President Donald Trump’s administration is faltering in its aggressive pursuit of the death penalty as it revisits cases in which predecessors explicitly decided against seeking capital punishment (article available here).
Since taking office in February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has authorized prosecutors to seek the death penalty against 19 people, including nine defendants in cases in which President Joe Biden’s administration had sought lesser sentences. But judges have blocked those reversal attempts for all but two defendants, most recently on Monday in a pair of cases in the U.S. Virgin Islands, showing the limits of the administration’s power to undo decisions in cases already underway.
Judges who have rejected reversal attempts on constitutional and procedural grounds were blunt in their assessment of the administration’s approach.
“The government has proceeded hastily in this case, and in doing so has leapfrogged important constitutional and statutory rights,” a Trump appointee in Maryland wrote in June, striking the notice of intent to seek the death penalty against three alleged MS-13 gang members. “That is unacceptable.”
Authorization of capital prosecution typically occurs years before trial, but in the Maryland case, prosecutors filed the death penalty notice less than four months before the trial was scheduled to start. None of the defendants were represented by attorneys who specialize in death penalty litigation, which they would have been entitled to under federal law due to the complexity of capital cases and the potential consequences.
“The government does not hide the ball here — the only reason for its flip-flop on the death penalty was the change in administration,” wrote the court, who called the government’s “willful blindness” to the differences between capital and non-capital trials “startling.”
“This court will not cast aside decades of law, professional standards, and norms to accommodate the government’s pursuit of its agenda,” the court wrote.
Whether the reversals will stand remains a question in two of the cases. In the others, courts have sided with defendants who said they reasonably relied on assurances made by the previous administration. In court documents, lawyers for some of the defendants said they would have pursued plea bargains or objected to postponing trial dates had they known the death penalty decision would be reversed.
In Nevada, prosecutors notified Cory Spurlock of their intention to seek the death penalty just 12 days before trial. Striking down that notice in May, the court held the government fell far short of justifying its “wholesale reversal at the eleventh hour.” The trial began this week after prosecutors withdrew their appeal of her ruling.
“The government decided — certainly not by inadvertence or accident — to reverse course on an issue of critical importance, involving Spurlock’s life, less than two weeks before trial, with full knowledge that the reversal would have a chaotic impact on the progression of this case and would make it impossible to proceed to trial on the scheduled date,” wrote the court.
“Under the circumstances, this is certainly tantamount to playing ‘fast and loose’ with the Court’s orders in particular and the judicial process in general.”