Deadliest Prosecutors, Worst Defense Lawyers Linked to High Rates of Death Sentences in Heavy-Use Counties

Prisoners sen­tenced to death in the small num­ber of U.S. coun­ties that most aggres­sive­ly pur­sue the death penal­ty often suf­fer the ​“dou­ble wham­my” of get­ting ​“both the dead­liest pros­e­cu­tors in America and some of the country’s worst cap­i­tal defense lawyers,” accord­ing to an arti­cle in Slate by Robert L. Smith. In review­ing the the unusu­al­ly high num­bers of death ver­dicts from 3 coun­ties that are near the top of the nation in dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pro­duc­ing death sen­tences over the last 5 years, Smith found not only high rates of seek­ing death but a pat­tern of inad­e­quate cap­i­tal defense representation. 

In Maricopa County, Arizona, the nation’s sec­ond high­est pro­duc­er of death sen­tences since 2010, two cap­i­tal tri­al lawyers had, between them, rep­re­sent­ed 10 clients who were sen­tenced to death. Serious con­cerns about the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion were also present in the two coun­ties with the nation’s high­est lev­el of death sen­tences per capi­ta since 2010, Duval County, Florida, and Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

75% of defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Caddo Parish since 2005 were rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by lawyers who would be found unqual­i­fied to try cap­i­tal cas­es under cap­i­tal defense stan­dards recent­ly put in place in the state. One Caddo Parish lawyer, Daryl Gold, was tri­al coun­sel for near­ly 20% of the peo­ple sent to death row in Louisiana from 2005 to 2014. He has been sus­pend­ed from prac­tic­ing law three times and received 14 pri­vate rep­ri­mands, and was per­mit­ted to con­tin­ue rep­re­sent­ing poor defen­dants in cap­i­tal cas­es even though he was barred from tak­ing on private clients. 

In Duval County, a new­ly elect­ed pub­lic defend­er fired respect­ed senior cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tors and installed as deputy chief and head of homi­cide defense a lawyer, Refik Eler, who has at least 8 for­mer clients on death row — the most of any lawyer in Florida. Eler has already been found inef­fec­tive by the Florida Supreme Court in three cap­i­tal cas­es for fail­ing to inves­ti­gate both guilt and penalty issues. 

In Maricopa County, Nathaniel Carr — who has rep­re­sent­ed four men now on death row — wrote that a pos­si­bly intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled client ​“looks like a killer, not a retard.” The tri­al court ​“admon­ished him for both lack­ing can­dor and fil­ing ​‘offen­sive’ and ​‘incom­pre­hen­si­ble’ motions” and the Arizona Supreme Court said his actions could be described as ​“will­ful mis­con­duct.” Another of Carr’s clients sought Carr’s removal from his case because Carr had met with him only briefly in 15 months and the defen­dant had ​“lost all trust and faith in my attor­neys.” Another Maricopa attor­ney, Herman Alcantar, has six for­mer clients on death row and rep­re­sent­ed five pre­tri­al cap­i­tal defen­dants at once in 2009 — a case­load so heavy that as one case approached its tri­al date, he had not met with his client in more than a year and had­n’t filed a sin­gle substantive motion.