A federal jury, after deliberating for only 2 hours,...

A federal jury, after deliberating for only 2 hours, unanimously rejected the death penalty yesterday for 2 Bronx heroin dealers convicted of murder, handing a setback to Attorney General John Ashcroft's efforts to expand the application of capital punishment in the New York region. The jury, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was unusually swift and united in its decision on the sentence for Alan Quiones and Diego Rodriguez, who were convicted on July 27 of the narcotics-related murder of Edwin Santiago, a police informant. The two defendants will now serve a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Court documents indicate that Mr. Ashcroft overruled the recommendation of Mary Jo White, the United States attorney who brought the indictment in the case. Ms. White had not proposed to seek the death penalty. (See also Feb. 7, 2003) Mr. Ashcroft has overruled local prosecutors by ordering them to seek death penalties in 41 cases nationwide, many of them in New York and Connecticut, according to Kevin McNally, a defense lawyer who monitors capital prosecutions. The trial revealed that Mr. Quiones and Mr. Rodriguez had committed a savage murder in 1999, tying up Mr. Santiago, torturing and taunting him, suffocating him with duct tape and then burning his body with gasoline. Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez will be formally sentenced in September to life in prison. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff, made no secret of his "personal, albeit heartfelt, disagreement" with the Justice Department's decision to push for the death penalty. Judge Rakoff said he had no doubt "that the defendants committed a vicious murder." But he added, "There is also no doubt in the court's mind that a reasonable exercise of discretion by the powers that be would not have favored seeking the death penalty in this case." Even before the case went to trial, the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff , had concluded the federal death penalty was unconstitutional. Rakoff made it a focus in the nation's death penalty debate by declaring the federal death penalty statute unconstitutional in July 2002. Rakoff said too many innocent people have been executed and that the federal death statute amounted to the "state-sponsored murder of innocent human beings." But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan in December 2002 overturned Rakoff's ruling, finding that only the Supreme Court can change "well-settled" law. No jury has delivered a federal death penalty sentence in New York State since the penalty was reinstated in 1988. The case marked only the second time in Manhattan that a federal jury has considered whether the death penalty should be imposed since the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Since then, the death penalty statute has changed considerably, placing much more responsibility with jurors. In the Rosenbergs' 1951 trial, the law called for the judge to impose death in a capital crime unless the jury recommended mercy. Under current law, a separate penalty hearing is held following a conviction for a capital crime. The jury's decision is binding unless a judge finds it to be tainted. In 2001, 2 men convicted of conspiracy in the 1998 terrorist bombing of 2 U.S. embassies in Africa were sentenced to life in prison when a jury rejected the death penalty for each of them. (see also May 10, 2001) Of the 41 death penalty cases nationwide in which the Justice Department overruled prosecutors, 13 defendants have gone to trial, death sentences were imposed in 3 cases and life imprisonment in nine, and 1 person was acquitted.