King County (Washington) Prosecutor Dan Satterberg (pic­tured) announced that his office will no longer seek the death penal­ty against Michele Anderson after a jury returned a life sen­tence for her co-defen­dant, Joseph McEnroe. McEnroe and Anderson were charged with killing six mem­bers of Anderson’s fam­i­ly in 2007 in what Satterberg called ​“one of the worse crimes we’ve ever had in King County.” Satterberg explained his deci­sion in a news con­fer­ence on July 29, say­ing, ​“To pro­ceed with the death penal­ty against defen­dant Anderson, in light of the sen­tence imposed [on] defen­dant McEnroe, would not be in the inter­est of jus­tice.” Pam Mantle, the moth­er of one of the vic­tims, said she was relieved by the deci­sion. ​“It’s been dev­as­tat­ing for all of our friends and fam­i­ly,” said Mantle. ​“We’re all just worn out from the whole thing. It’s almost eight years.“ Less than one week ago, on July 23, after a high­ly pub­li­cized six-month tri­al, a King County jury sen­tenced a men­tal­ly ill defen­dant, Christopher Monfort, to a life sen­tence in the killing of a Seattle police offi­cer. Anderson has spent time in a state men­tal insti­tu­tion dur­ing her pre­tri­al incar­cer­a­tion, por­tend­ing exten­sive pre­sen­ta­tion of men­tal health evi­dence if the death penal­ty was pur­sued in her case. Seeking the death penal­ty against Anderson, McEnroe, and Monfort has cost King County tax­pay­ers more than $15 mil­lion in defense costs alone. A recent Seattle University study found that cas­es where the death penal­ty is sought cost an addi­tion­al $1 mil­lion, on aver­age, com­pared to non-death penalty cases.

Bob Boruchowitz, one of the co-authors of the cost study, said, ​“The governor’s mora­to­ri­um, juries return­ing life ver­dicts and costs going through the ceil­ing — all of those things have com­bined to sug­gest it’s long past time to say good­bye to the death penalty.”

(J. Sullivan, ​“Prosecutors won’t seek death penal­ty for Michele Anderson,” The Seattle Times, July 29, 2015; S. Lerner, ​“Is Washington mov­ing away from the death penal­ty?,” KIRO Radio, July 30, 2015.) See Arbitrariness and Costs.

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