District Court Judge Karas Visits Cadets

US District Court Judge Kenneth Karas visited with cadets in the Advanced Constitutional Law seminar taught by Department of Law Professor and Constitutional Law Chair, Professor Tony DiSarro. Judge Karas was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2004. Prior to that, he served as a federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, where he was Chief of the Organized Crime and Terrorism Unit. Judge Karas spoke with the cadets about the death penalty and the 8th Amendment. He discussed his experiences as a prosecutor in the capital cases against the East African embassy bombers, and how, in a twist of irony, jurors voted against a death sentence to punish the defendants, reasoning that the defendants would prefer death to life imprisonment because they wanted to be seen as martyrs.