Aug. 21
TEXAS:
Year-old state office challenges death sentences
Brad Levenson wasn't thrilled to watch the condemned prisoner die, but he
believed it was his duty to his client — and to the state-funded agency he now
leads, charged with defending people who have been sentenced to death.
It was the 1st execution he'd ever seen.
"No matter how many pictures you see and other attorneys describing it, it's
just a surreal experience," Levenson said of the lethal injection earlier this
year of convicted killer Cary Kerr.
"I was haunted by that for weeks, thinking there was something we could have
done," he said. "I don't want this to sound insensitive. I needed to see an
execution to do the work I do... I had to see the start and the finish."
After years of handling death penalty cases as a federal public defender in
California, which has the nation's largest death row but rarely carries out the
ultimate punishment, Levenson heads the year-old Texas Office of Capital Writs,
an independent state agency tasked with scrutinizing capital murder trials to
ensure they were legally proper.
The Texas Legislature created the office two years ago after repeated
embarrassing instances of shoddy legal work by appeals attorneys representing
capital murder convicts. The agency now handles the state appellate process for
nearly all new Texas death penalty cases.
"So far, I think we are seeing the system work as we intended and hoped," said
Sen. Rodney Ellis, the Houston Democrat who sponsored the measure creating the
agency. "Considering the mistakes made in Texas to date, we should pay for this
safety net and pray it's adequate enough to get the job done right."
More than a dozen states have similar operations, but Texas was the largest
without a public office to address death penalty appeals. None of the other
states with capital punishment executes people as frequently as Texas.
The primary method of getting a new trial following a criminal conviction is to
file a habeas appeal, which argues that a major legal mistake was made during
the first trial. In Texas, courts generally will hear only one habeas appeal
and attorneys should raise such claims early, as the cases wind through the
judicial system.
Andrea Marsh, executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, a group
that works to improve legal help for poor Texans accused of crimes, said the
role of habeas attorneys is crucial.
"The lawyer is basically required to reinvestigate the case from beginning to
end," she said. "If a lawyer makes a mistake ... it is almost impossible to fix
it down the road."
That's what happened in a number of cases in previous years when private
lawyers — appointed and paid by the state — didn't even bother to meet their
clients, filed faulty appeals in which the facts didn't match the inmate, or
filed cursory appeals that courts quickly dismissed. For some attorneys, habeas
cases were money spinners that required little real effort and their clients
suffered as a result, or the attorney just took on too many clients, or didn't
have the expertise.
The state was spending a lot of money, but not getting quality legal services,
Marsh said. "Now they're getting their money's worth."
Since opening for business last September, the Office of Capital Writs has
about a dozen clients on death row.
"This is where the help was needed most," said Levenson, 51, explaining why he
took the job.
Levenson directs a team of attorneys, investigators and staff working out of
quarters just a few blocks north of the capital building in Austin. Working
with an annual budget of about $850,000, they focus on habeas writs,
essentially trying to determine if mistakes were made at the trial.
"What I think is great about this office is this is all we do," he said. "This
is not a machine, but we know how to get the case, what to look at, what
experts to look at, what issues might go."
Levenson said he couldn't imagine letting a client go to an execution without a
lawyer present, but then he's not a career attorney. He was an actor in New
York City, then a bond trader with big Wall Street firms before going to law
school in Los Angeles and joining the California attorney general's office as a
prosecutor. He spent 11 years there.
"At some point I realized I wasn't on the right side," he said. "I'm very
thankful the federal public defender office took me in. It was a big risk for
them."
Levenson's team concentrates on recent convictions, but picked up Kerr's case
when he was within weeks of execution for a rape-slaying near Fort Worth and
without a lawyer.
"We were trying to find a legal argument that cuts to the chase, that the
courts will be either interested or won't be interested," he said.
They weren't.
In an area of the profession where losing in court means his client likely
dies, Levenson said victories can be as meaningful as reconnecting a prisoner
with his family or getting a dissenting opinion from an appeals court judge.
But Levenson acknowledges that they won't win every case, nor will Texas stop
using the death penalty anytime soon.
"I'm against the death penalty, but I'm not an abolitionist," he said. "My job
is not to oppose the death penalty... Our job is to be legal representatives."
(source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Court briefs
A Luzerne County senior judge has scheduled a hearing next month for attorneys
to discuss a convicted murderer’s request to go through with the death penalty
to which he was sentenced.
Senior Judge Patrick Toole scheduled a Sept. 19 hearing after Michael Bardo
filed court papers on July 7, saying he wishes to stop any further appeals in
his case and go forward with his sentence.
Bardo, 42, was convicted in January 1993 of first-degree murder and two counts
of indecent aggravated assault for molesting and killing his niece, Joelle
Donovan. Police said Bardo stuffed the girl’s body in a garbage bag and threw
it into Solomon Creek in South Wilkes-Barre. Bardo was sentenced to death, and
a death warrant was signed by then-Gov. Ed Rendell in January 2006. Later that
month, Senior Judge Patrick Toole issued a stay of execution, allowing Bardo’s
attorneys time to review records and prepare an appeal.
In court papers filed Friday, Deputy Attorney General Kelley Nelson said she
would not be opposed to the hearing, based on the fact that it appears Bardo’s
attorneys have not informed Toole or Nelson of Bardo’s desires.
(source: The Times Leader)
OHIO:
Blair takes lead in fight against death penalty
There’s been a summer pause in the execution of Ohio’s death row inmates and
state Rep. Terry Blair would like to see that pause made permanent.
“I don’t think we have any business in taking another person’s life, even for
what we call a legal purpose or what we might refer to as a justified purpose,”
the Washington Twp. Republican said.
Blair is doing what he can to put his beliefs into action.
He’s 1 of just 2 Republican cosponsors of House Bill 160, legislation to
abolish the death penalty in Ohio and replace it with life imprisonment without
parole for the worst crimes.
That puts Blair in a distinct minority in the 59-member House Republican caucus
and in alliance with two of the House’s most liberal Democrats, Reps. Ted
Celeste of Grandview Heights and Nickie Antonio of Lakewood.
Celeste and Antonio are the joint sponsors of the bill.
For Blair, it’s a matter of living out his Catholic faith.
“The creeds of the church say that life is to be protected all along, from
natural birth to natural death,” said Blair, 64.
He’s also a cosponsor of the “Heartbeat” bill, which would ban abortion once a
heartbeat is detected.
A low-key legislator who seldom speaks on the House floor, Blair has been in
the minority before in his own party.
In 2009, he was 1 of just 5 House Republicans — along with Rep. Ross McGregor
of Springfield and then Rep. Peggy Lehner of Kettering — who joined Democrats
in a historic vote approving gay rights legislation banning discrimination in
housing and employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
That bill died in the Senate.
The legislation banning the death penalty may not get that far, but Celeste
said it helps to have a Republican cosponsor in a GOP-controlled House.
Rep. Lynn Slaby, an Akron-area Republican, is chairman of the Criminal Justice
Committee and said he expects to hold another hearing on the bill in early
October. Slaby, a former Summit County prosecutor and state appeals court
judge, is not a supporter.
“I still believe in certain very, very rare situations that it (capital
punishment) has to be used extremely cautiously with good, solid evidence,”
Slaby said.
By the time of the committee hearing, it’s likely that capital punishment will
have resumed in the state. Since 1999, when Ohio resumed capital punishment, 45
prisoners have been executed.
Ohio prison officials have submitted a modified lethal injection procedure to a
federal judge in anticipation of resuming executions next month.
The protocol was part of a filing Friday with U.S. District Court Judge Gregory
L. Frost who halted a July execution because he had concerns about the state’s
“haphazard” lethal injection process.
Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
said the agency is moving ahead with plans for the Sept. 20 execution of Billy
Slagle of Cuyahoga County.
