Arapahoe County DA Charges Death-Penalty Fees to the State

Last week, attorneys for Nathan Dunlap, Colorado's sole inmate on death row, filed a 750-page motion in federal court seeking to overturn his death sentence, which has been under appeal for twelve years. Nationally, the legal costs associated with executions have gone up considerably since 1999, even as the annual number of executions has dropped from 98 to 42, according to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a group opposed to the practice. California, which has 660 inmates awaiting execution, spends $114 million a year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life to maintain its system. Florida, which has executed 44 inmates since 1976 and has 397 more to go, spends $51 million a year more than it would cost to keep all first-degree murderers in prison for life; that works out to $24 million per execution. Last year a legislative council pegged Colorado's death-penalty costs at $770,000 a year, but that is bound to climb sharply if the seven defendants now facing capital cases are actually sentenced to death (see story, page 24).

A separate part of Lane's motion seeks the removal of special prosecutor Daniel Edwards, who once represented Perez in one phase of his 1997 murder case — the same case that's now an "aggravator" in seeking a lethal injection for Perez. A judge has ruled that Edwards can't work directly on the Perez prosecution, but Lane thinks the prosecutor is ethically obligated to remove himself from the Bueno case as well, since the two are so intertwined. "He represented Alejandro Perez on the very murder conviction Edwards now employs in the effort to execute him," the motion notes, "and Alejandro Perez objects to his lawyer trying to kill him."

Chambers, who is seeking a second term this fall, declines to comment on the Edwards matter until the judge has ruled on it. However, she notes that the judge in the Bueno case rebuffed a similar effort to disqualify Edwards and Chambers's office from that case. A spokeswoman said the district attorney's office will not comment on specific legal issues in the Bueno and Perez cases because they are ongoing.

Ongoing — and with the Bueno trial under way and Perez still to come, the meter is ticking at a furious pace.