Second judge rules against death penalty

Christian Century, Oct 9, 2002

A federal judge in Vermont has become the second magistrate in two months to say the current national death-penalty law is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled in Vermont that the federal Death Penalty Act does too little to ensure that the rights of defendants in death-penalty cases are safeguarded.

The judge on September 24 struck down a law passed by Congress in 1992, citing a series of recent Supreme Court decisions narrowing application of the death penalty. One delivered in June said that only juries could sentence defendants to death.

Sessions said federal prosecutors should not have used a confession from an alleged accomplice to argue for giving the death penalty to 22-year-old Donald Fell, convicted of kidnapping and beating to death a 53-year-old Vermont woman in 2000. That is because the same evidence would not have been allowed at trial.

"It is inconceivable to this court that Congress could have intended ... to provide less protection in a capital proceeding than in a non-capital proceeding," Sessions wrote. The Vermont case comes on the heels of a July ruling in New York by Judge Jed Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. The two rulings conflict with other recent federal court rulings from Pennsylvania and Virginia upholding the Death Penalty Act.

Prosecutors said they would appeal the rulings against the act. "In our system of government, it is the legislature elected by the American people which determines the proper punishment for federal crimes, not lone members of the judiciary," said Barbara Comstock, a spokesperson for Attorney General John Ashcroft. "Congress passed the Federal Death Penalty Act to save lives, and the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly said the death penalty does not violate the Constitution."

Sessions's ruling does not affect state death-penalty laws, under which most executions are carried out.--ABP