Courting death

New York

Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty more often. Ashcroft recently rejected recommendations against seeking execution in a dozen cases in New York and Connecticut, where the death penalty is seldom applied. “What we are trying to avoid is one standard in Georgia and another in Vermont,” said Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for Ashcroft. Lawyers said the policy would make life harder for prosecutors. In a Long Island, N.Y., case, Ashcroft vetoed an agreement to offer a murder defendant a life sentence in exchange for his cooperation. Prosecutors had offered to keep him off death row if he helped convict other alleged members of a Colombian drug cartel’s assassination team. “If you bargain away death,” a former prosecutor said, “you will never get a plea.”

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