Judge: No death penalty for Mitt Romney, Christie Whitman

CAMDEN, N.J. — A lawsuit seeking the death penalty for 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman is frivolous and malicious, a federal judge in South Jersey has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler on Thursday dismissed the civil suit filed by a woman who claimed the politicians were among six people “trying to blow up” her Newark apartment building. The woman, Evette Feagin, also claimed the defendants “tried to blow up downtown Newark.”

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and former Essex County Executive James Treffinger also were involved in the plot, Feagin alleged in the lawsuit.

Feagin asked the court to impose the death penalty on all of the defendants except Farrakhan — she did not specify what punishment he should face — but the judge noted a federal court cannot grant such “an extreme measure” in civil actions.

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He also described the complaint as “frivolous and malicious.”

“Even under the most liberal of constructions,” Kugler ruled, Feagin’s suit “fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted and is in no way plausible on its face.”

In the suit, Feagin said her “residential building needs a contractor to deter terrorism.”

“Somehow,” the judge noted in trying to make sense of the claim, “this lack of a deterrent is the defendants’ fault and — in plaintiff’s eyes — punishable by death and $100,000.”

Kugler also noted Feagin listed her address as the residence for all of the defendants, too. "As such, they purportedly sought to blow up their own residences," he said.