Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has written a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft regarding the federal death penalty. Here is the first part of it:

March 14, 2003

The Honorable John D. Ashcroft
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
10th Street & Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Ashcroft,

I write to inquire about the decision-making process for determining whether to seek the death penalty in federal capital-eligible cases.

I am concerned about the fairness of the decision-making process, after reading recent news reports that indicate you have overridden the recommendation of local federal prosecutors in at least 28 federal death-eligible cases. You appear to be pursuing consistency in the application of the federal death penalty nationwide by seeking it more aggressively in jurisdictions where federal prosecutors have infrequently requested authorization from the Attorney General to seek the death penalty. In other words, you seem intent on making the federal system replicative of states that aggressively pursue the death
penalty * states like Texas, which next week is scheduled to execute its 300th inmate in the modern death penalty era.

I am concerned that your apparent determination to increase death penalty prosecutions, including sometimes overriding decisions of local prosecutors, increases the risk that the federal government could execute an innocent person. Former federal prosecutors have said that "they need to take every last precaution to avoid the risk of condemning an innocent person to death." See "In Brooklyn Murder Case, Doubts on Identification," New York Times, Feb. 12, 2003. While you and I may disagree on the fundamental question of whether the federal government should be authorized to use capital punishment, I hope that we can agree that the Constitution and the integrity of our criminal justice system require the fair administration of the death penalty and that only the guilty are convicted....

Feingold then calls upon Ashcroft to provide information about his decisions. The list of requested items is too long to print here, but if we (or you) find an online copy of the letter, or a similar one written by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy on February 7, 2003, we'll post it here.