Currently, there are 151 residents of death row, according to LoParo, spokesman
for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Gov. John Kasich in July put Ohio’s death penalty on hold after U.S. District
Judge Gregory Frost found that the state’s lethal injection procedures were
used in a haphazard way.
LoParo said the procedures have been revised and are expected to be in place
for an execution scheduled for September.
Blair, meanwhile, isn’t likely to change his mind.
“At least in my belief system, there’s another judge. I’m not the one who’s to
judge a person, whether to take their life or not,” he said.
(source: Middletown Journal)
****************
Death-penalty appeal begins Monday
Jury-related issues will loom large as the 7th District Court of Appeals hears
oral arguments at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the case of Bennie L. Adams, 54, who is
on death row for the 1985 murder of his neighbor, Gina Tenney, according to
documents filed with the court.
Nearly 3 years ago, then-Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common
Pleas Court followed the recommendation of the jury by sentencing Adams to
death by lethal injection.
Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student who was Adams’
upstairs neighbor in an Ohio Avenue duplex, was strangled Dec. 29, 1985. Her
frozen body was found in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the next day.
Adams was indicted for the murder in 2007 after a DNA match was found in
evidence police had preserved for 22 years.
In their effort to save Adams’ life, Adams’ appellate lawyers, John B. Juhasz
and Lynn A. Maro, have filed with the appeals court a 529-page written brief
containing 21 allegations of legal and procedural error in Adams’ trial.
Those allegations of error cover a broad range of issues from jury selection
and instructions to admissibility of trial testimony and evidence, trial
location and the constitutionality of the death penalty.
One of those allegations is that Judge Franken rushed jury selection, thereby
making meaningful questioning by the lawyers of each potential juror
impossible.
“If the time allotted was over, the trial court interrupted and cut off
questioning, even before the juror could answer,” Juhasz and Maro complained.
However, Ralph M. Rivera and Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutors,
argued that Adams “was afforded his due-process right to a fair and impartial
jury” because Judge Franken gave the lawyers “a reasonable opportunity to
inquire into the jurors’ exposure to pretrial publicity and their views on the
death penalty.”
Juhasz and Maro argued that Adams was denied a trial by a fair and impartial
jury because his trial lawyers failed to ask Judge Franken to move the trial to
another Ohio county after extensive publicity in Youngstown.
Rivera and Desmond argued Adams got a fair trial and that pretrial publicity
did not prejudice the jury. “Thus, a change of venue was neither warranted, nor
necessary,” they wrote.
Juhasz and Maro argued that Adams “was denied a fair and impartial jury and
equal protection of the laws when his jury was not composed of a fair
cross-section of the community” due to racially discriminatory dismissals of
potential jurors by prosecutors, which Judge Franken approved.
Rivera and Desmond replied, however, that the jury represented a fair cross
section of the community “and the state did not use its peremptory challenges
to racially discriminate.” Adams is black; Tenney was white.
Immediately after Judge Franken imposed the death sentence on Adams on Oct. 30,
2008, Lou DeFabio, one of Adams’ trial defense lawyers, said the lone black
person on the panel of 12 jurors didn’t adequately represent blacks, who
constituted 15.3 percent of the county’s population in the 2000 census.
DeFabio noted that he challenged the prosecution’s dismissal of two black
jurors; but he said the prosecution then offered race-neutral reasons for
excusing them, and the judge accepted the prosecution’s explanations.
The 3-judge panel that will hear the arguments at the appellate court’s
headquarters at 131 W. Federal St. consists of Judges Gene Donofrio, Joseph J.
Vukovich and Cheryl L. Waite.
The court has ordered that Adams remain imprisoned, but it has stayed his
execution while it considers his appeal.
(source: Youngstown Vindicator)
USA (RHODE ISLAND):
RI inmate in death penalty fight has violent past
"Smiley," a skinny state inmate known behind bars for his missing 2 front
teeth, is at the center of a legal tug-of-war between federal officials who
could pursue a death penalty prosecution against him — and Gov. Lincoln Chafee,
a staunch death penalty opponent.
