital punishment may now alone be deemed sufficient to justify a federal death penalty prosecution."

We need more of these Judges. How many do you think we will get if Bush's nominations go through?