Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Under a proposed rule being finalized by the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be allowed to shorten, or ‘fast-track,’ inmate appeals in death penalty cases.

The controversial proposal came about under a little known provision in amendments to the Patriot Act.

The language in the Patriot Act modifies provisions in death penalty cases under 28 U.S.C. 2261, et seq..

Death row inmates would have less time to file habeas petitions in federal appeals courts challenging their convictions and resulting death row sentences. Instead of a full year to file an appeal, they would get less than half that time — 180 days. Federal appellate judges would also have less time to decide death row appeals.

L.A. Times’ D.C. reporter Rick Schmitt, broke the story yesterday, warning that “the move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty.”

The DOJ’s is seeking public comment on the proposed rule. That means anyone has until September 24, 2007 to write the DOJ to critique or praise the proposal.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told the Washington Post that the DOJ wanted “to ensure ample opportunity” for pubic comment about the changes so that advocacy groups had time to detail their objections to the proposed changes.

While this blog does not yet know exactly where you need to send objections to the proposal rules that would let the Attorney General potentially speed up death row executions, you can contact Roehrkasse at the DOJ to find out just how to do that.

Brian Roehrkasse
Director of Public Affairs
U.S. Department of Justice
E-mail: Brian.Roehrkasse@usdoj.gov
Tel: (202) 616-2777

Interested parties may also wish to mail and fax the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy here:

Office of Legal Policy
U.S. Department of Justice
Room 4234 Main Justice Building
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Telephone: (202) 514-4601
Fax: (202) 514-2424

Before Michael Chertoff became became Secretary of Homeland Security, he was Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Roderick M. Hills, a former law firm colleague of Chertoff’s, called him as an attorney representing Chiquita Brands Int’l to seek the Justice Department’s advice about illegal protection money payments that the company was paying to right-wing Colombian paramilitaries, according to an article in this morning’s Washington Post.

According to WaPo, “Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal..but said that he needed Chertoff’s advice.” The potential impact upon Hills’ client could have been enormous for both the company and American trade (Hills’ wife, Carla Hills, was the U.S. Trade Representative under George H.W. Bush): Chiquita says that it has “26,000 full-time employees and operations on six continents.”

What happened? Apparently nothing. WaPo reports that Chertoff held a meeting at the DOJ that the agency’s lawyers say was “complicated…Chiquita’s executives left the meeting convinced that the government had not clearly demanded that the payments stop.” Moreover:

Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making payments for nearly another year.

What transpired at the Justice Department meeting is now a central issue in a criminal probe.

Justice Department officials knowingly ignoring payments to paramilitaries that the State Department identified as a terrorist group?

If true, that kind of official government conduct has serious implications for Chiquita officials who are now reportedly targets of a federal criminal probe by (guess who!) the Justice Department.

The Chiquita officials include Robert Olson, the company’s former general counsel, former CEO Cyrus Friedheim, and other officials allegedly accused of making illegal payments.

But look who are apparently not targets of the DOJ’s criminal probe: Chertoff and Thompson, the very Justice Department officials who had knowledge of the transactions after their advice was sought, and did nothing.

Did Gonzales or other DOJ officials make a decision not to probe the agency’s own former executives? If so, that would surely lead to another investigation by Congress, and a call for Gonzales to step down.