A Chicago Tribune article, available here, states that an Illinois public defender recently moved to prohibit the state from seeking the death penalty against her client because the state does not have enough money to pay for the expert witnesses that she believes she will need at the penalty phase of the trial. Apparently, Illinois has a fund specifically for expert fees in capital cases, and the fund for the fiscal year has run dry with several months left to go. The public defender says that the experts she needs are "fed up" and refuse to accept more capital cases. The prosecution opposes the motion, and there's been no ruling yet. I've blogged previously about the financial crisis and the death penalty -- here -- but the impact of the financial crisis on expert witnesses is a new angle, one with implications beyond the capital context. Could defense lawyers in North Carolina make a similar argument? The short answer is, I doubt that such an argument would be viable now, but depending on what happens with the state budget, it could become so in the next few years. The Office of Indigent Defense Services pays for experts in cases involving indigent defendants, which is a huge proportion of all defendants in serious cases, including virtually all capital defendants. IDS doesn't have a separate fund for experts, or even for capital cases -- it has a single pot of money that it uses to pay experts, investigators, and court-appointed lawyers, in capital [...]
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