U.S. Atty. Paul Charlton didn’t think the case merited the death penalty. But his superiors in Washington overruled him in August — they wanted the ultimate punishment.

Charlton is one of eight U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Bush administration. Their departures, which normally might have gone unnoticed, have sparked political outrage on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are charging that the Republican-led Justice Department removed competent prosecutors for political reasons, including two instances in which prosecutors did not bring charges that might have helped Republican candidates.

The growing dispute is beaming a spotlight on the inner workings of federal law enforcement and its linchpin U.S. attorneys system. It is a system whose dynamics are rarely in public view and whose tensions have often played out in the West: the tug and play between prosecutors in the field and top Justice officials in Washington; the efforts by regional offices, where cases are tried, to set their own priorities and guard their autonomy; the clashes that occur when those local decisions run into the dictates of Washington.

The cold war between the Justice Department and the 94 districts can be more strained the farther they are from Washington. Indeed, the eight fired prosecutors included two from San Diego and one each from Washington state, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.

In Seattle, John McKay had followed his older brother into the top spot at the U.S. attorney’s office. He also had an eye on a federal judgeship someday. Instead, he got bounced, he said, after senior White House officials became displeased over his inaction during a 2004 recount in a razor-thin governor’s race, which a Democrat ultimately won.

In Little Rock, Ark., H.E. "Bud" Cummins III was pushed aside, he was told, to make room for a GOP operative for White House political guru Karl Rove.

In San Diego, Carol Lam notched her belt with the conviction of Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe, only to become embroiled in a political spat with Washington over illegal immigration. She too was let go.

Also shown the door was David C. Iglesias of Albuquerque. Democrats charge that his departure is linked to veiled attempts by two Republican lawmakers to speed up action on a Democratic corruption scandal before last year’s midterm election.

U.S. attorneys are appointed by the president and serve at his pleasure. They can be fired at his whim. But what has made these dismissals remarkable is that most of them were done the same day, Dec. 7. The firings were followed by a strong hint from Washington that the group should not make any noise in the media or before Congress.

As originally structured, the system gave prosecutors leeway to decide which cases to take, when to serve subpoenas and whom to target with indictments. Washington has tended to serve a supporting role, providing resources and expertise to carry out investigations and trials, and prodding the district offices on the president’s top priorities, such as immigration and drugs.

More recently, especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Washington seems to be taking a greater role in overseeing cases.

Daniel G. Bogden, U.S. attorney in Las Vegas until his recent firing, felt the tension of competing priorities. The Justice Department, he said, wanted him to stay vigilant on a raft of issues, particularly terrorism, violent crime and drug enforcement. At the same time, being in a Western state where gambling is legal, he tried to concentrate on public corruption, money laundering and fraud.

That made it all the more baffling when he was fired and was not afforded a reasonable answer for his dismissal, he said. First, Justice Department officials cited unspecified performance issues. Next, it was policy issues, he said. This past week he learned he was replaced to make room for "new blood."

The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that three widely used anemia drugs sold by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson would be required to carry a safety warning that they could cause serious side effects, including death, when used in higher doses and given to some patients.

The news was another setback for Amgen, which sells two of the three medications under the names Epogen and Aranesp. They account for nearly half of the Thousand Oaks-based biotech giant’s revenue. Amgen stock fell 2.1% on the announcement.

The largely expected "black-box warning" — the strongest type possible for prescription drugs — could prompt doctors to pull back even further on prescribing the drugs. Many doctors had already cut usage of the treatments, prescribed to more than 1 million people in the U.S. each year, in the wake of five research reports in recent months that raised serious safety questions about the drugs when used by some patients.

None of the studies have been conclusive, but the number and pace of the research have raised worries among doctors, federal regulators and Congress.

The drugs, all from the same class of the drug erythropoietin, are sold under the brand name Procrit by Johnson & Johnson, and Epogen and Aranesp by Amgen.

The medications, which help kidney and cancer patients who become anemic from needing repeated and potentially dangerous blood transfusions, have become enormously popular in recent years and are now the largest medicine expense for the federal Medicare program.

In a statement, the FDA said it was reevaluating the safety of the drugs in light of recently completed studies that showed an increased risk of death, blood clots, strokes and heart attacks in some patients when given at higher-than-recommended doses.

