Prosecutors in Mohave County, Arizona announced in February that they will drop the pursuit of the death penalty in two murder cases in the county. Justin Rector and Darrell Ketchner were separately charged with first-degree murder, and officials said their defense teams had already spent over $2.2 million preparing for trials that are still far from taking place. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith said, “Everybody’s looking to save money and these death penalty cases are extremely expensive.” The murders happened in 2009 and 2014, but because of the thorough investigation and preparation required to competently defend a death-penalty case, Smith said, “[t]he anticipated soonest trial date in this case will be 10 years after the events charged.” Even if the defendants were sentenced to death, “there is no reasonable likelihood of the death penalty actually being imposed in a realistic and efficient timeframe given the current state of affairs surrounding persons sentenced to death,” he said. Bob Allison, whose granddaughter, Ariel, was allegedly killed by Ketchner, said he approves of the prosecutor’s decision, in part because his other grandchildren were being bullied as a result of publicity around the case. “We’re OK with it because we want to protect the kids,” he said. “It’s a waste of money in my opinion and the end results are going to be the same.” Between fiscal years 2010 and 2018, Mohave County has spent nearly $3.6 million on defense costs in death-penalty cases. Because no lawyers in the county public defender’s or legal defender’s office meet the state’s qualifications to handle death penalty cases, the county must contract out for those services, paying lead counsel at a rate of $125 per hour and $90 an hour for second-chair counsel. In 2016, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors authorized $344,000 in county funds to cover the costs of trying Rector and Ketchner. A Mohave County Superior Court judge granted the prosecution’s motion to withdraw the death penalty in Rector’s case on February 20, and allowed death-penalty counsel to withdraw from representing Rector. The court granted the motion to drop the death penalty in Ketchner’s case on February 14. Only one case originating in Mohave County has ever resulted in an execution.
(David Louis, The cost of death: Legal fees in Mohave County death penalty cases cost more than $1 million for each trial, Kingman Daily Miner, February 25, 2018; Jim Seckler, Death penalty formally taken off the table for Rector, Mohave Valley Daily News, February 20, 2018; Death Penalty Not Sought in Trial of Arizona Girl’s Murder, Associated Press, February 15, 2018; Dave Hawkins, Arizona prosecutor drops death penalty in 2 murder cases, Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 16, 2018.) See Costs, Representation, and Victims.
