Watch ABC15 Arizona’s sequence “In search of Loss of life,” primarily based on our joint investigation into Maricopa County’s dealing with of demise penalty circumstances.
Reporting Highlights
- Many Expenses, Few Sentences: Maricopa County has continuously pursued the demise penalty however hardly ever secured demise sentences. In practically 350 circumstances over 20 years, simply 13% led to a demise sentence.
- Adjustments Wanted: A former county legal professional and consultants say the numbers sign the necessity for a extra deliberate and clear course of for deciding which circumstances warrant capital fees.
- Resuming Executions: The county’s dealing with of the demise penalty is newly related as Arizona has resumed executions after a two-year pause to evaluation issues with deadly injection protocols.
These highlights have been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
In 2010, Vikki Valencia’s 24-year-old brother, Triny Rey Lozano, died in an nearly unimaginably brutal means. He was shot within the head a number of instances, dumped on a distant street outdoors Phoenix and set on fireplace.
Valencia noticed just one means prosecutors may convey her household justice: The killer ought to get the demise penalty.
Maricopa County prosecutors constructed a capital homicide case in opposition to the person they are saying killed Lozano, Victor Hernandez.
Valencia knew it could take a very long time however believed it could be value it. Over practically 10 years, she visited the courthouse tons of of instances, continuously lacking work to attend hearings the place she revisited traumatic photographs of the crime scene.
“The demise penalty was the factor that we wished most as a result of we thought it was going to provide us justice,” she mentioned in a latest interview.
Throughout jury choice, the case stalled due to a possible battle of curiosity involving a prosecutor who had beforehand represented Hernandez. Years later, a second trial adopted. As that jury was deliberating, prosecutors dropped the demise penalty. 9 years after he was charged with killing Lozano, Hernandez was discovered responsible and sentenced to life in jail.
Though the Maricopa County Lawyer’s Workplace has traditionally pursued the demise penalty at excessive charges, its efforts hardly ever end in a demise sentence.
ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona reviewed practically 350 circumstances over a 20-year interval wherein Maricopa County prosecutors determined the crimes warranted the demise penalty, and located that 13% led to a demise sentence. In many of the circumstances, defendants both pleaded responsible and acquired a lesser sentence or prosecutors modified course, ending their pursuit of the demise penalty.
In 76 trials wherein Maricopa County juries deliberated a demise sentence, 41, or 54%, yielded one.
By comparability, an evaluation of demise penalty circumstances initiated in Harris County, Texas, from 2004 via 2023, discovered prosecutors took fewer circumstances, 24, to trial and have been extra profitable, acquiring a demise sentence 75% of the time, in response to figures supplied by a neighborhood advocacy group. Knowledge over an extended time interval additionally exhibits that federal prosecutors nationwide have obtained demise sentences at a better price than in Maricopa County, in response to the Federal Loss of life Penalty Useful resource Counsel Mission.
Pursuing the demise penalty is among the many most consequential choices that prosecutors make. Every case could be litigated throughout the tenures of a number of county attorneys and may price greater than 1,000,000 {dollars}. Within the tons of of Maricopa County demise penalty circumstances that prosecutors have pursued since 2007, the price of furnishing the accused with an enough protection has totaled $289 million. However the outcomes within the county increase questions in regards to the workplace’s judgment in its pursuit of the final word punishment, in response to courtroom data and interviews with greater than three dozen individuals together with attorneys, former prosecutors, members of the family of victims and defendants, jurors and consultants.
Former County Lawyer Rick Romley mentioned there must be a evaluation of capital charging choices after ProPublica and ABC15 shared the newsrooms’ findings with him. Romley questioned whether or not prosecutors are searching for demise “within the acceptable circumstances.”
“The jury is form of a barometer of whether or not or not you’re doing a very good job,” he mentioned. “And fairly frankly … if it was a college grade, that’s referred to as an F.”
The workplace, now headed by Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, declined our request for an interview. A spokesperson responded to written questions, emphasizing that “just one” particular person in Maricopa County — Mitchell — makes the choice to hunt the demise penalty and that every case is reviewed all through the method, as info adjustments.
Maricopa County’s and the state of Arizona’s dealing with of the demise penalty have been questioned for years. A 2016 report by the now-defunct Honest Punishment Mission, a authorized and academic analysis group at Harvard College, cited the county, amongst different locations, as having a historical past of “overzealous prosecutors, insufficient protection and a sample of racial bias and exclusion.”
