A sitting federal judge who is working on a book is calling on the Justice Department to ease off in pursuing the federal death penalty in New York City cases.

Speaking at an American Bar Association event yesterday, the judge, Frederic Block of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, criticized the government for spending millions of dollars in pursuit of death sentences and ignoring what he said were New Yorkers’ views on capital punishment. Washington often seeks death sentences when it has virtually no chance of success, he said, sometimes even over the objections of the local U.S. attorneys tasked with prosecuting the cases.

“The problem is, basically, New York has spoken against the death penalty with the exception of a situation involving a cop killing,” he said, referring to the single instance in which a federal jury has rendered a death verdict in New York in recent years. The condemned man, Ronell Wilson, killed two undercover detectives.

Judge Block cited the fact that federal juries have been reluctant to impose death penalties in other trials. Since that February 2006 death verdict in the Wilson case, Judge Block’s courthouse has hosted seven capital trials in which a jury has declined to impose a death sentence, which requires unanimity.

“Yet you go on and on and on and prosecute these cases,” Judge Block, who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, said.

Individual jurors in Brooklyn may, however, be less reluctant to impose the death sentence than the ultimate verdicts would suggest. In at least two cases beyond the Wilson prosecution, federal juries in Brooklyn voted nine to three in favor of death, lawyers with knowledge of the cases say. One trial involved a scheme to take out insurance policies on people and then murder them, and the other involved a gang member responsible for several killings.

In response to a query from The New York Sun, a Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said the agency’s decisions regarding capital prosecutions are “set within a framework of consistent and even-handed national application of federal capital sentencing laws.”

Judge Block’s comments yesterday are some of his strongest public statements yet against the administration of the death penalty. While other judges have also asked the justice department to reconsider the death penalty in individual cases, Judge Block has emerged as the most vocal critic.

In 2006, Judge Block urged prosecutors not to seek the death penalty against a crack dealer who had ordered up two murders. A transcript of the remarks was discovered by reporters, resulting in significant news coverage. Shortly afterwards, Judge Block published an opinion piece in the New York Times describing the toll that death penalty cases exact on courthouse resources.

“It’s just not cost-effective to willy-nilly strive for the death penalty,” Judge Block said yesterday. “It really goes a long way toward hurting the functions of the court and the U.S. attorney’s office in terms to being able to handle the rest of their criminal docket. It creates a serious problem.”

A former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, Loretta Lynch, also participated on the panel. She said the current Justice Department leadership appears more willing to disregard a local U.S. attorney’s desire to waive the death penalty.

One surprising disclosure at yesterday’s panel came from the remark of an audience member, Ephraim Savitt, who was a defense lawyer for Wilson, the man sentenced to death for the murder of the two officers. He said that he believed that the U.S. attorney’s office was willing to forgo seeking the death penalty against Wilson in favor of a plea agreement involving a life sentence.

Until Mr. Savitt’s statement, there had never been any public indication that the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn had not sought the death penalty every step of the way.

But in an interview, Mr. Savitt said that the Brooklyn prosecutors discussed the possibility of a plea after a criminal associate of Wilson and key witness, Omar Green, recanted on a crucial detail. Green had initially told investigators that Wilson knew his victims were police, Mr. Savitt said.

Based on the plea negotiations, Mr. Savitt said, “there’s a clear inference that the U.S. attorney’s office was seeking re-evaluation” from Justice Department officials in Washington about requesting capital punishment.

The Wilson case demonstrates how the decision “to seek the death penalty is very arbitrary,” Mr. Savitt said.

As a matter of policy, the Justice Department doesn’t publicly discuss internal deliberations leading up requests for death sentences. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, Robert Nardoza, declined to comment on Mr. Savitt’s remarks.

At yesterday’s panel, Judge Block distributed an excerpt from a book he is writing about the death penalty and other issues in the judicial system.