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Feds pursuing death penalty for violent gang members

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this new NPR story, which is headlined "Death To Gang Members: The Feds' New Tactic," the US Justice Department has started to try a new approach to taking on violent gangs: Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana has an unfortunate claim on history. He is the first member of the MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, gang to be sentenced to death under the federal system of capital punishment, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors and FBI officials say the Umana investigation, which took them from North Carolina to California to El Salvador, is a model for how federal authorities will attack a growing gang threat that is leaching into smaller cities across America's heartland. Umana is only 25. But over the course of his relatively short life, he allegedly killed five people in his role as a traveling evangelist for the MS-13 gang...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 17, 2010 (boomark / email).