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Judge Speaks Out Against Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions

By TChris, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Thu Mar 15, 2007 at 09:11:01 AM EST
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U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block (E.D.N.Y.) recently scolded federal prosecutors for seeking a death sentence against Kenneth McGriff.

He told prosecutors, "I feel, as an officer, as a judge, that this is an absurd prosecution based upon what I have heard. I think I have a responsibility to let authorities know. ... There's just no chance that 12 jurors will vote for the death penalty in this case, and I think it is good for us to save money, if we can do that, and judicial resources."

Judge Block was right: the government failed to convince a unanimous jury to vote for death. And he's right again in a NY Times op ed that scolds the Justice Department for its ghoulish desire to kill defendants.

Over the last few years there has been a surge in death penalty prosecutions authorized by the United States attorney general, both nationwide and in federal cases in New York. But these have resulted in disproportionately few death penalty verdicts, at enormous costs and burdens to the judicial system.

The Gonzales' Justice Department's lust for death comes at an enormous cost.

In New York, 17 of the authorized cases have been tried, but only one death penalty verdict returned .... Thus, we have probably spent more than $17 million on the 17 federal death penalty trials in New York State, with one death verdict to show for it.

For the solution, Judge Block turns to a colleague, conservative Judge Alex Kozinski:

[Judge Kozinski] gave a speech at Case Western Reserve University of Law in which he noted that “the number of executions compared to the number of people who have been sentenced to death is minuscule” and concluded that “whatever purposes the death penalty is said to serve — deterrence, retribution, assuaging the pain suffered by victims’ families — those purposes are not served by the system as it now operates.”

Judge Kozinski added that the costs of death penalty prosecutions far outweighed the results, and that because of the proliferation of such prosecutions “there would have to be one execution every day for the next 26 years” to handle the volume. He recommended that death penalty prosecutions should only be brought against “the most depraved killers.”

< WaPo: Did Gonzo Lie To Congress? | Bad Officer's Career Finally Ends >

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    Judge Speaks Out Against Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions | 1 comment (1 topical)

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    Death Lovers (none / 0) (#1)
    by squeaky on Thu Mar 15, 2007 at 10:53:46 AM EST
    It is not a suprising priority for this Administration. Texas was the same under Bush and Gonzales.
    .....it turns out that Gonzales has left quite a paper trail - in the form of fifty-seven death-penalty memoranda he prepared for then-Texas Governor George Bush....

    "During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas," Berlow reports in the Atlantic, "a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history."[Alan Berlow]

    John Dean

    Judge Speaks Out Against Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions | 1 comment (1 topical)

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