As well as, protection attorneys for a demise row prisoner in 2018 petitioned unsuccessfully to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, claiming that Arizona’s statute was overly broad as a result of nearly each homicide could be charged as a capital case. And two former prosecutors and appeals courtroom judges wrote in a 2022 regulation journal article that state officers, relatively than particular person counties, ought to make all demise penalty choices to make sure the method is “much less arbitrary.”
Maricopa County prosecutors’ dealing with of demise penalty circumstances is newly related as Arizona has resumed executions after a two-year pause. The state, which has 111 individuals on demise row, halted executions in 2014, after Joseph Wooden was injected repeatedly over two hours, gasping greater than 600 instances earlier than dying, in response to a reporter’s account. The state executed three individuals in 2022 however paused after the newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a evaluation of the deadly injection course of. Hobbs dismissed the retired federal Justice of the Peace she had appointed to conduct the evaluation after he concluded there isn’t any humane technique to execute individuals.
Valencia and her household felt the case had put their lives on maintain. Trying again, she mentioned it appeared odd that the prosecution, which had pursued demise for therefore lengthy, determined to not as soon as the result was shut. (Prosecutors declined to touch upon the case.)
However as Valencia realized, there’s little transparency across the course of in Maricopa County. Though the ultimate choice to hunt demise is made by the county legal professional, every case is vetted by somewhat identified panel, the Capital Assessment Committee. The county legal professional’s workplace refused to confide in ProPublica and ABC15 who sits on the panel, how they vote on the circumstances being thought-about for the demise penalty and even which circumstances they evaluation.
The workplace mentioned in an announcement that the method ends not with the county legal professional’s workplace however with a trial, which is “all accomplished in public, in an open courtroom.” The workplace additionally mentioned that it’s profitable in prosecuting capital circumstances and comparisons to Harris County could possibly be deceptive as a result of they ignore the “particulars and intricacies of particular person circumstances.”
Establishing a committee is usually higher than particular person judgments, however the high quality of the selections relies on the people concerned, mentioned Robert Dunham, former director of the Loss of life Penalty Info Heart, a gaggle that shares information and evaluation on capital punishment and continuously highlights points with the system.
“Anybody who says that they’ve a good course of and is unwilling to say what that course of is, is any individual who doesn’t have a good course of,” Dunham mentioned.
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Ash Ponders for ProPublica
“I Need to Run It by The Man”
When Romley, a Republican, was first elected Maricopa County legal professional in 1989, deputy prosecutors in one of many nation’s largest counties determined whether or not to hunt the demise penalty on their very own.
Among the many first adjustments Romley made was to foster extra deliberation. He created the Capital Assessment Committee to guage circumstances and advocate whether or not to pursue the demise penalty. He nonetheless had the ultimate say, however he believed {that a} group of veteran prosecutors would apply the regulation extra constantly and advocate solely circumstances that warranted the final word punishment.
“In search of the demise penalty is a momentous choice that you just’ve acquired to make,” Romley mentioned. “I wished to make it possible for we have been ferreting out all of the details, that we made positive that judgment wasn’t being skewed by private biases.”
Romley served 4 phrases and determined to not search a fifth, leaving workplace in 2004. His successor was Andrew Thomas, a Republican legal professional and writer, who ran as a law-and-order conservative vowing to crack down on unlawful immigration and impose harder sentences. After two years, Thomas had practically doubled the variety of demise penalty prosecutions, incomes Maricopa County the excellence of searching for demise greater than nearly every other jurisdiction within the nation.
Critics mentioned Thomas sought the demise penalty for crimes that didn’t warrant it — together with a case of vehicular murder. The defendant in that case, David Szymanski, had a blood-alcohol content material practically twice the authorized restrict and cocaine in his system when he drove the improper means on a freeway and killed a 22-year-old man.
A police evaluation discovered that officers had violated division coverage whereas pursuing Szymanski. Thomas relented greater than a yr later, and the Capital Assessment Committee beneficial the capital cost be withdrawn. Szymanski pleaded responsible to second-degree homicide and was sentenced to 22 years in jail.
The sufferer’s mom instructed the Arizona Republic, “We’ve by no means wished the demise penalty.”
Kenneth Everett, who was a protection legal professional on capital circumstances for the Maricopa County Workplace of the Authorized Advocate throughout Thomas’ tenure, instructed the American Bar Affiliation’s ABA Journal in 2010 that it was clear choices on the circumstances have been made solely by Thomas. “Once I begged for a deal, the entire prosecutors would say, ‘I’ve to run it by the person,’” he mentioned. “Thomas actually had the final word energy. And if he mentioned no, you have been going to trial. And he normally mentioned no.”
The Arizona Supreme Courtroom convened a job pressure to handle case delays amid a scarcity of certified capital protection attorneys.
