Maricopa County: Cost of capital cases

A recent article has reported that more than 300 cases over the past two decades have been reviewed where Maricopa County prosecutors sought the death penalty. In more than three-quarters of cases, defendants pled guilty in exchange for lesser punishment.

The article reports that in the review conducted by ProPublica and ABC15, that the transparency of capital charging practices varied widely across the United States, but Maricopa County stood out as a outlier for obscuring nearly every aspect.

Further the report raised the cost to taxpayers in pursuing capital cases, in that they are three times the amount more than noncapital cases.

You can read the full article here