Jason Pleau, 33, a braggadocios BB-gun robber, petty thief and troublemaker who
has spent nearly half of his life in prison, straddles the death penalty issue
because of the shooting death of a man outside a Woonsocket bank last year.
Pleau allegedly shot gas station manager David Main, 49, on Sept. 20 outside a
Citizens Bank — which, because it is federally insured, gives the Rhode Island
U.S. Attorney's office the authority to prosecute Pleau.
Rhode Island has no death penalty and Chafee, who pardoned the last man to be
executed in his state more than 150 years ago, says he has the final say over
who will try the case.
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is now considering whether to side
with Chafee and keep Pleau in state custody or surrender him to federal
officials. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has not said if he will seek the
death penalty if Pleau is convicted.
In a statement, Chafee said his pursuit of the case has nothing to do with the
inmate at the center of the fight.
"My interest in the Pleau case is not about Mr. Pleau as an individual. It is
in protecting the sovereignty and the legitimate public policy choices of our
state," Chafee said. "Rhode Island has a long history of opposition to the
death penalty and it has not been used here since 1845."
Chafee said he would be allowing "our state's opposition to capital punishment
to be subverted" if Pleau were turned over to federal authorities.
"Because Mr. Pleau has already agreed to plead guilty on state charges to life
in prison without parole - Rhode Island's harshest penalty - the federal
government's primary motivation appears to be exposing him to the death
penalty," the governor said.
Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha said in a statement that his office
has claimed federal jurisdiction in the case from the beginning.
He said his decision reflected the commitment of his office and the Justice
Department to protect banks and the people who use them. "It was not based on
the potential punishment anyone ultimately charged in connection with the case
might face," Neronha said.
The federal government has executed 3 people since 2001, when it resumed
executions after a 38-year suspension. That includes Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh.
Pleau's criminal career began — and came to a deadly end, police say — on a
busy thoroughfare in his hometown 15 years later.
Police say Pleau confessed to killing Main when he was caught in New York 3
days later. His co-defendants, Jose A. Santiago and Kelley M. Lajoie, both of
Springfield, Mass., have pleaded not guilty.
The bank branch is on Diamond Hill Avenue, the street where police say Pleau,
then 18, walked into Caldor's in 1996 and shoplifted a $16.99 Trapper Keeper
notebook.
Pleau and his associates then embarked on a 2-state spree, authorities say,
trying to hold up a restaurant, tripping on acid and breaking into homes, and
donning masks to rob convenience stores at gunpoint.
Pleau was arrested in November 1996 after a traffic stop and sentenced to 12
years in prison, a term that was lengthened after authorities say he attacked a
rookie correctional officer and nearly pushed him off a 3rd-floor lockup.
After numerous failed attempts to get parole, Pleau was finally freed from the
Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston in 2009 and moved to a halfway
house in Providence. He worked as a landscaper and stayed with his girlfriend,
according to his aunt, Lori Badeau.
But on Sept. 20, authorities said Pleau picked up where he'd left off as a
teenager, brandishing a gun and hiding behind a ski mask as he approached Main,
demanding more than $12,000 in receipts Main planned to deposit from the Shell
station on Diamond Hill Avenue.
Main died of a single .38-caliber bullet wound to the head. Several hours
later, Pleau checked in as usual with his parole officer, said state Department
of Corrections spokeswoman Tracey Zeckhausen.
"I thought he was happy. I guess not," said Badeau, 53. "Why would you screw up
something like that? He didn't want to live on the outside. I can't wrap my
mind around why he did it."
Restaurant owner Michele Decelles, one of Pleau's 1996 crime-spree victims, is
furious with Chafee's decision not to surrender Pleau to federal officials.
"How many more people does he have to kill?" she asked.
Decelles said she was closing her Bellingham, Mass. restaurant when Pleau
grabbed her hair and put a gun to her throat as she struggled to get back
through the kitchen door at the Coachmen's Lodge, located on the Woonsocket,
R.I. line.
