A new study by the Fair Punishment Project shows Maricopa County ranks among a handful of places with the most death penalty cases between 2010 and 2015, when local juries sentenced 28 people to death.
The U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of intellectually disabled prisoners in 2002.
Since 2006, about 62 percent of defendants in Maricopa County death penalty cases were intellectually disabled, had a mental illness or brain damage, according to the study.
There are three reasons why the percentage is so high, said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender who represents plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against Arizona’s death penalty.
“First, I think the county attorney is skeptical of claims of mental impairment,” Baich said. “The view may be that the accused is somehow faking it.”
The two other reasons are: Some defense lawyers have not effectively explained their client’s mental issues to the jury, and the state legislature made it more difficult for the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse a death sentence, Baich said.
Authors of the study also named several attorneys as having provided an inadequate defense of clients facing the death penalty in Maricopa County courtrooms.
One lawyer wrote that a client with a low IQ “looks like a killer, not a retard,” according to the study. Another didn’t tell the jury his client was born addicted to heroin, had symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome and suffered head injuries caused by physical abuse.
“Some of the lawyers that were mentioned in this report are still being appointed to death penalty cases in Maricopa County,” Baich said. “I think the state Supreme Court really needs to take a careful look at who is qualified to handle these cases.”
Arizona has not carried out an execution since 2014.
