Arizona’s last exe­cu­tion, the botched lethal injec­tion of Joseph Wood in July 2014, sparked con­tro­ver­sy and legal chal­lenges to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure, and came at a time when Arizona was strug­gling not only with the logis­tics of car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, but also broad­er issues of fair­ness and costs. In a sweep­ing piece for The Arizona Republic, Michael Kiefer, who wit­nessed Wood’s exe­cu­tion, describes the his­tor­i­cal and legal back­ground that led up to Arizona’s cur­rent hold on exe­cu­tions. He describes how Arizona’s list of statu­to­ry aggra­va­tors — fac­tors that make a case eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty — became so expan­sive that then-Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a pro­posed aggra­va­tor in 2014 because she wor­ried it would make the death penal­ty law uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly broad and vague. Kiefer notes Arizona’s 42% rever­sal rate in cap­i­tal cas­es, mean­ing that 129 of the 306 death sen­tences in the state were reversed or remand­ed by high­er courts. Nine peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed in Arizona, and one, Jeffrey Landrigan, was exe­cut­ed despite test results weeks before his exe­cu­tion that found DNA from two dif­fer­ent men, but not Landrigan, on the vic­tim’s cloth­ing. Landrigan was exe­cut­ed in 2010 using lethal injec­tion drugs import­ed ille­gal­ly from London. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lat­er seized the remain­ing drugs, caus­ing Arizona to switch first to pen­to­bar­bi­tal and lat­er to mida­zo­lam, the first drug in Wood’s botched exe­cu­tion. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake halt­ed all exe­cu­tions in Arizona, ask­ing the state to clear­ly spec­i­fy what drugs it has and how it intends to car­ry out exe­cu­tions. His rul­ing is expected soon.

Kiefer’s arti­cle also explores the arbi­trari­ness and dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of Arizona cap­i­tal sen­tences, con­trast­ing the crimes for which defen­dants were sen­tenced to death with those of defen­dants who received less­er sen­tences. Tom West, for exam­ple, blud­geoned a man who inter­rupt­ed him dur­ing a bur­glary and tied the man up so West could escape. The man, who was alive when West tied him up, lat­er died and West was cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed, sen­tenced to death, and exe­cut­ed. On the oth­er hand, Crisantos Moroyoqui-Yocupicio killed a drug-car­tel asso­ciate and decap­i­tat­ed him, was allowed to plead guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der and received a 14-year sen­tence. Seeking the death penal­ty in Arizona is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive than seek­ing a less­er sen­tence: defense costs in non-cap­i­tal first-degree mur­der tri­als aver­age $27,191, while a case result­ing in a death sen­tence costs an aver­age of $1,066,187 in defense costs alone. The case of Jeffrey Martinson, whose con­vic­tion was thrown out as a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, has cost $3.67 mil­lion so far. The 306 death sen­tences imposed in Arizona since 1976 have result­ed in 37 exe­cu­tions and 21 deaths in prison of oth­er caus­es, while 119 pris­on­ers remain on death row. The rest were re-sen­tenced or released.

(M. Kiefer, ​“Is the death penal­ty in Arizona on life sup­port?” The Arizona Republic, April 23, 2016.) See Arbitrariness, Lethal Injection, Innocence, and Costs.

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