A legal team assembled by the American Bar Association is calling to reform Arizona’s use of capital punishment, finding “serious problems” with its implementation after a 21-month study.
The report issued by the Arizona Death Penalty Assessment Team, which included Arizona State University law professor Sigmund Popko; Kent E. Cattani, chief counsel of the capital litigation section at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office; former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Thomas A. Zlaket, and three private attorneys Jonodev O. Chaudhuri, Larry Hammond and Jose de Jesus Rivera, provided several recommendations.
The study concluded that to ensure an even application of capital sentencing, a single state committee as part of the Arizona Prosecuting Advisory Council could be formed to rule on whether a county attorney’s seeking of the death penalty should be granted.
“We have a fragmented, Balkanized system with no proportionality,” said Mr. Popko, comparing the differing death penalty standards of Arizona’s 15 counties to the dissolving of the south-eastern European nation of Yugoslavia.
Arizona’s judicial system also lacks a uniform standard for state-provided legal counsel for defendants, according to the findings. The ABA team recommends a study be conducted of Arizona’s four indigent defense offices to determine if adequate defense is being provided for those charged with capital crimes.
Mr. Hammond said “tremendous disparities” exist in the standards of indigent defense in capital crimes, creating an “intolerable situation.”
“We simply cannot have a system for which the quality of the defense is determined by which county they’re in,” he said.
Defense counsels are also not adequately compensated to “meet their obligations” in capital cases, and crime labs and forensic investigations require sufficient funds to gather and protect biological evidence to ensure reliability and minimize the possibility of wrongful convictions
State lacks definition of ‘heinous or depraved’
The state also lacks a precise definition as to what qualifies as “especially cruel, heinous or depraved,” which is an aggravating factor that can support the implementation of the death penalty, the study said.
Deborah Fleischaker, director of the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, said the studies, which are occurring in several states, are funded by the European Union.
The EU, which views the death penalty as a “major human rights issue of our time,” grew increasingly critical of the practice in the United States after two German-born brothers, Karl and Walter LaGrand, were executed in Arizona in 1999.
Records kept by the Department of Corrections show the brothers were convicted for their role in stabbing a 63-year-old bank manager in Marana to death and wounding another employee during a robbery in 1982.
The EU has provided around $1.1 million for the entire project and the Arizona report will be issued to various figures such as Governor Napolitano and Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor, Ms. Fleischaker said.
The recommendations of the study, particularly that to establish a statewide committee to review individual death penalty cases, would not go over well with the members of the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council, said the group’s chairman.
“I don’t think they’d be enthused,” said Terence Hance, also the Coconino County Attorney. “Most of the members would feel that is the reason why they were elected. Individual community values should be reflected in that position.”
Though county attorneys reserve the right to seek the death penalty in certain cases, communication with other prosecutors is common, particularly among rural counties because capital cases are so expensive and resources can be limited, he said.
“It changes the cost of prosecution erratically,” said Mr. Hance, who recalls only one capital case in Coconino County in his 12 to 13 years experience. “It is not decision we take lightly.”
Mr. Hance, said he is not aware of a single prosecutor among the state’s 15 county attorneys in the APAAC that was contacted for the study, and the council’s executive director also had “no idea” a study pertaining to capital punishment was being conducted by the American Bar Association.
In general, the American Bar Association does not reflect the interests of state defenders or prosecutors, but more often “well-to-do criminal defense lawyers,” Mr. Hance said.