In October that year, police say Pleau and his associates stole liquor and
jewelry from the home of a 75-year-old man, held up a mother and her 2
½-year-old daughter at gunpoint and knocked off 2 convenience stores. Pleau
wore what one victim described as a "Jason" hockey mask from the "Friday the
13th" slasher films.
"When someone puts a gun to your face, it changes how you feel," said Renee
Crisafulli, who was held up by Pleau at a Woonsocket convenience store.
Police caught Pleau during a routine traffic stop just after his 19th birthday.
He confessed to the break-in, home invasion and robberies and admit ted to a
friend he was using BB guns to commit the crimes, police records show. He
bragged about evading authorities and the night of his arrest, confided in a
pal that he was looking for a "real gun" to commit suicide.
"Jay was laughing, saying that all these other guys were getting locked up and
he was the only one out," Roger L. Berube Jr. told police. Berube was driving
the car Pleau was riding in when he was arrested.
Pleau pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
While Pleau was locked up, his family was busted for operating a crack den out
of their Woonsocket apartment. On Aug. 12, 1998, an undercover police officer
busted Pleau's father, Robert Henshaw, 55; mother, Leslie; half-brother,
Thomas; and another man, court records show.
Henshaw told police he had been selling cocaine for 3 years.
"I did it to support my habit and keep my wife off the street," Henshaw told
police.
Pleau's father spent more than a year in prison for drug possession with intent
to deliver; his mother was imprisoned several times for drug possession and
loitering for prostitution, Zeckhausen said.
Jason Pleau was repeatedly turned down for parole until 2009. He spent much of
his time after prison with his new girlfriend and had a job with an East
Greenwich landscaping company, according to his aunt.
Badeau said she was stunned to read about the bank killing. She thinks a
death-penalty prosecution is a waste of money.
"Jail is the only life he ever knew," she said. "He didn't want to deal with
the outside world."
(source: Associated Press)
***************************************************
In His Own Words----The death penalty? 'I think it's uncivilized'
The Monitor editorial board interviewed Republican presidential candidate Ron
Paul last week. Much of the conversation was about the economy and the Federal
Reserve, but Paul also touched on numerous other issues. Here's what he had to
say on the death penalty, environmental protection, the value of the Tea Party,
and the difference between compromise and coalition-building.
On the death penalty: Somebody asked me yesterday, "When was the last time you
ever changed your opinion?" It's been a while since I've had a major change of
opinion, but I try to understand and study and figure out how things work and
become better. But on that issue (the death penalty), I did have a change of
opinion. . . . It was not overnight, but my position now is, since I'm a
federal official and I would be a U.S. president, is I do not believe in the
federal death penalty . . .but I would not come and say the federal government
and the federal courts should tell the states they can't have the death penalty
anymore.
I just don't think with the scientific evidence - I read an article yesterday,
and 68 % of the time they make mistakes.
It's so racist, too. I think more than 1/2 the people getting the death penalty
are poor blacks.
This is the one place, the one remnant of racism in our country is in the court
system, enforcing the drug laws and enforcing the death penalty. . . .If you're
rich, you usually don't meet the death penalty. . . .
I don't think it's very good sign for civilization to still be invoking the
death penalty. . . .
If you believe in the death penalty, what I really object to is the doctors
participating in torture, and doctors who are there to make it smooth and
sweet.
"Oh, let's put him to sleep." If it's a death penalty, do it on Times Square,
see 'em get their head chopped off and see how all the people, see how much
they like it, make 'em look at it. I think it's uncivilized. But, boy, there
are some really bad people out there, makes it awfully tempting.
(source: Concord Monitor)
LOUISIANA:
Ronald Bodenheimer ethical conflict cited as killer's death sentence is thrown
out
A state judge has tossed out a convicted killer's death sentence for a 1992
double homicide in Kenner, finding that "rogue prosecutor" Ronald Bodenheimer,
who later served time for being a corrupt Jefferson Parish judge, created a
"repugnant" ethical conflict by arguing the defendant killed for a life
insurance payout but then representing a victim's family in a related lawsuit
to get that insurance money -- netting his law firm about $300,000.
