Arizona Department of Corrections

Arizona began executing death-row inmates by lethal injection in 1993.

With limited resources, death penalty cases can be a huge expense for rural counties.

In western Arizona, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved about $330,000 in contingency money for a pair of capital murder trials.

Local governments can sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into a death penalty case only to have the defendant die in prison before the appeals process ends. 

Mohave County has a sufficient tax base to finance capital cases, according to Supervisor Buster Johnson. But for many rural counties, a death penalty trial can eat up an entire budget.

“The smaller counties, when you get a death penalty case that comes in, the cost can bankrupt them very easily because of the amount of attorneys that are required, especially for the accused,” Johnson said.

Most of the $330,000 will go toward defense of the accused. The tab for Mohave County is similar to the combined annual salaries of four sheriff’s deputies, said Supervisor Steve Moss.

“You (have) to assign two public defenders for each death penalty case,” Moss said. “You have to hire experts. It’s very time consuming, and time is money in the legal world.”

The defendants are both accused of first-degree murder - the first for allegedly killing an 8-year-old girl in 2014. That trial is scheduled for October.

In the second case, the defendant faces retrial for the 2009 murder of an 18-year-old woman. A date has not been set for that trial.