Thomas responded to criticism of the delays by blaming protection attorneys for drawing out proceedings and the courts for failing to implement speedy trial guidelines. He wrote in an Arizona Republic opinion piece, “I’ve sought the demise penalty in acceptable circumstances understanding juries make the final word choice and believing they need to have this selection.”
Thomas received a second time period however resigned in 2010 to pursue an unsuccessful bid for state legal professional basic. He was later disbarred for misconduct and political prosecutions of county officers. Thomas, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, mentioned on the time that he was “working to struggle corruption.”
After Thomas’ resignation, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Romley to serve out the time period. Again in his outdated job, Romley reviewed the 120 capital circumstances the workplace was pursuing on the time. He determined to not search the demise penalty in 11 of them, together with a case wherein a 4-month-old little one was discovered lifeless at an in-home day care. The health worker had concluded the kid died of blunt pressure trauma, however Romley mentioned he introduced in medical consultants who disputed that and located the accidents the kid suffered may have been attributable to an sickness.
In courtroom minutes of a listening to to drop the demise penalty within the case, the Capital Assessment Committee is famous as having voted 8-0 to dismiss the case, which was by no means refiled. However the weight of the cost on the defendant, Lisa Randall, is clear in courtroom paperwork. Over the three years she was out and in of jail, her marriage fell aside and he or she misplaced her home, in response to courtroom paperwork. Randall couldn’t be reached for remark.
“When you allege demise, the entire recreation adjustments,” Romley mentioned. “So many extra sources go into that specific case.”
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Gerard Watson/ABC15
“They Ought to Present A few of the Bravery That They Anticipate Us to Present”
As soon as a prosecutor decides to hunt the demise penalty, the stakes rise. The courts and victims’ households face a lengthier course of, and jurors can face intense scrutiny.
The courtroom appoints two protection attorneys, together with an investigator and a mitigation specialist. (In different circumstances, defendants have just one lawyer.) The protection can be given extra time to arrange, to permit for an examination of the defendant’s background to seek out sympathetic elements that would mitigate a demise sentence.
Capital trials eat extra time as a result of they include three elements: A jury first decides if the defendant is responsible; then jurors think about aggravating circumstances that would make the defendant eligible or ineligible for a demise sentence. Lastly, the jury decides if the sentence must be demise or life in jail.
It’s unclear how a lot the Maricopa County Lawyer’s Workplace spends prosecuting capital circumstances. When ProPublica and ABC15 requested the workplace for a breakdown, a spokesperson mentioned that the workplace doesn’t observe spending on demise penalty circumstances.
However since 2007, the county has spent practically $289 million on protection for capital circumstances. Final yr, the county spent $26 million, greater than any yr since 2007, in response to the Maricopa County Workplace of Public Protection Companies.
In Oklahoma, a research launched in 2017 discovered that capital circumstances price, on common, thrice greater than noncapital circumstances.
Jodi Arias made headlines in 2013 when she was convicted of killing her ex-boyfriend. Prosecutors sought the demise penalty twice, and jurors deadlocked each instances. Arias was finally sentenced to life in jail. The 2 trials price $3.2 million, together with the protection and prosecution, in response to officers on the time.
Through the 20 years examined by ProPublica and ABC15, juries in 35 circumstances both voted for all times, deadlocked, decided the circumstances didn’t qualify for demise or discovered the defendant not responsible. In 41 circumstances, jurors beneficial the demise penalty.
Frank Baumgartner, a College of North Carolina political science professor, was stunned Maricopa County juries disagreed with prosecutors 46% of the time in capital circumstances. Prosecutors would save taxpayers cash by exercising extra discretion over which circumstances they pursue, Baumgartner mentioned. In addition they look like out of step with public opinion within the county, provided that juries disagree with them so continuously on the demise penalty. “They’re not in sync with their area people,” he mentioned.
Individuals who served on capital juries within the county instructed ProPublica and ABC15 that they’d traumatic experiences. Through the choice course of, potential jurors are requested private questions in open courtroom, making them really feel weak. Some have had their identities revealed by jurors who disagree with them.
A juror in a high-profile Maricopa County homicide case who requested to not be named due to security issues referred to as the expertise “one of many worst of my life.” As soon as the juror realized it was a demise penalty case, the stress triggered intense abdomen ache. “It’s the best penalty within the land, and I don’t assume that it must be utilized frivolously,” the previous juror mentioned.
Given what jurors go although, prosecutors must be clear about their decision-making, the juror mentioned.
“They need to present a number of the bravery that they anticipate us to indicate,” the previous juror mentioned of the secretive committee. “You ask us to do that, to place our life on maintain, to undergo this, not share it with anyone. Then present a number of the bravery that you just maintain us to, and be accountable like we’d be accountable if we have been caught not following any of the foundations.”
