The last execution in NY for a federal crime was Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 for spying

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor police officer accused in the killings of four men in Orange County nearly three years ago.

That decision has been pending since Tartaglione's arrest in December 2016 and was conveyed to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas Tuesday morning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gerber.

It is the second time in recent months that prosecutors opted to pursue capital punishment in the Southern District of New York, where death penalty cases are generally rare.

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Defense lawyer Bruce Barket, who said he was notified Thursday, didn't mince words as he left the federal courthouse in White Plains.

"Unfortunate, despicable, unnecessary, unjust, egregious, thoughtless, pointless; those are all words that came to my mind," Barket said, adding "outrageous" to the list.

Tartaglione is accused in the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, who went missing April 11, 2016, after going to a bar in Chester, that was owned at the time by Tartaglione's brother.

Their bodies were discovered eight months later, the day after Tartaglione's arrest, on property he had previously rented in Otisville.

Prosecutors contend that Luna was lured to the bar to be confronted over money he owed from a drug deal. He brought the others along – Miguel Luna and Santiago were relatives and Gutierrez was a family friend – and they had nothing to do with the drug deal.

Martin Luna's death was ruled a homicide but the autopsy did not reveal how he was killed. The other men were each shot in the head. Prosecutors have said Tartaglione was not present when the three men were shot because he had left with Martin Luna's body.

A second defendant in the case, former Graham School security guard Joseph Biggs, has not been in court with Tartaglione in more than a year and federal court records show only sealed documents filed in his case. His lawyer, George Glotzer, declined to comment on Biggs' status.

Death penalty cases rare

In September, prosecutors announced they were pursuing the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of killing eight people when he drove a truck down a Hudson River bike path in lower Manhattan on Halloween 2017.

The last death penalty case in the Southern District of New York was a decade ago. Khalid Barns, the leader of a Peekskill drug ring, was found guilty of killing two drug dealers in Manhattan but was spared the death penalty when the jury opted instead for life imprisonment.

The last execution in New York for a federal crime was in 1953 when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed following their conviction on espionage charges.

Barket and other lawyers for Tartaglione worked on a mitigation package for more than a year to head off pursuit of the death penalty. In December they met with officials at the Department of Justice in Washington but failed to convince them.

Barket has declined to discuss details of why the death penalty should not be pursued and on Tuesday would not again.

"The first part of the trial that we will have, and we are preparing for, is the innocence phase and that's what we're preparing for as much as anything else," he said.

He said that Tartaglione took the news about the government's decision "pretty well, all things considered."

"He's more concerned about the time, the extra time it will take," Barket said. "He's focused like we all are on the first part of the trial."

A formal notice of intent to seek capital punishment that the government must present to the defense will be completed in the coming weeks, Gerber said.

Karas adjourned the case until May 3 for the defense to consider pre-trial motions they want to pursue related to both the case itself and to the death penalty. No trial date has been set.

Tartaglione's father and relatives of the victim declined to comment as they left the courthouse.

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Twitter: @jonbandler