$1.75 MILLION PRICE TAG FOR SANCHEZ MURDER TRIAL.Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer The death-penalty murder trial of Simi Valley Simi Valley (sē`mē, sĭm`ē), city (1990 pop. 100,217), Ventura co., SW Calif. in an oil, fruit, and farm region; laid out 1887, inc. 1969. rapist Vincent Sanchez cost taxpayers more than $1.75 million, Ventura County officials said Wednesday. Sanchez, 33, offered to plead guilty two years ago to second-degree murder in the shooting death of 20-year-old Moorpark College Moorpark College is a California-state funded community college located on a 134 acre (542,000 m²) property reclining on a hill in Moorpark, a town in Ventura County, California. student Megan Barroso in July 2001. The admission would have sent him to prison for life without possibility of parole life without possibility of parole n. a sentence sometimes given for particularly vicious criminals in murder cases or to repeat felons, particularly if the crime is committed in a state which has no death penalty, the jury chooses not to impose the death penalty, or - a sentence he already would have been serving for his guilty pleas in the rapes of a dozen other women. Prosecutors instead embarked on a successful two-year effort to convict Sanchez of first-degree murder with special circumstances special circumstances n. in criminal cases, particularly homicides, actions of the accused or the situation under which the crime was committed for which state statutes allow or require imposition of a more severe punishment. - a move that led to him being sentenced to die by lethal injection  This article or section may deal primarily with the U.S. and may not present a worldwide view. . The effort cost Ventura County just over $1 million for two prosecutors and two investigators, and about $160,000 for expert witnesses, consultants, travel costs and supplies, said Patricia Murphy, chief assistant district attorney. The Public Defender's Office hasn't added up the cost of defending Sanchez, but estimate it at more than $600,000, Chief Deputy Public Defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was Neil Quinn said. The cost will continue to mount as death penalty cases are automatically appealed. Cost is never a factor in deciding what punishment to seek, Murphy said. ``It's either the right thing to do or it isn't,'' she said. ``The death penalty is a legitimate penalty in California, and the majority of voters support it. It was the right thing to do in this case.'' Murphy didn't know the additional courtroom costs of Sanchez's four- month trial. Many legal experts estimate that jury trials cost $5,000 per day to conduct, including the prosecutor's salary. The societal costs are greater than the monetary expenses for a trial that was more about politics than protecting the public, Quinn said. ``The trial wasn't about public safety, and it wasn't about the victims,'' Quinn said. ``To invest this amount of resources into something that doesn't help the victims is insanity.'' Sanchez's willingness to plead guilty and the cost of his trial weren't valid factors in considering whether to seek the death penalty, said Jean Rosenbluth, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission . Although Rosenbluth opposes capital punishment capital punishment, imposition of a penalty of death by the state. History Capital punishment was widely applied in ancient times; it can be found (c.1750 B.C.) in the Code of Hammurabi. , she cited the brutality of Sanchez's assaults as one reason why a life sentence might not have been adequate punishment. ``There are times when a person who offers to plead guilty and get life in prison should be spared the death penalty, but this case is a much tougher call,'' she said. ``I think that the depth of depravity of the crime is one of the considerations.'' Don Facciano, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Association, said the Sanchez case was not about money. ``We deplore de·plore tr.v. de·plored, de·plor·ing, de·plores 1. To feel or express strong disapproval of; condemn: "Somehow we had to master events, not simply deplore them" the use of that much money on one case,'' he said. ``They could have avoided the trial, but the district attorney has the responsibility to pursue it, and we support that decision.'' Andrea Cavanaugh, (805) 583-7604 andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion