Rule Change Shifts Death Penalty Responsibilities to Gonzales

Overwhelming evidence shows that Alberto Gonzales isn’t fit to be attorney general. But despite that, his office continues to accrue important powers. Recently, the FISA bill took oversight powers from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and gave them to the attorney general. And next month, a new rule will come into effect that gives the attorney general new power over state death penalty cases.

In June, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton testified about the nonchalance with which Gonzales’ Justice Department views executing U.S. citizens. Charlton’s office had convicted Rios Rico on murder charges, but Charlton did not want to seek the death penalty. His reason: “If a government seeks to take another person’s life it should do so on only the best of evidence.” The government had not obtained the victim’s body, and the Department had refused Charlton’s request to cover the cost of exhuming it.

After the Department overruled Charlton, deciding to seek the death penalty, he asked to talk it over with the leadership. He spoke with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and was subsequently told that McNulty had spent a “significant amount of time” with Gonzales on the issue — as much as “5 to 10 minutes.” When he asked to speak with Gonzales directly, he became an object of ridicule among Gonzales’ senior staffers. After Charlton was fired, Department officials cited “insubordination” as one of the chief causes.

So that’s how Gonzales has exercised his power over federal inmates. The new rules will give Gonzales new powers over how state death row inmates are able to appeal their convictions.

The Los Angeles Times explains:

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year’s reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use “fast track” procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court….

Frustrated with the pace of changes — and believing that judges were part of the problem — death penalty advocates Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) led a successful effort to include language in the Patriot Act last year that let the attorney general, rather than judges, decide whether states were ensuring death row inmates had adequate legal representation.

The rules are expected to be finalized and go into effect later this fall.

During Gonzales’ hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) grilled him about the Rico case. Was it true that he’d only spent 5-10 minutes examining the case? Did he really think that was a “significant amount of time” on such a weighty issue?

Gonzales, characteristically, couldn’t remember the case or anything about it:

“Well, Mr. Attorney General, I’m not totally unfamiliar with this sort of thing,” Specter concluded. “When I was district attorney of Philadelphia, I had 500 homicides a year. I didn’t allow any assistant to ask for the death penalty that I hadn’t personally approved. And when I asked for the death penalty, I remembered the case.”