Prosecutors in sep­a­rate cap­i­tal cas­es in Indiana, Florida, and Texas have dropped pur­suit of the death penal­ty in order to end noto­ri­ous­ly lengthy delays and facil­i­tate heal­ing for the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. On March 8, 2019, St. Joseph County, Indiana pros­e­cu­tors agreed to a plea deal instead of a third death-penal­ty tri­al for Wayne Kubsch (pic­tured) at the request of the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly. Kubsch was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to death in 2000 and received the death penal­ty a sec­ond time in 2005, but both times his triple-mur­der con­vic­tions was over­turned. In announc­ing the plea agree­ment, St. Joseph County Prosecutor Kenneth Cotter said “[t[he fam­i­ly actu­al­ly asked us to take the death penal­ty off. They want­ed to remem­ber their loved ones, not remem­ber him every time he came back with anoth­er appeal.” Kubsch pled guilty and was sen­tenced to life with­out parole, agree­ing to waive his right to appeal his sen­tence. I’m 75 years old. I’ll soon be 76. And we decid­ed that the best thing would be life in prison, because that way we don’t have all the appeals. We don’t have all this to go through and the kids don’t have to deal with this con­stant­ly,” said Diane Mauk, the moth­er of vic­tim Beth Kubsch. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Eric Tamashasky said, For the fam­i­ly, this gives them the clo­sure that they’ve so des­per­ate­ly need­ed for 20 years.”

Prosecutors also decid­ed to drop the death penal­ty to end lengthy pre-tri­al delays in cas­es in Florida and Texas. After eight years of pro­ceed­ings in what news reports described as Hillsborough County’s longest-run­ning mur­der case that has yet to see tri­al,” Florida state attor­neys announced on February 4 that they would no longer seek the death penal­ty against Michael Keetly. Keetly had been in pre­tri­al deten­tion for near­ly 3,000 days. Keetly’s attor­ney, Lyann Goudie, said she had recent­ly pre­sent­ed mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence to the pros­e­cu­tors in an effort to per­suade pros­e­cu­tors that they were unlike­ly to obtain a unan­i­mous vote for death, and had chal­lenged the bal­lis­tic evi­dence and eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion the pros­e­cu­tion intend­ed to present at tri­al. Following the prosecution’s deci­sion, the case is now sched­uled to go to tri­al in June. Todric Deon McDonald was charged with two counts of cap­i­tal mur­der in McLennan County, Texas, more than four years ago. In 2018, with the case fac­ing addi­tion­al delays to per­mit the defense to pre­pare for a poten­tial penal­ty phase, the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies told pros­e­cu­tors they sup­port­ed with­draw­ing the death penal­ty if it meant the case would pro­ceed to tri­al as sched­uled. The pros­e­cu­tors dropped the death penal­ty in August 2018 and jury selec­tion began on February 11, 2019, after McDonald had spent 1,733 days in jail. McDonald was con­vict­ed three days lat­er and sen­tenced to life without parole.

A death-penal­ty tri­al requires exten­sive pre­tri­al prepa­ra­tion, because defense attor­neys have to con­duct an in-depth inves­ti­ga­tion into their client’s life his­to­ry and men­tal health to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the event their client is con­vict­ed. The longer pre­tri­al peri­od is one of many rea­sons why death-penal­ty tri­als are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive than tri­als in which a death sen­tence is not an option. There is also a lengthy appeals process if a defen­dant is sen­tenced to death, and at that point, the most like­ly out­come is that the con­vic­tion or death sen­tence will be reversed.

(Mark Peterson, UPDATE: Wayne Kubsch sen­tenced to life in prison, WNDU, March 8, 2019; Dan Sullivan, Eight years lat­er, state drops death penal­ty in Ruskin dou­ble-mur­der case, Tampa Bay Times, February 4, 2019; Tommy Witherspoon, Capital mur­der defen­dant jailed 4 years set for tri­al, Waco Tribune-Herald, January 31, 2019; Tommy Witherspoon, State drops death penal­ty in McDonald case, Waco Tribune-Herald, August 17, 2018.) See Costs and Victims.

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