WASHINGTON, June 28 (UPI) -- One of the nine U.S. attorneys fired last year told a Senate subcommittee that the U.S. attorney general was sometimes overzealous in seeking the death penalty.
Paul Charlton told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzales frequently ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty, despite low quality of evidence in some cases -- including an Arizona case where no body was ever recovered -- The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Charlton claimed Gonzales hadn't carefully reviewed the evidence in the cases and didn't pay heed to the views of prosecutors familiar with the cases.
"No decision is more important for a prosecutor than whether or not to... deliberately and methodically take a life," Charlton said. "And that holds true for the attorney general."
Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Phoenix, had been branded disloyal by Justice Department officials because he opposed seeking the death penalty in the Arizona case, the Post said.
Gonzales ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty against their own judgments 21 times in 2006, a sharp increase from three in 2005, the Post report stated.
