Death penalty: Judge won't set deadline on decision in Nicholas Tartaglione murder case

The judge handling the quadruple murder case of ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione is reluctant to set a deadline for the U.S. Department of Justice to decide whether it will continue seeking the death penalty.

But U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas said Thursday he was considering reaching out to Justice officials in Washington, concerned about the money and other resources being spent on the case that would be wasted if the eventual decision is to not seek the death penalty.

Tartaglione is scheduled to go on trial March 13 in the 2016 killings of four men in Orange County, one of whom, Martin Luna, allegedly owed Tartaglione and his co-conspirators money for a drug deal. Luna was lured on April 11 that year to a bar in Chester run by Tartaglione’s brother. He brought along his nephew, Miguel Luna; his niece’s fiancé, Urbano Santiago; and a family friend, Hector Gutierrez.

None were ever seen alive again. Eight months later, just after Tartaglione was indicted, their bodies were found buried on property he had rented near Otisville.

Tartaglione, 55, spent most of his career as a Briarcliff Manor police officer, retiring in 2008, but also was a cop in Mount Vernon and Pawling.

His lawyers in May filed a detailed request asking federal prosecutors to reconsider their 2019 decision to seek the death penalty. Last week, Bruce Barket, Tartaglione’s lead lawyer, said no information had been shared in recent months and asked Karas to set a Dec. 1 deadline for a decision to be made.

While President Joe Biden campaigned on ending the federal death penalty, his administration has not gone that far. There is currently a moratorium on federal executions, the Justice Department has not sought the death penalty in any new cases and it has withdrawn notices of intent in at least 15 cases. There are still at least 11 defendants in nine cases awaiting trial in death penalty cases.

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Jury selection is currently underway in another death penalty case in the Southern District of New York. Sayfullo Saipov is a suspected terrorist accused of killing eight people when he drove into them along the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan on Oct. 31, 2017. There is also a pending case in the Eastern District of New York, where brothers Jairo and Alexi Saenz face the death penalty in seven killings attributed to the MS-13 gang.

In Tartaglione’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Fiddelman on Thursday told Karas he was precluded by his superiors from revealing any details about the status of the deauthorization request other than that it was in Washington. He wasn’t even allowed to say when it had gotten there. But he did hint that a decision could come by mid-January, saying Jan. 15 would be a more realistic date if Karas was to set a deadline.

And while nothing about the government’s consideration or specific timeline was revealed, getting that far does take time.

There were four levels of review in the Southern District of New York – the trial lawyers, the district’s capital committee, the executive staff and finally U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. The steps in Washington include review by: the Capital Case staff, a committee of prosecutors from around the country, the capital case supervisor, the Deputy Attorney General and finally the Attorney General.

The judge said he was disinclined to impose the kind of pressure on the Justice Department that a deadline would entail.

“Speeding it up for the sake of speeding it up is not a good idea,” Karas said. “I don’t want to disrupt a process that is supposed to be deliberative, fair and careful.”

Edward Rymsza, one of the lawyers handling capital matters for Tartaglione, said that when a recent case in the Western District of Missouri dragged on, the judge there wrote to the Capital Case supervisor in Washington. Within a week, Rymsza said, the decision deauthorizing the death penalty in the case was announced.

“That must have been some letter,” the judge quipped.

He asked for a copy of it and said he would likely review it and send one of his own, less to force a decision than to remind them of all the resources that go into prosecuting and defending a capital case.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Nicholas Tartaglione: Judge won't set deadline on death penalty ruling