Last year, pros­e­cu­tors in two neigh­bor­ing Arizona coun­ties, Pima and Maricopa, sought the death penal­ty at dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent rates, a fact that has many ques­tion­ing the arbi­trary nature of the state’s death penal­ty. Though just five years ago it had the high­est rate of death penal­ty cas­es in the nation, Pima County now ranks among the low­est. County Attorney Barbara LaWall sought the death penal­ty for 1 of 65 accused mur­der­ers last year, but in bor­der­ing Maricopa County, 44 of 89 1st-degree mur­der defen­dants faced the death penal­ty. The dis­crepen­cy ​“can’t be jus­ti­fied in any demo­graph­ic way,” accord­ing to Larry Hammond, a Phoenix attor­ney who served on an American Bar Association assess­ment team that recent­ly issued a report Arizona’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws.

When decid­ing whether to seek a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion, LaWall and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas each con­sid­er the rec­om­men­da­tion of a pan­el of senior pros­e­cu­tors, but both retain final veto pow­er. ​“We don’t go in on every case and ask for the max­i­mum. It’s not a knee-jerk reac­tion,” said Pima County’s chief tri­al coun­sel, Rick Unklesbay.

After its review of Arizona’s death penal­ty, the ABA rec­om­mend­ed that the state address its pro­por­tion­al­i­ty prob­lems by mod­i­fy­ing its death penal­ty laws. The group urged the state to fil­ter all 1st degree mur­der cas­es through the Arizona attor­ney gen­er­al or some oth­er out­side enti­ty that could decide who should be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty.
(Arizona Daily Star, May 20, 2007). See Arbitrariness.

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