Maricopa County, Arizona County Attorney Bill Montgomery has sought the death penal­ty so fre­quent­ly that the coun­ty has run up mil­lions of dol­lars in defense costs and run out of defense lawyers qual­i­fied to han­dle new cap­i­tal­ly-charged cas­es. The Arizona Republic reports that, with 65 active death-penal­ty cas­es and more new cap­i­tal cas­es charged than the 35 that have been resolved since July 1, 2014, the coun­ty ran out of the spe­cial­ized lawyers need­ed to defend the cas­es in January of this year. Yet despite the coun­ty’s high rate of seek­ing the death penal­ty, the num­ber of death sen­tences imposed in the coun­ty is falling. With 81 peo­ple on death row as of January 1, 2013, Maricopa County ranked fourth among all U.S. coun­ties in the num­ber of death-row pris­on­ers. According to a 2016 Fair Punishment Project report, Maricopa County imposed 28 death sen­tences between 2010 and 2015, mak­ing it one of only 16 coun­ties to have imposed as many as 10 death sen­tences over that peri­od. However, only six of the cas­es resolved since July 1, 2014, have result­ed in death sen­tences. In addi­tion to bur­den­ing the coun­ty’s defense ser­vices, the County Attorney’s broad pur­suit of the death penal­ty has placed a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial strain on the coun­ty. An audit com­mis­sioned by the Office of Public Defense Services, one of the agen­cies that pro­vides rep­re­sen­ta­tion for cap­i­tal defen­dants, found that cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es cost eight to 40 times more than first-degree mur­der cas­es in which the death penal­ty is not sought. The audit found that non-cap­i­tal mur­der tri­als cost about $27,000 to defend, where­as cap­i­tal cas­es — which require two defense attor­neys, an inves­ti­ga­tor, and a mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ist — cost from $213,000 to $1 mil­lion, depend­ing on the out­come. Capital cas­es end­ing in a plea to a less­er offense or sen­tence cost about $213,000, the audit said; more than the cost of a non-cap­i­tal case tak­en to tri­al. Death penal­ty tri­als result­ing in life sen­tences cost $580,000, and those that end­ed with a death sen­tence cost $1 mil­lion, not includ­ing fed­er­al appeals. John Canby, an attor­ney for the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office, sum­ma­rized the sit­u­a­tion: ​“For a vari­ety of rea­sons it appears that juries in Maricopa County are less will­ing to return death ver­dicts in tri­als for first-degree mur­der than they once were. Nevertheless, it seems that the County Attorney’s Office is still will­ing to seek death sen­tences in cas­es with only a remote pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death ver­dict. That prac­tice costs the tax­pay­ers of Maricopa County a lot of mon­ey because the court is required to appoint cap­i­tal-qual­i­fied attor­neys to those cas­es, even if the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence is in fact very remote.” 

(M. Kiefer, ​“Maricopa County runs out of death-penal­ty defense attor­neys,” Arizona Republic, March 26, 2017.) See Costs and Representation.

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