WASHINGTON — As attorney general, Eric Holder has approved pursuing the death penalty in at least 34 criminal cases, upholding a long-ago pledge to Congress that he would vigorously enforce federal law even though he is not a proponent of capital punishment.
In the next day or two, Holder will make the most high-profile death penalty decision of his career in law enforcement: whether to seek capital punishment in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the defendant in the Boston Marathon bombings in April that killed three people and injured 260.
“The problem (with the death penalty) is that in too many places, lawyers who are defending poor people don’t have adequate resources to do a good job,” Holder said last week at the University of Virginia.
But Holder’s description of a flawed legal system with inadequate resources doesn’t apply to this case. One of the finest death penalty attorneys in the U.S., Judy Clarke, leads Tsarnaev’s defense team. That team might be able to mount a strong defense by arguing Tsarnaev was under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police four days after the blasts.
