If Loughner is convicted, death penalty will be tough to carry out

Of 182 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by Washington since 1988, 60 defendants are on death row, and only three — including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh — were executed, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which tracks capital cases. None of the 60 are even close to a date with the executioner…

And there are other obstacles for getting a convicted Loughner into the death chamber. There are jurisdictional issues, such as whether he knew that John M. Roll was a federal judge when Loughner is believed to have fatally shot him or whether the judge was at the Jan. 8 congressional event “in the performance of his official duties.”

A huge backlog in federal cases in Arizona has just led officials to declare a judicial emergency and allow lengthy trial delays. And Loughner’s mental fitness could sway a jury to give him a prison term rather than death.