OUTLIER COUNTIES: Maricopa, Arizona — ​“Outrageously Exploited Power,” ​“Crippled” Defense, and Five Exonerations

Maricopa County, Arizona imposed 28 death sen­tences between 2010 and 2015 and, as described in a BuzzFeed news analy­sis of a new report on out­lier death penal­ty prac­tices, ​“stands out for its stark exam­ples of the prob­lems found across the coun­ties that most often sen­tence peo­ple to death.” 

The report, Too Broken to Fix, by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project, stud­ied the nation’s 16 most pro­lif­ic death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties and found that Maricopa County exhib­it­ed sys­temic prob­lems with extreme pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, defi­cient defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion, racial bias, exces­sive pun­ish­ment, and inno­cence. The coun­ty’s top pros­e­cu­tor, Andrew Thomas, pur­sued cap­i­tal charges at near­ly dou­ble the rate of his pre­de­ces­sor after win­ning elec­tion in 2004. His pat­tern of gross mis­con­duct led a three-mem­ber pan­el of the Arizona Supreme Court to dis­bar him in 2012 for hav­ing ​“out­ra­geous­ly exploit­ed pow­er, fla­grant­ly fos­tered fear, and dis­grace­ful­ly mis­used the law.” 

Three Maricopa pros­e­cu­tors who served under Thomas account­ed for more than one-third of all cap­i­tal cas­es the Arizona Supreme Court has been called upon to review on direct appeal since 2006, ​“amass[ing] find­ings of improp­er behav­ior in eight [cas­es].” The exces­sive num­ber of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in Thomas’ tenure cre­at­ed a ​“cap­i­tal case cri­sis” that ​“crip­pled the coun­ty’s pub­lic defend­er sys­tem” and left a dozen mur­der defen­dants without lawyers. 

Four lawyers who were appoint­ed account­ed for near­ly a quar­ter of all Arizona death cas­es that have reached the state supreme court since 2006. One Marciopa defense attor­ney, Herman Alcantar, rep­re­sent­ed five pre­tri­al cap­i­tal defen­dants at once, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble for him to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent his clients. In one of those cas­es, a month before tri­al, he had not filed any sub­stan­tive motions or met with his client in over a year. Nathanial Carr rep­re­sent­ed four peo­ple now on death row, and spent less than two days pre­sent­ing mit­i­ga­tion for each one. He wrote that one client, who had an IQ of 72, ​“looks like a killer, not a retard.” 

In the six years cov­ered by the Fair Punishment Project’s report on out­lier coun­ties, 57% of Maricopa’s death sen­tences were imposed on peo­ple of col­or. In that same peri­od, no peo­ple of col­or were sen­tenced to death any­where else in Arizona. 

Five Maricopa County death row inmates have been exon­er­at­ed. Ray Krone (pic­tured) was con­vict­ed on junk sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny after a pros­e­cu­tor false­ly claimed, ​“bite marks are as unique as fin­ger­prints.” He was lat­er exon­er­at­ed by DNA test­ing. Debra Milke spent 22 years on death row before her case was reversed and the state courts barred the pros­e­cu­tion from retry­ing her because of exten­sive offi­cial mis­con­duct. An appel­late court called her case, ​“a severe stain on the Arizona justice system.”

This is the sec­ond in our 16-part What’s New series on out­lier coun­ties that have sent the most num­ber of defen­dants to death row since 2010.