Death penalty expenses increasing
Bills 'outrageous' after safeguards Your Reaction
Illinois spent more than $700,000 on trials that sent two men to the state's once-empty death row this year, costs that defense lawyers say safeguard against wrongful executions but that one prosecutor labeled "outrageous."
Defense costs accounted for more than $613,000 of the $705,000 spent on the cases, according to records from the state's capital litigation trust fund, set up about 4 years ago to bolster trial funding as Illinois began retooling its flawed capital punishment system.
Records show the state paid nearly $300,000 to defend Anthony Mertz of Charleston, the 1st person sentenced to die in Illinois after former Gov. George Ryan emptied death row last January. Expenses topped $313,000 for a second condemned killer, Curtis Thompson of Toulon.
Those defense costs alone are higher than the combined $200,000 to $250,000 spent to prosecute and defend the average death penalty case before the special fund, several lawyers estimated.
Defense lawyers say the increase is justified, because in the past, defendants were often relying on low-paid, inexperienced public defenders.
They said the state fund shores up that flaw in Illinois' criminal justice system by giving defendants the same financial resources as publicly funded prosecutors' offices.
"It makes the playing field somewhat more level," said Bloomington attorney Steve Skelton, who represents clients in two potential death penalty cases.
Prosecutors agree that defendants needed more money but contend costs sometimes go beyond what's reasonable.
"It's absolutely outrageous and completely predictable. When that kind of appropriation is made, the defense will milk it like a cow," said Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons, who prosecuted a death penalty case this year that ended with a life prison term.
Matthew Maloney, the lead attorney in Thompson's case, thinks prosecutors likely spent just as much as defense attorneys. But he said prosecution expense figures are deflated because they don't factor in attorneys and other employees on county and state payrolls who worked the cases.
The state fund does reimburse prosecutors for expenses, ranging from expert witnesses to photocopies of case files.
The state paid more than $83,000 to prosecute Mertz, convicted of killing an Eastern Illinois University student in 2001. About $8,000 for prosecution expenses have been paid in the case against Thompson, found guilty in a 2002 shooting spree that killed a Stark County deputy and a Toulon couple. Some of the bills in that case have not yet been submitted, including fees for an expert witness, Stark County State's Attorney Jim Owens said.
Maloney, who used two mental health experts in Thompson's unsuccessful insanity defense, said expert witnesses are a major expense for both sides. Rates can reach $400 to $600 an hour.
"No way to control cost."
"That's what it costs. We have no way to control the cost of qualified experts," said Maloney.
Statewide, the fund paid more than $3 million each of the last two years and payouts are expected to reach nearly $4.5 million this year, records show.
Stephen Richards, head of the state appellate defender's death penalty trial assistance division, thinks the fund could save the state money in the long run.
Cases are being handled more thoroughly at the trial level, making them less likely to be overturned on appeal and sent back for another costly trial, he said.
Richards also said fewer people are being sent to death row, cutting costs that topped $33,000 a year for each condemned prisoner in 2002, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. He said the 2 death sentences in 2003 are down from 15 or more in some years before Illinois' capital punishment debate began.
A better-funded defense also has made prosecutors less likely to seek the death penalty, opting instead for prison terms that are far less costly to argue in court, Richards said. Of the roughly 300 potential death penalty cases generally pending in Illinois, only 6 went to trial this year, he said.
John Piland, whose term as president of the Illinois State's Attorney's Association ended last week, said executions are being sought less because it's better to give victims' families closure through a prison term until the continuing uncertainty over capital punishment is settled.
"The concern now seems to be more for the poor defendant than these surviving family members whose wounds just keep getting reopened," said Piland, Champaign County's state's attorney.
Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said the state could save even more money and guarantee that no innocent people will be executed by abolishing capital punishment.
"The safest outcome is simply to accept that as human beings we really shouldn't be in this business of life and death," Bohman said.
(source: Associated Press)
