cost

ARIZONA – Cost of death penalty case keeps climbing

November  17,2017

The cost of a Bullhead City murder suspect’s death penalty case could exceed more than $1 million by the time it goes to trial.

Justin James Rector, 29, is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, child abuse and abandonment of a dead body for the Sept. 2, 2014, death of 8-year-old Isabella Grogan-Cannella.

The total cost for Rector’s defense including the 2017-18 fiscal year is now $582,579. That dates to the 2014-15 fiscal year. The cost includes $409,822 for all of Rector’s defense attorneys and $172,007 for investigative services for the last four fiscal years, indigent defense services director Blake Schritter said.

So far, this current fiscal year, his attorney fees are $31,056 and the investigative services are  $20,415. During the 2016-17 fiscal year, his attorney bill was $199,290 and the investigative services cost $129,777. In the 2015-16 fiscal year, attorney fees were $121,725 and the investigative services were $13,578, Schritter added.

Rector’s next hearing before Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen is scheduled for today. Vacated several times, Rector’s trial has not been scheduled and the length of the trial is not known but could last a month or longer.

Quinn Jolly made his first appearance as first chair on Rector’s death penalty murder case in September. Julia Cassels, who was assigned to the case in July 2016, is the second counsel in the murder case. Two death penalty qualified attorneys are required in a capital murder case.

Rector’s previous attorney took the case in March 2015 but withdrew in July. The public defender’s office withdrew from the case in March 2015.

Idaho death penalty cost report finds limited data

mars 20, 2014

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A new report from Idaho’s state auditors shows that sentencing a defendant to life in prison without parole is less expensive than imposing the death penalty.

But the Office of Performance Evaluations also found that the state’s criminal justice agencies don’t collect enough data to determine the total cost of the death penalty. The report was presented to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Wednesday by Hannah Crumrine and Tony Grange.

Idaho is one of 32 states with the death penalty, but two of those states — Oregon and Washington — have moratoriums on executions. Idaho has executed 29 people since 1864, but only three since 1977. Keith Eugene Wells was executed in 1944, Paul Ezra Rhoades was executed in 2011 and Richard Leavitt was executed in 2012.

It’s difficult to determine just how much imposing the death penalty costs, Crumrine told the committee, in part because most of the needed data is unavailable. Law enforcement agencies typically don’t differentiate between the costs of investigating death penalty murder cases and non-death penalty murder cases, and jail and prison staffers don’t track the transport costs to bring a condemned prisoner to court cases versus a regular prisoner.

The researchers were able to determine some costs, however: Eleven counties have been reimbursed more than $4.1 million for capital defense costs since 1998, and the state appellate public defender’s office has spent nearly half a million dollars on death penalty cases between 2004 and 2013.

The Idaho Department of Correction spent more than $102,000 on executing Leavitt and Rhoades.

In any case, it’s clear that death penalty cases cost more than sentencing an offender to life without parole, according to the report, in part because it takes longer for the appeal process to come to an end in death penalty cases.d

And the ultimate penalty is seldom imposed: The report found that of the 251 first-degree murder cases filed from 1998 to 2013, prosecutors sought the death penalty in 42 and it was imposed in just seven cases.

Of the 40 people sentenced to death in Idaho since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977, 21 have had their sentences overturned on appeal or are no longer sentenced to death for other reasons, 12 are still appealing their cases and four died in prison. Just three were executed during that time span.

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter wrote a letter responding to the report, stating that he believes state agencies have been diligent in accounting for and containing costs. Otter wrote that though the report raises the question of whether tax dollars are spent wisely on capital punishment, he continues to support the death penalty laws.

“The Idaho Department of Correction in particular has been exemplary in its duty to responsibly carry out death sentences,” Otter wrote. “… And while your report raises and then leaves open the policy questions of whether tax dollars are wisely spent on death penalty cases, let me leave no doubt about my own continuing support for our existing laws and procedures.”

 

Utah’s death penalty costs $1.6M more per inmate

November 15, 2012 http://www.sltrib.com

Craig Watson said he didn’t know if “closure” was the proper word.

But as he witnessed the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner, who killed Watson’s cousin Melvyn J. Otterstrom at a bar in 1984, a feeling of peace came over him: It was, finally, over.

As Utah lawmakers weigh the cost of executing men like Gardner versus keeping them in prison for life, Watson asked them on Wednesday to remember there are some things that no amount of money can touch — a message also shared by Barbara Noriega, whose mother and sister were killed by another man now on Utah’s death row.

“With the death sentence, there are no recurring offenders and we can go on with our lives,” Watson said, his voice breaking at times as he addressed the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee.

Rep. Steve Handy, R-Layton, asked for the analysis, the first study to examine what the capital punishment option costs the state and local governments. Handy has not proposed any legislation and said Wednesday he is “under no illusion that people in Utah want to change the present law.” But Handy said the comparative costs of life without parole and the death penalty — which a legislative fiscal analyst pegged “unofficially” at an added $1.6 million per inmate from trial to execution — should be understood.

“Which direction citizens of Utah choose to go remains to be seen,” Handy told the committee.

It is a topic of discussion in other states as well. New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut all did away with the option in recent years. A year ago, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber put a moratorium on executions and ordered a review of that state’s capital punishment law. On Nov. 6, voters in California, where more than 700 inmates sit on death row, rejected a proposition that would have repealed the state’s death penalty; proponents argued for doing away with the option based on its costs.

Lawmakers may get some insight into Utahns’ views of capital punishment from a survey being conducted by students at Utah Valley University under the direction of Sandy McGunigall-Smith, an associate professor of legal studies. The survey will be sent to 6,000 people randomly selected in Ogden, West Valley City, Kamas, Saratoga Springs, Alpine and Taylorsville.

