To deter future use of the death penalty in their county, the Blaine County, Idaho County Commissioners on January 2 voted to consider withdrawing from the state’s Capital Crimes Defense Fund as a way to choke off state funding in capital prosecutions. “This is a way for our county to say we don’t support the death penalty, and that we don’t want the prosecutor seeking it in Blaine County,” said Commissioner Larry Schoen (pictured), who proposed the withdrawal. Two days later, however, the commissioners backtracked after learning that participation in the fund was a prerequisite for the county to be eligible to receive the services of the State Appellate Defender’s office in a wide range of non-capital appeals. The commissioners had believed that, by requiring the county to absorb the entire cost of defending death penalty cases, pulling out of the fund would create a disincentive for local prosecutors to seek the death penalty. At a minimum, Schoen said, “the prosecutor would have to certainly be aware that [a capital prosecution] would be an enormous financial burden on the county.” Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Thomas, who has not sought the death penalty since assuming office in 2000, strongly opposed the proposal, saying that decisions to seek the death penalty should not be based on cost. “It’s probably the most important, weighty decision that I would make,” he said. “And to think that we would make it on the basis of finances, I think that’s probably what insulted me most, frankly.” After considering a letter from Thomas and reviewing the conditions of Blaine County’s agreement with the appellate defender’s office—under which the county would lose an estimated $22,000-$25,000 annually in state appellate assistance in non-capital felony cases if it withdrew from the Capital Crimes Defense Fund—the commissioners decided against withdrawing. “My underlying thoughts haven’t changed,” Schoen said. “But at this point, there would likely be too many unintended consequences and negative implications involved with not participating.” As a result, he recommended that the county “continue participation in the Capital Crimes Defense Fund, though I hope we can pursue a legislative solution to decouple that from access to the state’s public defenders.” A 2014 study of death-penalty costs in Idaho by the Idaho Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations found that the State Appellate Public Defenders office spent 44 times more billable hours on the average death-penalty appeal than on cases in which a life sentence had been imposed. The study also concluded that, on average, capital trials took seven more months to reach a conclusion than non-capital cases. More than half of the 40 people sentenced to death in Idaho since 1977 have had their death sentences overturned on appeal and then received lesser sentences. In November, the commissioners in Ada County—the state’s largest county and the county that most aggressively seeks the death penalty—voted to leave the fund to reduce payments for capital defense services. The commissioners reconsidered that decision after realizing that withdrawal from the fund would make the county responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in appellate costs for non-capital cases.
(Express Staff, Commissioners backtrack on ‘death penalty’ discussion, Idaho Mountain Express, January 4, 2018; James Dawson, Blaine County Commissioners, Prosecutor, Spar Over Felony Defense Fund, Boise State Public Radio, January 3, 2018; Gretel Kauffman, Weighing the cost: Blaine County attempts to deter use of death penalty, then backtracks on plan, magicvalley.com, January 8, 2018; Rift between Ada and IAC causes ‘kerfuffle,’ almost costs Ada taxpayers big $, The Spokesman-Review, November 10, 2017.) See Costs and New Voices.
