More Murders Ahead

It's been over five months since we killed anyone in Ohio.  That was Danny Bedford back in May.  He followed Frank Spisak, Johnnie Baston, and Clarence Carter to the death house this year.  But since then, nobody.  We've had stays and reprieves.  Kasich granted clemency twice.  Two men died of natural causes.

Reginald Brooks is scheduled for November 15.  On Friday, a judge in Cleveland ruled that he's mentally ill but not so crazy that Ohio can't murder him.  The Parole Board hasn't yet spoken.  Until they do, the Governor can't decide on clemency.  And we can expect more court rulings.  And perhaps another reprieve, though perhaps not.

Brooks is the last scheduled for 2011.  Next up would be Charles Lorraine on January 18, 2012.  He's one of seven scheduled for next year, along with Michael Webb (Feb. 22), Mark Wiles (April 18), Abdul Awkal (June 6), Jeff Eley (July 26), Don Palmer (Sept. 20), and Brett Hartman (Nov. 13).

And that's not all, as Ron Popeil would say if he shilled for executions, there's more.  Because Fred Treesh (March 6), Steven Smith (May 1), and Billy Slagle (August 7) are already scheduled for 2013. 

This morning the Columbus 7 added Ronald Post (January 18) and Harry Mitts (September 25) to the 2013 list.

Texas has killed 11 this year.  Alabama 6.  Ohio's tied with Arizona and Georgia for third place with 4.

On Halloween, appropriately enough, they'll be starting a capital trial in Butler County.  The state hopes to murder Hector Alvarenga Retana.  The judge, Michael Sage, doesn't know how much the effort will cost, but he told Denise Callahan of the Middletown Journal it will be a lot. 

“It is so great we can’t afford to pay for that directly out of our ongoing budget,” he said. “All the costs associated with that we take directly to the commissioners. If you include the direct costs and indirect costs I think it would be somewhere around $250,000 per case.”

That $250,000 is very low.  But then, it is Butler County.  Right now there are seven men on death row from Butler County.  Most of those charged in capital cases, most of the ones the county spends all that money on, they end up with life sentences anyway.

But if they have to go to the County Commissioners for special funding even to try and kill them, that means that the County Commissioners could stop it, could channel Nancy Reagan and just say no.

We can't afford this foolishness.  All that money and for what?  So that maybe a jury will say he should die and then he can sit on death row for a while and maybe someday be executed.  Or he'll die in prison anyway, and we can do that for a whole lot less.  And with no chance that we'll have screwed up and killed someone who didn't deserve it.  Forget whether it's better for him.  It's better for us.

Well, sure.  They could say that.  But of course they won't.

Some lawyers though, they say can't afford to keep enabling the system.  Callahan also spoke to Chris Pagan who's tried several death penalty cases in Butler County.

He said he can’t afford to handle these cases anymore, with the paltry fees he is allowed.
. . .
“The costs here are extremely low compared with the costs in other metropolitan areas,” he said. “The funding has to be leveled out in a statewide reasonable way.... Here they get a great bargain and I don’t know that the funds are sufficient. I’m not doing it anymore I can’t afford it. You get 40 bucks an hour and my overhead costs more than that. And it’s a thankless job.”

But it keeps going.  There are some people though, says the Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser who are "perceived to be beyond redemption."

When the facts are clear and the conduct shocks and the person is perceived to be beyond redemption, the jury ought to have the opportunity to say ‘we don’t want to just lock you up we think you deserve not to breathe in our world anymore.’ Now that’s pretty cold, but let’s face it, the death penalty is a legal penalty under our law.”

Of course, perception isn't always accurate.  Nor is judgment.  And then there's that whole thing of who deserves to cast the first stone.

Not just in Butler County, of course.

Not even just in Ohio where we've killed four men so far this year.  Where Reginald Brooks will or will not become the fifth.

And where we just planned two more murders for 2013.

$185,000 and Counting

Really, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

What?  Oh, sorry.