Thomas Brunker, an assistant Utah attorney general, said the state has two policy interests in supporting capital punishment: deterrence and retribution. Gardner’s case illustrated a “special” interest in assuring a condemned person could not kill again, he said, while the heinous nature of the crimes committed by other Utah death row inmates highlighted society’s “right” to exact retribution.

Ralph Dellapiana, a defense attorney and death penalty project director for Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the cost estimates fall short of capturing the full expense of the dozen or so aggravated murder cases filed each year in which the death penalty is an option. Such cases require thousands of hours of extensive, multi-generational social histories of the offender, for example, costs that would not be incurred if the penalty were replaced with a life without parole alternative. The cost analysis also doesn’t include expenses incurred in cases that are prosecuted as capital offenses but that end up in plea deals or acquittals, as occurred recently with Curtis Allgier, who shot and killed corrections officer Stephen Anderson during a 2007 escape attempt.

Without the death penalty, there would be faster closure for victims’ families, he added.

And for offenders’ families.

Peggy Ostler described the pain and emotional roller coaster her parents have experienced over the more than two decades that their adopted son, Michael Archuleta, has spent on death row. Archuleta tortured, raped and murdered Gordon Ray Church, 28, in 1988. The crime was terrible, she said, and life in prison would be appropriate, but facing their son’s execution would be the “final blow” to her parents, who oppose the death penalty.

Watson agreed the legal process is too lengthy and often painful, an argument for streamlining rather than doing away with the death penalty.

For more than two decades, as they waited for justice to be carried out, Watson said he and other relatives had every “stupid” move Gardner shoved in their faces — among them, feigned illnesses and escape attempts, including one at a courthouse in 1985 where Gardner fatally shotattorney Michael Burdell and wounded bailiff Nick Kirk.

“We got to hear about it, we got to see it, we got to relive it,” said Watson, a 37-year veteran law enforcement officer.

Since Gardner’s execution, Otterstrom’s widow and son have finally been able to move on with their lives, he said.

“In my opinion, there isn’t enough money to make a difference,” Watson said.

Noriega placed framed photos of her mother Kaye Tiede, 51, and grandmother Beth Harmon Tidwell Potts, 72, on the table before her as she addressed lawmakers. Tiede had survived two husbands, both killed in automobile accidents, before marrying Rolf Tiede, Noriega said. The two built a cabin, which they called “Tiede’s Tranquility,” in Oakley as a family get-away and where they planned to spend Christmas in 1990.

Von Lester Taylor and Edward Steven Deli, who had escaped from a halfway house, broke into the cabin on Dec. 22, opened presents and waited for the family to return. Tiede, another daughter and Potts arrived first; the two women were shot and the daughter bound and gagged. Rolf Tiede and another daughter arrived next; he was shot and played dead as the two men set the cabin on fire and took off on snowmobiles with the younger daughters. Despite his injuries, Rolf Tiede managed to get help, and Taylor and Deli were captured.

Deli received a life sentence, while Taylor, identified as the shooter, was sentenced to death.

“There is no doubt that these savages did this to my family,” Noriega said, calling the 22 years of legal wrangling that has followed “shocking, a travesty.”

“It might be a lot of things, but it is not justice,” Noriega said.

The family, once so wary of danger and crime, has had to confront evil and personal responsibility in “ways I never imagined,” she added. “Our family feels the death penalty actually represents a reverence for the sanctity of the lives of the innocent.

 

Study: Death Penalty Will Cost California Up To $7.7 Billion By 2050

September 14, 2012 http://thinkprogress.org

California’s prison system is severelyovercrowded and expensive, but incarceration for those sentenced to life without parole is not the state’s most costly form of punishment. With a state initiative to eliminate capital punishment on the ballot this November, an updated study by a law professor and a federal appeals court judge projects that California’s death penalty system would cost taxpayers between $5.4 and $7.7 billion more between now and 2050 than if those in death row were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

During that time, the study projects, about 740 more inmates will be added to death row and 14 executions will be carried out, while more than 500 of those prisoners will die from suicide or natural causes before the state executes them. Compared to life without parole — the state’s second-most-severe punishment — the costs of the death penalty system include higher incarceration costs due to security and other requirements, and astronomical litigation costs — both for individual appeals and for lethal injection litigation.

Ninth Circuit Senior Judge Arthur L. Alarcón and Loyola Law School Los Angeles adjunct professor Paula M. Mitchell explain in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review:

[T]here is absolutely no support for the contention, advanced by some pro-death-penalty organizations, that replacing the death penalty with LWOP [life without parole] will increase housing or medical care costs for the state. Death-row inmates grow old and need costly medical care, just as LWOP inmates do. Indeed, death row inmates receive the same medical care that LWOP inmates receive, but it is provided at a premium due to logistical problems and security concerns that are endemic to providing healthcare to aging inmates on San Quentin’s death row. The vast majority of death-row prisoners who have died in California have lived out the remainder of their natural lives in state prison, just as LWOP inmates do. This is because most death-row inmates die in prison of natural causes. They just do so in a much more costly manner than do LWOP inmates.

If the state were to pass the proposed SAFE California Act (Proposition 34), $30 million per year would be reallocated toward the 46 percent of homicide cases and 56 percent of rape cases that go unsolved, according to statistics from the California Attorney General’s office.

Since 1989, California has sentenced two men to death who were later exonerated and released from prison. In 2011 and 2012 alone, five California men who were wrongfully convicted of murder but received lesser sentences were exonerated and released from prison, according to the study.

The National Registry of Exonerations — a database of those who were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated since 1989 — reports that California had the second-highest number of wrongful convictions in the country at 97 (tied with Texas). The state with the highest number, Illinois, eliminated the death penalty in 2011.