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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Ind. Courts - "Rios trial costs ballooning: Court to request another $340,000 for murder case"

Jeff Wiehe reports in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, in a long and detailed story:

Allen Superior Court officials are asking County Council for another $340,945 on top of the estimated $100,000 already spent on Simon Rios’ death-penalty case, and Rios’ lead attorney believes even more will be needed.

Michelle Kraus said multiple trips to Mexico to investigate Rios’ past, the need for Spanish interpreters, bilingual experts, a sequestered jury from southern Indiana and assorted other costs will make the Rios case the most expensive among the capital cases she has studied.

“I do have information about a number of capital cases throughout the state, with the low-end figures at $300,000 and the high end up to about $750,000,” said Kraus, a public defender being paid by the county. “Based upon the prior costs we’re looking at and the additional costs, it means our trial is probably going to exceed the most expensive trial we have data on.” * * *

The request for the $340,945 appropriation is on County Council’s agenda for its June 21 meeting. Also in the appropriation request is the court’s projected 2007 budget. Originally set at $4.6 million, it’s expected to grow to $4.9 million by the end of the year.

Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards said she could not comment specifically on the Rios case because it is still pending. Kraus said she could not disclose how much she had spent thus far because most of what has been paid for on her side has been sealed, but 50 percent of what she spends should be reimbursed to the county with funds from the state Public Defender Commission.

The appropriation request, though, estimates Kraus needs $20,000 for experts to evaluate Rios and $150,000 for attorney fees. It’s not clear if that includes evaluations already performed by two expert psychologists.

More than $40,000 will be needed for interpreters, though the court received a $30,000 grant from the chief justice of Indiana to defray that bill. About $7,100 is needed to pay for [Judge] Gull, attorneys and staff to travel to Clark County, where they’re expected to spend five days and nights picking a jury. That trip is tentatively scheduled for next month. A specialized court reporter to transcribe what is said in the courtroom should cost more than $47,000.

The story also has discussion of the cost of a death penalty case v.s. the cost of incarceration for life.

The ILB has had a number of earlier entries of the costs of death penalty cases, including "Death penalty sends a state's legal costs soaring" from 11/5/06, "Cost of death penalty trial factored into Pike County decision" from 10/17/06, "Three trials in the Camm murder case have cost Floyd County taxpayers about $1.8 million" from 4/3/06.

The Camm retrial costs led to legislation: see these entries from 1/27/07 and 2/5/07. As reported in this 4/30/07 ILB entry, the new state budget does include language providing for "state reimbursement on new trial costs when the Indiana Court of Appeals or Indiana Supreme Court calls for a new trial."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 16, 2007 03:03 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts