Passing the Buck(s) in Denver

In an interesting move, a District Attorney in Colorado has defrayed some of the counties' budget burden caused by death penalty cases by billing the Department of Corrections (found by Sentencing Law and Policy):

Then there's Carol Chambers, the maverick district attorney of the 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties. Her office is pursuing six of the seven capital murder cases now under way in Colorado. The crusade has drawn heat from death-penalty opponents, but it's also attracting scrutiny from the state legislature.

Using a 130-year-old statute that requires the Colorado Department of Corrections to reimburse counties for prosecuting crimes committed inside state prisons, Chambers has found an unusual way to pay for half of her death-penalty cases. She's billed the DOC hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months, effectively shifting the cost of trying to execute three inmates from her county-funded budget to Colorado coffers. The tactic has forced prison officials to go to state lawmakers, seeking a special fund for "payments to district attorneys," and raised questions about whether Chambers can bill the state for the entire salaries of employees in her office, including a chief deputy making $131,000 a year.

The D.A., Carol Chambers, sent a response in to the paper, the Denver Westword, which was posted to their blog:

It does cost millions to pursue, obtain, and see a death penalty case through to execution. However, it does NOT have to. In cases where we are "only" seeking life without parole, there are not hundreds of motions filed, it does not take weeks to pick a jury, it does not usually take years to get to trial, it does not take months to hear pre and post trial motions.

Chambers goes on to pin the costs on the capital defenders, stating that it is they who up the ante and the District Attorney is forced to simply match them.

The reality of the situation here in Indiana is that both sides likely spend similar resources and both the defense and prosecution may feel caught in an increasingly expensive cycle while trying to outdo each other (see the earlier post, Death in Georgia, for a sampling of the numbers). After all, outdoing each other is their job and neither side should be faulted for this. However, that leaves us with the question of whether or not it's even worth putting this cycle of spending in motion. In the end, after all, in the 94% of Indiana death penalty cases where the defendant was represented by a public defender it's the taxpayer that gets the bill for both sides.