Eric Holder as Attorney General
[Update] TMN has more on the AG select’s views on governmental killing the death penalty.
News accounts have President-Elect Obama naming Eric Holder as his AG choice.
President-elect Barack Obama’s top choice for attorney general is Eric Holder, a former No. 2 Justice Department official in the Clinton administration and Obama campaign aide who would become the first African American to serve as the nation’s chief lawyer.
Holder testified before Congress on the subject as follows:
SEN. SPECTER: Mr. Holder, philosophically do you agree with the imposition of the death penalty?
MR. HOLDER: I am not a proponent of the death penalty, have stated that publicly on many occasions, but would not hesitate to enforce any law that this Congress has passed that has a death penalty provision.
SEN. SPECTER: So that if an issue came before the Senate, illustratively, and you were in the Senate, you would vote against the death penalty?
MR. HOLDER: It would depend on what the provision was. I have testified before the D.C. City Council that it is the policy of my office, where a law enforcement officer is killed, to seek the death penalty in that situation.
His confirmation from his last stint at Justice is here. Link to follow on a good examination of his positions on other crimlaw issues.
