The Daily Background

Jeralyn over at TalkLeft flags a February 24th Washington Post article which notes that both Margaret Chiara, the fired US Attorney for Michigan– and Paul Charlton, the former US Attorney for Arizona were purged after they parted ways with the Administration over use of the death penalty. Wrote the Post in late Feb:

Chiara — who had once studied to be a nun — is personally opposed to capital punishment, but in 2002 she presided over the first death penalty case in Michigan in more than 60 years. A year later, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft rejected a plea agreement proposed by Chiara’s office in a separate murder case, according to news reports.

Another of the fired U.S. attorneys, Paul K. Charlton of Phoenix, also clashed with Washington over the death penalty.

And the Associated Press reported on March 15 that Rove said “The U.S. attorney in Arizona [Charlton] said he would not ask for the death penalty. The administration has a policy of, where appropriate, asking for the death penalty.”

Obviously this is a very pro-death penalty Administration; Bush’s time in texas was marked by record numbers of executions, and the BBC reported in 2005 that “Texas accounts for 355 of the 1,000 executions carried out since a 10-year ban on capital punishment was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1976.”

“During his six years in office as governor of Texas, Mr Bush commuted one death sentence and allowed 152 to go ahead.”

Texas had killed 355 between 1976 and 2005. And 152 of those were under Bush as governor over 6 years. Compare that with the next highest state, Virginia which executed 94 people since 1976.

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