Ashcroft pushes for more death sentences

US attorney general overrules prosecution deals

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday February 7, 2003
The Guardian

The United States attorney general, John Ashcroft, has overruled his own federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for 28 defendants, in what has been criticised as a drive to spread capital punishment into states that have resisted it.

In one case Mr Ashcroft demanded that prosecutors renege on a deal made with a defendant in a murder trial to drop their demand for the death penalty in return for testimony against a Colombian drug ring.

The attorney general, arguably the most conservative member of a rightwing administration, has also declared he will seek a death sentence for Brian Regan, an intelligence analyst arrested in 2001 for trying to sell secrets to Iraq, Libya and China. He would be the first espionage defendant to face execution since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Ouch...