Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decid­ed to force an unwill­ing attor­ney to han­dle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qual­i­fied lawyers were will­ing to take the assign­ment for the amount of pay offered. ​“The court ulti­mate­ly con­cludes that it has the author­i­ty to appoint unwill­ing coun­sel to rep­re­sent the peti­tion­er here, but only if the attor­ney appoint­ed is just­ly com­pen­sat­ed,” Roth wrote.

The judge will ask attor­ney Richard P. Mauro for evi­dence of past and future expens­es. If the amounts are rea­son­able, he will autho­rize the appro­pri­ate pay­ment. The attor­ney may still be excused if the state is unwill­ing to make reasonable compensation.

In the esti­ma­tion of Judge Roth, no oth­er lawyers offered to take the case because, ​“Without excep­tion, the attor­neys con­tact­ed indi­cat­ed that, giv­en what is at stake and the amount of time and effort required to com­pe­tent­ly lit­i­gate any post-con­vic­tion death penal­ty case, the amounts avail­able under the reg­u­la­tion are inadequate.”

The Utah Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers has said that the state’s sys­tem of pay­ing a set amount for cer­tain tasks some­times results in a pay rate for attor­neys of $10 an hour.
(Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 14, 2008). See Costs and Representation.

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