NYC Has Three Capital Trials All at Once

Ronell Wilson, seen in this photo provided by the U.S. attorney's office Friday, Jan. 12, 2007, was convicted in Brooklyn Federal Court in December, 2006, for the execution-style slaying of two police officers. His punishment could be death. At the same federal courthouse in Brooklyn, two other men, a cop killer and a deadly drug dealer, are fighting for their lives in an unusual confluence of three death penalty trials. (AP Photo/U.S. Attorney's Office) (AP)

NEW YORK -- At one point last week, a cop killer, a notorious druglord and a defendant portrayed by prosecutors as a one-man crime wave were fighting for their lives in the same federal courthouse in Brooklyn in an unusual confluence of three death penalty trials under one roof.

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.

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. In New York, the state's highest court declared the state death penalty statute unconstitutional in 2004.

While the volume of state death penalty cases around the country has decreased in recent years, federal cases have multiplied, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

One result: There are now 46 inmates on the federal death row _ more than double the total in 2000; three, including Timothy McVeigh, have been put to death since 2001.

One of the three men on trial in Brooklyn, Martin "Sassy" Aguilar _ who prosecutors say robbed drug dealers, shot at couples parked in cars for kicks and once killed a man by stabbing him with a screwdriver _ was spared Friday when a jury could not reach the required unanimous verdict on whether he should be executed. That means Aguilar, 33, will automatically get life in prison without parole.

But the death penalty docket in Brooklyn is far from done: Two more capital trials are scheduled to begin in the spring.

Previously, only three capital cases had been tried in Brooklyn since 1994, when Congress dramatically broadened the federal death penalty statute.

Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf declined through a spokesman to discuss the cluster of cases. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said only that the department has a vigorous, closed-door review process designed to apply the federal death penalty "fairly across the country."

The other capital-case defendants in New York could take some solace in the fact that New York juries are reluctant to impose death. The last time a federal death sentence was imposed in the city was for a bank robber who killed an FBI agent _ in 1954. New York state has not executed anyone since 1963.

Defense attorneys in New York say a blatant example of the federal government's hunger for a death sentence was seen last March, when prosecutors announced they were pursuing capital cases against five defendants _ including a mother accused of being a lookout in a murder _ in the case against a notorious crack kingpin, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. Less than two weeks later, the prosecutors reversed themselves without explanation, saying McGriff alone would face death.