A plea bargain offered in the Brian Kohberger case creates a predictable, quicker, cheaper—and to some—a more ethical outcome, according to legal experts following the proceedings.
Deborah Ahrens, a Professor of Law at Seattle University who also served as a criminal defense attorney, says attorneys for the prosecution as well as the defense have likely been working on a plea deal while simultaneously preparing for trial.
“It’s fairly common that when you have a case like this, once the trial date becomes relatively close, the parties get serious about trying to negotiate,” Ahrens said.
The trial slated for August will be preempted if Kohberger agrees to the plea and the judge accepts it. Sentencing could happen at the end of July.
Families of the victims are split on the deal—two supporting the ability to move on, two still yearning for definitive answers a trial could have provided.
“Part of a guilty plea, you do have to admit to the facts that are alleged, you also have to do what we call allocuting, which is basically legalese for having to explain what happened.” Ahrens said, “You will not have individual witnesses to come in and testify, all the experts come in and testify which is part of the expense of a capital trial.”
Ahrens says Capital Punishment trials take much longer than normal proceedings.
Normal trials have jury selection that lasts several hours to a couple of days. Kohberger’s jury selection was slated for two weeks as Ahrens says jurors would have been questioned individually, including if they were willing to sentence a person to death.
The normal trial itself may be comparable to a weeks-long murder trial without the death penalty on the table, but when prosecutors seek execution, an additional trial is held after a person is convicted for jurors to determine if the person should be put to death.
“The jury, rather than the judge, is going to be hearing the sentencing period for the trial.” Ahrens said.
Sentencing will be the definitive place for those impacted by the case to be heard. Although Ahrens says Idaho law requires prosecutors to check in with families of victims about pleas and court proceedings, they don’t have to abide by their wishes. At the end of the day, the prosecutors represent the State and its interests in the outcome.
Had Kohberger gone to trial and been convicted, she sees an appeals process that would take decades before any capital punishment were to be carried out.
“Normally, if you are sentenced to death you have an automatic set of appeals,” Ahrens said, “That entire appellate, post-conviction process often takes years, sometimes decades.”
Idaho last executed a person in 2012. The site Death Penalty Information Center shows that there are nine people currently on the state’s death row. The oldest case was a man convicted of murder in 1981.
“The prosecutors in Mr. Kohberger’s case made the statement that they were trying to spare the victims’ families from the uncertainty associated with a number of years of appeals.” Robin Maher said, the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
“That has been true of many victims’ family members. They have found that uncertainty and being forced to relive the worst moments of their life over and over again as these appeals go forward is a really devastating and retraumatizing experience,” Maher said.
Maher’s organization has also tracked problems in the execution process, such as botched executions and problems for states in accessing the chemicals needed for lethal injection.
Ahrens says European suppliers won’t sell the chemicals if they know that they will be used to execute a person.
“We are obtaining some of these drugs from pretty sketchy sources, they’re expiring, and also sometimes because staff for not adequately trained. We’re seeing problems when the execution itself goes forward.” Maher said.
This all adds to a reality where it’s nearly double the cost to house someone on death row than it is to house someone for a life sentence.
A study from Torin McFarland at Susquehanna University found it costs around $1.12 million more to keep someone on death row versus held in a federal detention facility. The average annual cost for federal detention worked out to $37,500 per year, compared to $60,000-$70,000 per year on death row.
Maher says that due to death row inmates being held at separate facilities where they are required to have extreme levels of security. The inmates are held in single cells and need to be escorted through the prison or to hearings for appeals.
“We need many more prison staff. It’s just a number of additional costs associated with maintaining this population in very, very severe and isolating conditions." Maher said.
Because of lethal injection issues, Idaho made Firing Squad it’s primary method of execution earlier this year. Also earlier this year, attorneys claimed South Carolina botched a firing squad execution by missing the inmate’s heart when firing.
“We have seen so many mistakes. We’ve seen 200 people who were innocent and wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. What we know is that the death penalty does not work. And that’s just a sad fact we need to accept.” Maher said.
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