The Justice Department is out for blood in Brooklyn's federal courthouse, where three death penalty trials are underway.

A fourth capital trial involving a triple-murder defendant has opened in Manhattan federal court as well.

"It's totally unprecedented to have two, let alone four cases going on at one time in one city," said Kevin McNally, a death penalty expert.

Even as states back away from the death penalty, federal capital prosecutions have increased. The US Attorneys who favor capital punishment find support in the Bush administration's Justice Department.

Death penalty opponents have complained that starting with President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, officials in Washington began rubber-stamping the pursuit of the death penalty in federal cases, particularly in states with no capital punishment laws of their own.

How about a little congressional oversight of the Justice Department's increasing reliance on death as a punishment?