News and Developments 2007: Costs

Lubbock criminal attorney Jack E. Stoffregen will head West Texas’ first public defender service devoted solely to capital cases. Centered in Lubbock County, a sparsely populated area that has few local criminal-defense attorneys with capital murder trial experience, the West Texas Regional Public Defender Office will handle the cases of indigent defendants who cannot afford an attorney. The office, with a budget of $2.5 million funded by Texas, is expected to alleviate some of the high costs death penalty cases can incur.

With recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions underscoring the importance of defense counsel performance during capital trials, judges across the nation are struggling to balance the high costs of capital cases with the need for adequate representation. In Georgia, Judge Hilton M. Fuller Jr. has delayed the trial of Brian Nichols because the state public defender system has no money to pay for his attorneys and other expenses associated with his defense. Fuller said that it is pointless to proceed with the case because it is unconstitutional not to pay the defense.

The New Mexico Supreme Court halted a death penalty case against 2 prison inmates charged with killing a guard during a 1999 riot because the defense has received insufficient funding to proceed. "Defense counsels' compensation is inadequate under the facts of this case, violating defendants' Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel," the court said in a unanimous ruling. The court held that an additional $200,000 must be appropriated by the legislature before the case can move ahead.

MORE STAYS GRANTED On October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit granted a stay of execution to Daniel Siebert, who was to be executed in Alabama on Oct. 25. On Oct. 22, the Georgia Supreme Court granted another stay, this time to Curtis Osborne. These stays are related to the issue of lethal injection as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the matter.

The Witchita Eagle recently called on Kansas lawmakers to reconsider the death penalty, stating: "At some point, given the legal problems and the lack of executions, a death penalty stops making sense for Kansas." The paper said the law has cost taxpayers millions of dollars without the benefit of deterring crime. Moreover, the state has not had a single execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1994, and the "care and caution" warranted to protect against wrongful convictions could mean the state's first execution is more than a decade away.