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the costs of federal captial trials

By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

The Office of Defender Services of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has released an updated report on the cost, quality and availability of defense representation in federal death penalty cases. Unsuprisingly death  costs much, much, more.  And, as one might expect, the greater the cost of the defense (presumably indicating more costs in preparing for a trial) the lower the chance of returning a verdict for death. During the period of this study, defendants who received the least amount of attorney and expert time, and whose defense representation thus cost the least, faced a higher probability of receiving a death sentence. Specifically, as Table Twelve (p. 40) shows, individuals whose defense received less than $320,000 in combined attorney and expert assistance ? the lowest one-third of federal capital trials ? had a 44 percent chance of being sentenced to death at trial...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on October 11, 2008 (boomark / email).