Prior to their dismissals, three federal prosecutors whose firings are under scrutiny by Congress were engaged in a struggle with the Justice Department over its expanded pursuit of the federal death penalty. Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, and Kevin Ryan of California were all criticized by Justice officials for failing to seek death sentences as part of a broader use of the federal death penalty begun by former Attorney General John Ashcroft and continued by Alberto Gonzales. As part of the Department’s efforts, which included seeking the death penalty in jurisdictions without statues of their own, the Attorney General would override federal prosecutors, and insist that they seek death sentences. Though this happened to Charlton, Chiara and Ryan, it was not cited as a reason for their dismissals. The Justice Department did, however, mention in at least one of their dismissals that they had “no assurance that DOJ priorities/policies [were] being carried out.”

Angela Davis, a law professor at American University, noted, “Federal prosecutors are supposed to represent ‘the people,’ but they are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. How do ‘the people’ have any connection to that? … The system as it stands is troubling enough. What’s going on now … is that these attorneys are being removed not because they aren’t being accountable to the people; they’re being removed because they’re not being accountable to the Bush Administration.”

In 2000, prior to the Justice Department’s new push in seeking the death penalty, there was no one on the federal death row from a jurisdiction that did not have the death penalty. Today, there are six on the federal death row from such states. Though the size of death row attributable to states has declined around the country, the size of the federal death row has more than doubled during the past six years.
(The Nation, March 23, 2007 and Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2007). See Federal Death Penalty.