In 2019, Myla Fairchild served as a juror in a case in opposition to the person accused of murdering Gilbert police Lt. Eric Shuhandler, who was killed after pulling over a pickup truck. Christopher Redondo, a passenger within the truck, shot Shuhandler within the face, setting off a 50-mile chase, prosecutors mentioned. Fairchild mentioned she voted in opposition to the demise penalty due to Redondo’s psychological capability and lengthy historical past of psychological sickness. Redondo was convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in jail. Afterwards, annoyed jurors instructed the media Fairchild’s title.
She wasn’t afforded the identical privateness because the prosecutors on the evaluation committee who beneficial the demise penalty within the first place, she mentioned.
“You’re not protected,” she mentioned.
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Gerard Watson/ABC15
“A Whole Disservice”
ProPublica and ABC15 requested the biggest prosecutorial workplaces in Arizona and throughout the nation how they determine whether or not to hunt the demise penalty. The newsrooms discovered that no two counties deal with decision-making the identical means, however Maricopa County is an outlier for obscuring practically each side of its committee’s work.
The ACLU sued the Maricopa County Lawyer’s Workplace in 2019 for entry to the committee’s membership and different data. Jared Keenan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s authorized director, mentioned the group thought-about the data vital to the general public’s understanding of the demise penalty.
“Prosecuting companies have an unimaginable quantity of energy, and that energy is at its top once they make life-and-death choices,” Keenan mentioned. “The general public must know who’s concerned in making these choices to have the ability to be certain that these choices are made responsibly, constitutionally, ethically.”
The county opposed releasing the data. “They have been combating to maintain this particular info from the general public for years and years,” Keenan mentioned. A decide didn’t order the county to launch the committee data to the general public.
At ProPublica and ABC15’s request, the county legal professional’s workplace shared a coverage doc itemizing the composition of the Capital Assessment Committee however mentioned the doc is “considerably old-fashioned.” It listed as committee members: the deputy chief of the Felony Division; the division chiefs from the Capital Litigation Bureau, Main Offenders Division and Particular Victims Division; and the Neighborhood Based mostly Prosecution Division chiefs. The coverage permits the county legal professional to designate different committee members.
In an announcement, the county legal professional’s workplace reiterated that Mitchell makes the ultimate choice after contemplating a variety of knowledge.
Nonetheless, the choice can really feel opaque to victims’ members of the family.
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Ash Ponders for ProPublica
When prosecutors sought the demise penalty in opposition to Octavia Rogers within the killing of her three younger youngsters in the summertime of 2016, they went in opposition to the household’s needs, in response to Rogers’ aunt, Sherry Spooney. Spooney and her household had misplaced three younger family within the killing and didn’t wish to lose Rogers to the demise penalty, too. “What wouldn’t it clear up? How wouldn’t it assist the scenario?” she mentioned.
Prosecutors by no means spoke to the household about how they arrived at their choice, Spooney mentioned.
The Maricopa County Lawyer’s Workplace mentioned it reached out to the household.
Spooney referred to as their secrecy “disheartening” and mentioned it brought on her to surprise if the workplace had its personal agenda in pursuing the demise penalty. “It’s a complete disservice, to not simply the household, however the victims of the household. And on this case, we’re each, we’re one and the identical, and in the event that they’re going to make choices for another person, it must be identified.”
Final yr, after Rogers was discovered incompetent to face trial, she pleaded “responsible besides insane,” which means she didn’t know on the time of her crime that the act was improper. Rogers is being held on the Arizona State Hospital.
Valencia recalled that when the case in opposition to her brother’s killer was delayed, she initially blamed protection attorneys for dragging out the proceedings, however the committee’s secrecy was additionally contributing to the delay. Attorneys for Hernandez, the defendant, had found a member of the Capital Assessment Committee had a possible battle of curiosity: A former protection legal professional for Hernandez in an unrelated case had since grow to be a prosecutor and was on the committee that voted to reject a plea deal for Hernandez. (The plea deal included the noncapital case as nicely.)
Prosecutors fought for practically three years to maintain the committee’s membership and its votes secret in a case that reached the Arizona Supreme Courtroom. A decide ultimately decided there was no battle of curiosity within the Hernandez case.
Years later, when prosecutors withdrew the demise penalty cost in opposition to Hernandez, Valencia mentioned she agreed with the choice regardless that she’d as soon as thought it could be the one simply final result.
“It took such a toll on our household, at that time, I used to be simply prepared for it to be accomplished,” she mentioned.
