Prosecutors in Mohave County, Arizona announced in February that they will drop the pur­suit of the death penal­ty in two mur­der cas­es in the coun­ty. Justin Rector and Darrell Ketchner were sep­a­rate­ly charged with first-degree mur­der, and offi­cials said their defense teams had already spent over $2.2 mil­lion prepar­ing for tri­als that are still far from tak­ing place. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith said, ​“Everybody’s look­ing to save mon­ey and these death penal­ty cas­es are extreme­ly expen­sive.” The mur­ders hap­pened in 2009 and 2014, but because of the thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion and prepa­ra­tion required to com­pe­tent­ly defend a death-penal­ty case, Smith said, “[t]he antic­i­pat­ed soon­est tri­al date in this case will be 10 years after the events charged.” Even if the defen­dants were sen­tenced to death, ​“there is no rea­son­able like­li­hood of the death penal­ty actu­al­ly being imposed in a real­is­tic and effi­cient time­frame giv­en the cur­rent state of affairs sur­round­ing per­sons sen­tenced to death,” he said. Bob Allison, whose grand­daugh­ter, Ariel, was alleged­ly killed by Ketchner, said he approves of the pros­e­cu­tor’s deci­sion, in part because his oth­er grand­chil­dren were being bul­lied as a result of pub­lic­i­ty around the case. ​“We’re OK with it because we want to pro­tect the kids,” he said. ​“It’s a waste of mon­ey in my opin­ion and the end results are going to be the same.” Between fis­cal years 2010 and 2018, Mohave County has spent near­ly $3.6 mil­lion on defense costs in death-penal­ty cas­es. Because no lawyers in the coun­ty pub­lic defender’s or legal defender’s office meet the state’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions to han­dle death penal­ty cas­es, the coun­ty must con­tract out for those ser­vices, pay­ing lead coun­sel at a rate of $125 per hour and $90 an hour for sec­ond-chair coun­sel. In 2016, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors autho­rized $344,000 in coun­ty funds to cov­er the costs of try­ing Rector and Ketchner. A Mohave County Superior Court judge grant­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s motion to with­draw the death penal­ty in Rector’s case on February 20, and allowed death-penal­ty coun­sel to with­draw from rep­re­sent­ing Rector. The court grant­ed the motion to drop the death penal­ty in Ketchner’s case on February 14. Only one case orig­i­nat­ing in Mohave County has ever result­ed in an execution.

(David Louis, The cost of death: Legal fees in Mohave County death penal­ty cas­es cost more than $1 mil­lion for each tri­al, Kingman Daily Miner, February 25, 2018; Jim Seckler, Death penal­ty for­mal­ly tak­en off the table for Rector, Mohave Valley Daily News, February 20, 2018; Death Penalty Not Sought in Trial of Arizona Girl’s Murder, Associated Press, February 15, 2018; Dave Hawkins, Arizona pros­e­cu­tor drops death penal­ty in 2 mur­der cas­es, Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 16, 2018.) See Costs, Representation, and Victims.

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