
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991                   TAG: 9102030183
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEWARK, N.J.                                LENGTH: Medium

FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY LAW FACING FIRST TESTS

A federal death penalty law passed in 1988 as a weapon in the government's campaign against drugs is moving toward its first tests in cases set for trial in Chicago, Alabama and New Jersey.

An anti-drug bill signed by ex-President Ronald Reagan allows the government to execute convicted drug kingpins and anyone convicted of drug-related killings.

It's been nearly 28 years since the last federal execution. Sixteen states have executed 143 people since the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to resume use of the death penalty.

The first attempt at reviving federal executions will be in Chicago. Alexander Cooper, an alleged leader of a drug ring, is scheduled for trial Tuesday in the slaying of a federal witness.

In Alabama, David R. Chandler is to go on trial Feb. 12, accused of arranging and providing a weapon for a May 1990 killing related to an Alabama marijuana-growing and distribution operation.

And last week, a March 26 trial date was set for Bilal Pretlow, a New Jersey man accused of being involved in the dismembering of a police informant and the slaying of a 15-year-old girl.

The last person put to death by the federal government was Victor Feuger, who was hanged at Iowa State Prison in 1963. He was convicted on federal charges of kidnapping and murder.

Feuger was executed under old federal law that has death penalty provisions for such crimes as treason, assassination of the president and top federal officials, and killings involving aircraft hijackings, train wrecks, kidnappings and bank robberies.

Those statutes were never amended to reflect changes in death penalty laws mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court, and are widely considered unconstitutional.

The 1988 anti-drug law is the first statute to take the Supreme Court guidelines into account, according to lawyers.

Pretlow's attorney, Raymond Beam Jr., said race may have played a decision in prosecutors' decision to push for the death penalty. Pretlow is black, as is Cooper. Chandler, the Alabama defendant, is white.

Michael Chertoff, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said the Pretlow case was simply the first case that met the provisions of the new death penalty law.

by CNB