Cost of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell's defense surpasses $185,000 mark

That's the headline from a story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Sowell, of course, is alleged to have killed a whole bunch of people and cluttered his house and property with the bodies.  (You can catch up some on the case here.)  But Cuyahoga County isn't facing those bills just because the body count is high and the case has kept the media hounds busy.  Hell, my guess (and it's only a guess, folks; I have no inside information) is that if County Prosecutor Bill Mason would say now - or would have said 150 thousand dollars ago -

Plead guilty to aggravated murder, agree to a sentence of death in prison, and we'll give up on the death penalty

Sowell would have taken the deal in a heartbeat.  My guess (still no inside info) is that he'd take the deal today.
It's one of the not-so-secrets about the death penalty that it costs a ton of money.   We can't just kill people.  First we have to be sure they're guilty.  (We're not terribly good at that, of course; see, e.g., Todd Willingham or Claude Jones down in Texas, or Joe D'Ambrosio here in Ohio; there's no shortage of other examples.)
And not just guilty of something like aggravated murder with at least one death specification.  Actually guilty of that.  That requires a full investigation complete with investigators and forensic examiners and maybe psychologists or who knows what for the defense because we don't have a system where whatever the government (or Nancy Grace) alleges must be accepted as true.
And then we have to decide that life or death question.  And the Constitution and the law of Ohio and fundamental human decency says that it isn't just whether the now-convicted person did something awful but whether the awfulness outweighs who that person is and was and how it all came to be.  Because the death penalty isn't just (we're talking theory here, but it's the theory of American justice so if you don't like it consider which other country's system you'd prefer) for the worst of the worst crimes but for the worst of the worst crimes when they're committed by the worst of the worst people.
And that means more investigation and more evaluation and more expert assistance because we want to be sure that this particular person, that one, sitting there, in the courtroom, the one the judge and the jury are looking at, him:  We want to be sure he's the one that judge and jury can look at and say
You should die and we are so damn sure of it that we're willing, individually, to be responsible for killing you.
Once more, the record shows that we're wholly incapable of making those decisions in any sort of reasonable or reliable or consistent way, but the point is that we're supposed to.  And that can't be done in a vacuum.  It really does require that we invest in getting it right.
Or, you know, we can just give this whole charade up.  Just do a trial.  Save a fortune.  Avoid the moral morass and legal quagmire of the death penalty.
In Indiana they've been talking about that. Indiana has a death penalty (though a comparatively small death row), and has killed twenty people, so they're serious about it over there.  And it's not up for immediate elimination.  An AP report explains.

Indiana state lawmakers say the General Assembly is more likely to try to find ways to help counties pay for death penalty cases than to abolish executions to save money.

"There aren't a majority of votes in the Indiana legislature to impose either a moratorium or a revocation of the death penalty, so that's not going to happen," state Sen. John Broden, D-South Bend, a Judiciary Committee member, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. 

But there's that money thing.

An analysis conducted earlier this year by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency found that the average cost for trial and direct appeal in six capital cases averaged $449,887, not including the costs incurred by prosecutors or sheriffs. That compares with an average cost of $42,658 for seven trials in cases involving sentences of life without parole.  

That's more than 10 times the cost.  And money's tight these days.  Sen. Broden got the point.

"In an era of declining revenues, we either need to come up with a way to fund future death penalty cases or take a look at other options. I guess everything is on the table right now," he said. 

Sure.

The comments were in response to an assertion earlier in the week by Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller that lawmakers should look at whether the costs of death penalty cases are justifiable in tough economic times.

Yep.
What's true in Indiana is true in Ohio.  And it's sure true in Cuyahoga County.
That $185,000 bill.  It'll be way higher before all is said and done.  Though they could pretty much cut it off right now if Bill Mason would just offer that deal.
So maybe we should try listening to some of those prosecutors across the border to our west.  That AP report quotes a couple of them from a summit at Notre Dame University where all this was discussed.

The Elkhart Truth reported that Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco said at the summit where Zoeller spoke on Monday that he believes Indiana's death penalty system is "nearly broken" because it costs so much.

"It's almost at the point where it's no longer viable. Unless we decrease the costs, it's not worth it," he said.

The newspaper reported that Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart said the system is broken because it costs too much.

"Prosecutors are scared to death about filing a death-penalty case and risking bankrupting their office budget and bankrupting their county budget," Stewart said. 

Note, if you would, the name of the newspaper where those statements were quoted.  It's the Elkhart Truth.
It's Ohio's truth, too.
We can give it up.  And save a ton of money. 
Maybe for crime prevention - or relief for families of those who are killed.