Town Weighs Price to Pay for Justice

McARTHUR, Ohio--In the airless courthouse on Main Street today, the talk will be of justice--how much it costs, and how much it’s worth.

At issue: Whether Vinton County can afford to put an accused murderer on trial for his life.

In a ruling that shamed and infuriated many of his neighbors, local Judge Jeffrey L. Simmons earlier this month decreed that the county was too poor to stage a death penalty trial for 25-year-old Gregory McKnight, who is accused of kidnapping a college student and shooting her in the head.

Vinton County’s finances were so precarious, Simmons explained, that he could not guarantee McKnight would get adequate resources to defend himself. “This risk,” he wrote, “is unacceptable.” So the judge struck the capital charges from the indictment and declared that McKnight would face a maximum sentence of life in prison, with the possibility of parole in perhaps 30 years.

National experts said it was the first time they had ever heard of such a ruling. Prosecutors immediately appealed; they plan to raise the issue this morning at a pretrial hearing, although they are not certain Simmons will hear them out.

“I don’t want two systems of justice in Ohio, one for rich counties and one for poor counties. The law’s the law,” county prosecutor Timothy Gleeson said.

“It’s not cost-efficient to prosecute criminals. But we have an obligation to do it. Otherwise, our laws are meaningless,” added Joe Case, a spokesman for the state attorney general. “You cannot put a price tag on justice.”

Defense lawyers dismiss such rhetoric as naive: Of course justice carries a price tag, they say--one that often determines who lives and who dies. They contend, for instance, that prosecutors in hard-up counties may be more willing to plea bargain to avoid the huge cost of holding a death penalty trial.

Just last week, the same lawyers who are representing McKnight got a plea bargain for a client accused of murder in another impoverished county; instead of facing the death penalty, he will be eligible for parole in 33 years. “No one ever said that cost was a factor, but you’d have to convince me otherwise,” said attorney K. Robert Toy, who is representing McKnight. “Judge Simmons just had the courage to announce out loud what everyone else is thinking.”

Indeed, in poor rural counties across the nation, judges and politicians long have complained that capital cases can break the bank. In some jurisdictions hit with high-profile trials, officials have cut public services and considered tax hikes.

“The fact that you run a death penalty system means you don’t do a lot of other things, whether it’s hot school lunches or whatever,” said Victor Streib, a scholar of capital punishment who teaches law at Ohio Northern University. “Maybe in a small county it’s more obvious, but even in large urban areas, there’s a constant drain on public funds.”

Yet many here say no expense is too great when justice is at stake.

“You need to go full out. Otherwise, what kind of message are you going to send?” wondered Shirley Ward, 64, a bookkeeper.

“It’s just like in your family budget, if you have $100 to spend, you have to decide whether to pay the electric bill or go to the movies. Well, this is the electric bill, not the movies,” Beverly Argabright, a 48-year-old clerical assistant, added as she dived into a salad at the Harvest House restaurant.

At the next table, 31-year-old Marcus Games put down his newspaper to object: “This is the second-poorest county in the state. Using our precious resources to murder someone is just ridiculous. We have so many other needs.”

That’s a minority opinion here. But barely. Many of those who say the county must pursue the death penalty do so with obvious reluctance; they acknowledge that they are loath to spend so many taxpayer dollars on an accused murderer when there’s so much need in Vinton County. “I can really see both sides,” Ward said.

One in four children in the county lives in poverty. Unemployment tops 12%. In hand-lettered signs along a winding two-lane road, residents advertise their skills, hoping for work: “Lawn mower repair.” “Trenching.” “Firewood cut, stacked.”

The county is beautiful, tucked into the green fringe of Appalachia in southeast Ohio, with just 13,000 residents scattered among miles of rolling fields. Yet the coal seams that once ran so deep are scraped bare. The forests that once stretched so far have been logged. There is little industry.

In the office where county commissioners work elbow to elbow, officials track the general fund budget to the penny: $72,835.24 will be spent this year on economic development, $13,846.08 on litter pickup and recycling. McKnight’s trial cost is not accounted for.

Ohio law requires defendants in capital cases to have two attorneys. Since McKnight is indigent, taxpayers must cover the tab. If the defendant is convicted, he is entitled to bring in family members, psychiatrists and other witnesses to argue to the jury that he should not be executed. Again, the public pays the bills. If the death penalty is imposed, automatic appeals add still more expense.

In the McKnight case, the state pitched in to cover most of the prosecution cost, sending experienced attorneys from Columbus to prepare the case and performing forensic tests at no expense to Vinton County. But by law, the state need only cover one-third of the defense bill. The county is on the hook for the rest. McKnight’s attorneys estimate that the county’s expenses could top $200,000. That’s way more than Vinton County spends in a year to operate its civil, criminal, probate and juvenile courts combined.

As the trial judge, Simmons must authorize each defense expenditure. He suggested in his ruling Aug. 8 that he would be uncomfortable doing so. “It would be disingenuous to suggest that a trial judge can consider such requests without an awareness of the financial impact on this county,” he wrote. “The court finds that the potential impact of financial considerations could compromise the defendant’s due process rights.”

Those who control the county purse strings respectfully dissent. They insist they can find the money to give McKnight a fair trial, even if they have to defer equipment upgrades, freeze staff salaries or skimp on office supplies.

“This is the first death penalty case anyone here can remember, and it does put a hardship on the county, but we can get by,” said Michael Bledsoe, who presides over the Board of Commissioners. “I’ve said it dozens of times: Vinton County is a can-do county.”

As he points out, even though the county is poor, residents did vote a few years back to tax themselves--an average of $75 per year per household--to build a red-brick high school. There’s no money for a fire department, so two dozen men put themselves on call around the clock as volunteers--and raise enough money through Monday night bingo games for equipment.

“We’re a small county, but we’re a proud county,” said Larry Clary, who has served as county treasurer for 25 years. “We’ll come up with what we need to pay for this case. We’ll do what we have to do.”