\n<\/p>\n
What happened:<\/strong> Judge Jennifer Green, who oversees the Maricopa Superior Court\u2019s criminal department, has quietly rolled out a program to facilitate quicker resolutions to death penalty cases in Arizona\u2019s most-populous county.<\/p>\n The court has begun issuing orders for the prosecution and defense to participate in settlement conferences two years after a notice to seek the death penalty is filed, according to a statement from the court. The orders are meant to \u201cencourage\u201d settlement talks in capital cases, which often drag on for many years only to end with prosecutors reducing the charges.<\/p>\n Court officials said current and retired judges will conduct the hearings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why it\u2019s happening: <\/strong>An investigation by ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona in June found that prosecutors in the Maricopa County Attorney\u2019s Office have frequently pursued the death penalty but rarely secured death sentences.<\/p>\n In nearly 350 such cases over 20 years, just 13% ended in a death sentence. The outcomes raised questions about the office\u2019s judgment in pursuing the death penalty, said former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who called for a review of capital charging decisions after the news organizations shared their findings with him.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you allege death, the whole game changes,\u201d Romley told ProPublica and ABC15 at the time. \u201cSo many more resources go into that particular case.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Capital cases can be litigated across the terms of multiple county attorneys and cost more than a million dollars each to prosecute. In the hundreds of Maricopa County death penalty cases pursued since 2007, the cost of furnishing the accused with an adequate defense alone has totaled $289 million. That figure did not include the costs of the prosecution, which the county attorney\u2019s office said are not recorded in a way that can be tracked separately.<\/p>\n Romley applauded the court for implementing the settlement conferences. \u201cThe courts have recognized this isn\u2019t the right way to be doing this,\u201d he said, adding that the orders could speed up other aspects of the cases, such as discovery. Victims could also benefit from quicker resolution, he said. \u201cIf I was county attorney, I would be embracing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Arizona resumed executions in 2025 after a two-year pause. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in 2022 ordered a review of the state\u2019s lethal injection process, but she dismissed the retired federal magistrate judge she had appointed to conduct the analysis after he determined that lethal injection is not humane, he said.<\/p>\n There are 107 people on Arizona\u2019s death row.\u00a0<\/p>\n What people are saying: <\/strong>Rosemarie Pe\u00f1a-Lynch, <\/strong>director of public defense services for Maricopa County, said in a statement that public defenders are committed to a process that \u201coffers an opportunity to explore potential case resolutions while safeguarding the constitutional rights of our clients.\u201d<\/p>\n Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, said at a news conference in November that she is \u201cfor anything that would speed up this process.\u201d But, she added, prosecutors seek death in cases \u201cwhere we think the death penalty is warranted.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about holding settlement conferences two years into such cases, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s not typically a situation where the death penalty is dropped \u2026 on a whim of a plea agreement. It\u2019s dropped because maybe evidence changes, or, for example, witnesses die, or something like that. Whether it will help or not, I don\u2019t know, but if it does that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s next: <\/strong>Last month, Green issued an order in a death penalty case to schedule a settlement hearing within two years. Green\u2019s order, in a case against two men accused of murdering a Tempe woman, cites a criminal procedure rule mandating capital cases be resolved within 24 months of the state\u2019s notice to seek death.<\/p>\n On Dec. 3, Mitchell announced that her office would seek the death penalty against\u00a0<\/p>\n Cudjoe Young and Sencere Hayes, who were previously charged with the April 17, 2023, murder of 22-year-old Mercedes Vega. Young and Hayes have pleaded not guilty.\u00a0<\/p>\n An autopsy report showed Vega, who was still alive when she was left in a burning Chevrolet Malibu, died of blunt force injuries and had been shot in the arm. A medical examiner also found bleach in her throat, according to ABC15.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to pursue justice for Mercedes Vega and her family,\u201d Mitchell said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What happened: Judge Jennifer Green, who oversees the Maricopa Superior Court\u2019s criminal department, has quietly rolled out a program to facilitate quicker resolutions to death penalty cases in Arizona\u2019s most-populous county. The court has begun issuing orders for the prosecution and defense to participate in settlement conferences two years after a notice to seek the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3767,4324,376,17419,4749,536,247,21489,2184,2244],"class_list":{"0":"post-40337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-cases","9":"tag-county","10":"tag-death","11":"tag-maricopa","12":"tag-penalty","13":"tag-program","14":"tag-propublica","15":"tag-resolutions","16":"tag-seeks","17":"tag-speed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}