Maricopa County, Arizona, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es than Los Angeles County, which has more than twice as many res­i­dents, and more than the so-called ​“death penal­ty cap­i­tal” of Harris County, Texas. There are more than 130 cas­es in tri­al or await­ing tri­al, and its four indi­gent defense agen­cies say that they have run out of attor­neys to han­dle the cas­es. Strained by the record num­ber of cas­es, Judge James Keppel gave pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, and coun­ty offi­cials five days to cre­ate a plan to pro­vide defense attor­neys for at least a dozen clients fac­ing cap­i­tal charges.

Peter Ozanne, the assis­tant coun­ty man­ag­er who over­sees the pub­lic defend­er sys­tem, stat­ed that if the cit­i­zens decide they real­ly want this many death cas­es ​“there will be more resources need­ed in the future.” Ozanne said the solu­tion to Maricopa County’s death penal­ty prob­lems could cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars. County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox added, ​“We real­ize we are prob­a­bly going to have to allo­cate more mon­ey. We are try­ing to make sure, that as these cas­es move for­ward, we are treat­ing both sides fairly.” 

The group cre­at­ed a sev­en-page pro­pos­al designed to address the short­age for the next 60 days. Though the plan includ­ed pro­pos­als to mon­i­tor death penal­ty cas­es more close­ly and review salaries, it offered few details about fund­ing the changes or how the coun­ty will pay for spe­cial­ists such as inves­ti­ga­tors and mit­i­ga­tion experts. The coun­ty now pays $8.5 mil­lion to defend cap­i­tal cas­es. Recently elect­ed County Attorney Andrew Thomas stat­ed that ​“there is no need for this office to eval­u­ate its pol­i­cy.” Thomas seeks death sen­tences in near­ly half of all first-degree mur­der cas­es. His pre­de­ces­sors pur­sued cap­i­tal con­vic­tions in about 30% of eli­gi­ble cas­es.
(Arizona Republic, March 8, 2007). See Representation and Costs.

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