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Politics : The Castle

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To: Tom C who wrote (146)	11/8/2002 12:32:53 AM
From: The Philosopher	of 7936

My understanding is that the jurisdictions didn't so much decide as Ashcroft took over. He charged the two with federal crimes based on their attempted extortion, which is a federal offense (shooting people from the back of a car or truck isn't unless it takes place on federal land). It was a pretty questionable charge, because the extortion letter came long after the early killings, but it was enough to make an excuse to charge them under federal law, and once they did that they had preemption rights to the suspects, so took them into federal hands. Then Ashcroft had the power to decide what to do, and where to send them. The theory is that he decided on Virginia not so much because of a Republican prosecutor but because it has a well tested death penalty statute and authority to charge minors as adults under it. Apparently Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of people they execute. So that seemed the best chance of getting them the death penalty. So Ashcroft then dropped the bogus federal charges so he could release them to the states and sent them to Virginia.

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