However, Manuel Ortiz's convictions of first-degree and second-degree murder
for the Oct. 23, 1992, deaths of his wife Tracie Williams, 31, and her
childhood friend, Cheryl Mallory, 33, remain intact. Ortiz, 53, who has
maintained his innocence, will spend the rest of his life in prison with no
chance of parole.
"The Court is aware of the gravity of this ruling," Judge Jerome Winsberg wrote
in a judgment he filed in the 24th Judicial District Court Friday. "However,
the prosecutor's aberrant behavior in this case is beyond the pale of what is
expected in a death penalty case."
Williams' and Mallory's families could not be reached for comment.
A Jefferson Parish jury convicted Ortiz in 1994 of taking out $905,000 in life
insurance policies on his wife of five months and then hiring a hit man to kill
her. She was stabbed to death at her Vouray Drive apartment, and Mallory, who
was visiting, was shot dead. Ortiz was in his native El Salvador at the time
and was arrested when he returned to the United States. The actual killer was
never identified.
Conflict decried
During Ortiz's trial, Bodenheimer argued that Ortiz increased the policy amount
on his wife as part of the murder scheme. That argument "may well have
influenced the jury to recommend the death penalty," Winsberg wrote.
Yet, days after the conviction, Bodenheimer signed on as the Williams' family
attorney to get that life insurance money and argued that Williams -- not
Ortiz -- increased the policies, Winsberg found. The civil case "could succeed
only if Mr. Ortiz, who was listed as the primary beneficiary of the insurance
policies, was convicted and remained so," he found.
Bodenheimer's private firm netted about $300,000 for the work. He was later
elected to the 24th Judicial District Court and convicted in the FBI's
"Wrinkled Robe" investigation into corruption at the Jefferson Parish
Courthouse. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison after pleading guilty in
2003 to federal racketeering charges.
In a strongly worded 13-page judgment, Winsberg, a retired New Orleans judge,
recognized Bodenheimer's past in assessing his credibility when prosecuting
Ortiz.
"This is yet another example of Mr. Bodenheimer's willingness to act in an
unprincipled manner for personal gain," Winsberg wrote. "It is repugnant that a
prosecutor would, in a death penalty case, urge the jury to make a particular
fact-finding, and then, in a related civil case, argue for the opposite
conclusion, one which may have aided the defense in the criminal case. Mr.
Bodenheimer's conduct in the related civil cases has cast a shadow on the
criminal prosecution, rendering the death sentence unreliable."
Ortiz's attorney Nick Trenticosta, who is defending a capital murder case in
New Orleans, could not be reached for comment Friday.
District Attorney Paul Connick Jr., whose office inherited the case when he was
elected in 1996, was unavailable for comment, his office said. His chief of
trials, Tim McElroy, said they are reviewing Winsberg's judgment.
"We will make a decision as to what our next step will be," McElroy said.
Winsberg also criticized former Jefferson Parish District Attorney John
Mamoulides, whom Bodenheimer has said allowed him to represent Williams' family
on the civil case. "This egregious act endorsed Mr. Bodenheimer's conduct, and
encouraged him to act as a rogue prosecutor," Winsberg wrote.
Mamoulides, who left office in 1996, could not be reached for comment Friday.
Restrictions established
Connick's Executive Assistant District Attorney Barron Burmaster said
prosecutors now are full-time employees who have little time for outside legal
work. Bodenheimer prosecuted cases and then tended to his "full-blown law
practice" on the side, Burmaster said.
"Our people don't have outside practices, but that doesn't mean our people
don't have outside law work," Burmaster said, adding he and supervisors review
all requests for outside work.
Bodenheimer's conflict was a central argument Trenticosta raised in 2003, when
he filed a post-conviction relief application in seeking a new trial.
Trenticosta argued that Carlos Saavedra Sr. killed the women and framed Ortiz
because of a dispute over a failed business venture. Trenticosta's witnesses
testified that Saavedra was a former Honduran hitman who confessed to the
Kenner killings and owned a knife similar to what was used to stab Williams to
death. Trenticosta also accused Bodenheimer of illegally hiding evidence that
would have helped Ortiz's trial attorneys.
Winsberg ruled he was "unconvinced" by the witnesses attacking Saavedra and
found that, except for Bodenheimer's conflict, Ortiz "received a fair trial,
resulting in a verdict worthy of confidence."
(source: New Orleans Times-Picayune)
WASHINGTON:
Reduce public costs of serious murder cases by not seeking death penalty----A
recent Seattle Times story explored the high costs of death-penalty cases in
Washington state. Guest columnists Mark Larrañaga and David Zuckerman argue the
best way to save money in these cases is for prosecutors to decide against
seeking the death penalty.
As lawyers representing defendants facing the death penalty, we are well aware
of the extraordinary time, effort and expense involved in prosecuting and
defending these cases. But it may come as a surprise to most people that the
cost of executing a prisoner is vastly greater than the cost of locking him up
for the rest of his life. There is only one way for a county or the state to
avoid this inordinate expense: Stop seeking the death penalty.
In an Aug. 14 Seattle Times article — "Death Penalty Dilemma: Is Soaring Cost
Worth it?" — King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg was quoted as claiming there
is an "industry" of capital-defense attorneys targeted at "running up the
bill."
Contrary to these comments, the significant cost is not the fault of the
defense, but is inherent in death-penalty litigation.
Once Satterberg — or any other elected prosecutor — chooses to seek the
ultimate and irrevocable punishment of death, extraordinary steps are mandated
by the Legislature, courts, and the state and federal constitutions. For
example, the defense is constitutionally duty-bound to investigate all aspects
of the defendant's background. Seeking death also results in a substantially
longer and more expensive jury-selection process, lengthier trials and extended
appeals.
Over the past 30 years, hardly any non-death-penalty aggravated murder
convictions have been reversed; whereas the vast majority of death sentences
have been, ultimately resulting in life sentences. If the prosecutor did not
seek the death penalty (or it was no longer a sentence option), the time,
resources and costs associated with this "industry" would be unnecessary and
could be used for more-productive purposes.
At first glance, the figures set out in the article appear to show the defense
spending much more than the prosecution. As the story notes, however, only the
money spent by the prosecuting attorney's office is listed and not the
substantial resources expended by other public agencies.
For example, the case of Conner Schierman, ultimately convicted of murdering
four members of a Kirkland family, tied up for years resources of the
Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory; the Woodinville, Kirkland and Kent
fire departments; the Kirkland, Bellevue, Kent and Shoreline police
departments; the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the King
County Medical Examiner's Office. These agencies expended thousands of staff
hours and generated thousands of pages of forensic reports. The cost of such
work may be difficult to quantify, but it certainly is not free.
If nothing else, the public suffers from having so many resources diverted from
the investigation of other serious crimes. Unlike defense funding requests,
which are public, the costs associated with the prosecution of capital cases
are far less transparent, making it easier to criticize the defense costs.
The costs associated with capital punishment were explored by a committee
created by the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) comprising defense
attorneys, judges, civil attorneys, non-attorneys and prosecutors — including a
prosecutor at the King County Prosecutor's Office. One prosecutor informed the
committee that costs of capital cases was "at least quadruple the cost of a
non-capital murder trial" and others estimated that the difference ranged
between $25,000 and $1 million.
After reviewing the administration of Washington's death penalty over the past
three decades (the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1981) and the
significant number of reversals and minimal executions, the committee
questioned the financial justification for its continued use.
With public funds tight, we should all be asking whether the government is
spending our tax money wisely on public safety. Blowing millions of dollars on
a few high-profile cases is not an efficient use of our resources. This is just
one of the reasons why we would be better off without a "death penalty
industry."
(source: Guest Column: Mark Larrañaga, is co-chair of Washington Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers' Death Penalty Committee. David Zuckerman is an
association member----Seattle Times)
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