In other studies, more rapid tumor growth occurred in patients with head or neck cancer who received higher doses.

In a news conference Friday, Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s cancer drug office, said the agency had recommended that doctors use the lowest doses needed to help patients avoid blood transfusions.

A separate FDA panel is expected to review the use of the drugs in oncology patients in the coming weeks. And Congress is expected soon to follow up on hearings it had begun late last year on the safety and costs of the anemia products.

In a statement, Amgen said it would immediately comply with the FDA’s decision and revise the label for its drug.

Amgen "is committed to providing timely and appropriate communications to physicians and patients whenever we become aware of new safety information that could affect clinical practice," the company said.

Erythropoietin drugs are typically prescribed to boost levels of hemoglobin in the blood to 12 grams a deciliter, although some doctors use higher doses to raise the hemoglobin above that in certain cases with the hope it will produce better results. The normal hemoglobin level is about 15 grams per deciliter.

Many physicians defend the practice but critics point out that oncologists make a significant share of their income buying cancer drugs at wholesale prices and then selling them to patients for a higher price.

The House Judiciary Committee on Friday broadened its investigation into the firing of eight top federal prosecutors, calling on the White House to provide legal documents and make current and former senior officials available for interviews — including former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers.

The Democratic-controlled panel is investigating whether the firings in December were part of a political vendetta against prosecutors who did not bring criminal cases that would have hurt Democratic candidates in last year’s midterm election. There is also concern that Washington officials may have imposed political or ideological litmus tests on prosecutorial decisions.

Specifically, the committee is requesting interviews with Miers and White House Deputy Counsel William Kelley, and is asking the administration "to produce relevant documents, including White House communications on the firings with the Justice Department and members of Congress."

Two of the dismissed prosecutors — David C. Iglesias of Albuquerque and John McKay of Seattle — told the committee this week of phone calls from Republican lawmakers inquiring about possible investigations into Democratic activities at the time of the November election.

Another fired U.S. attorney, H.E. "Bud" Cummins III of Little Rock, Ark., said he was told by Washington that he was being moved out to make room for Timothy Griffin, a Republican operative for chief White House political advisor Karl Rove.

U S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the White House.

Cruz, 34, had been prosecuted as part of a series of cases against agents who had dated — and in some cases married — illegal immigrants.

During his two-week trial, Cruz testified that he had given the woman a lift in January 2005 when he was driving home from a bar in Agua Prieta, Mexico, and saw her walking back to the United States. He said he knew her as the girlfriend of another agent in the Douglas, Ariz., station and had seen her at numerous social gatherings.

Prosecutors argued Cruz knew that the woman was in the U.S. illegally because she once told him that her boyfriend had threatened to deport her. Cruz and his attorney, Roger Sigal, maintained that the prosecution was retaliation for memos the agent wrote about overcrowding and abuse of detained immigrants.

Two Border Patrol agents and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who have since left law enforcement, did not fight charges that they helped illegal immigrants with whom they had relationships.

Lawyers on both sides of the gun-control debate called the decision significant: It was the first time a federal appeals court has voided a gun law on the basis of the 2nd Amendment, they said.

For that reason, the case is expected to reach the nation’s highest court.

If the justices were to agree with the lower court, the ruling would not likely sweep aside the many laws that regulate guns and gun ownership. However, it could cast doubt on measures that forbid law-abiding residents from possessing a weapon.

Although the 2nd Amendment is among the best known provisions of the Constitution, it has had remarkably little effect on the law.

Gun owners, led by the National Rifle Assn., have spotlighted the amendment’s reference to "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in waging political battles against efforts to limit the availability of weapons.

But in the Supreme Court’s only major ruling that interpreted the amendment, it focused on the measure’s opening words, which speak of  "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state."

In upholding a federal law against transporting machine guns across state lines, the justices dismissed the 2nd Amendment as being concerned only with "the preservation of … a well regulated militia."

Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia may cause the justices to reconsider that conclusion. Breaking with precedent, the 2-1 decision said the government may not forbid residents from owning "functional firearms" for self-defense at home.

The District of Columbia law barred virtually all of the city’s residents from keeping in their homes handguns that had not been registered before 1976. Exceptions were made for active-duty and retired police officers.