Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509180107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Keeping Robert M. May off death row cost $65,740.
At least, that's the amount his lawyers - estimating the cost of defending May on charges of killing five people during a drunken New Year's party - listed on time sheets filed earlier this month in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Because May was represented by public defenders, the calculations were submitted "for record-keeping purposes only ... and we do not expect compensation," Public Defender Ray Leven wrote in a letter to Judge Clifford Weckstein.
Even though May pleaded no contest to capital and first-degree murder in July, the cost of his weeklong sentencing hearing and earlier court appearances was much higher than the amount his public defenders documented.
When the time spent by prosecutors, the judge, bailiffs and a court clerk also is considered, the total cost is closer to $100,000. Even then, there's no way to put an exact price tag on the city's first contested capital murder case since 1987.
"You might as well ask me how much it cost to build the Dominion Tower; I have no idea," said Assistant Public Defender Roger Dalton, who, along with Leven, defended May. "Any figure you come up with in terms of the total cost is going to have to be a guess, because I don't see how you can quantify it."
Estimates for this story are based on hourly costs of the trial's principal participants and do not include other expenses, such as expert witnesses, travel, long-distance telephone calls and work done by investigators on both sides.
Yet in terms of actual cost to the taxpayers, most of the trial cost nothing.
Like Leven and Dalton, the prosecutors, judge and other court personnel involved in the case all draw state or city salaries. So they would have been paid the same this year if May had gone to sleep early the night of Dec. 31 without killing anyone.
But as Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom pointed out, "All the people involved spent more hours than they normally would, so there is a cost in terms of your ability to do other cases."
On the time sheets, Dalton estimated that he spent 511/2 hours in court on May's case and another 834 hours in out-of-court preparation. Leven had the same hours in court and 655 hours in trial preparation. Using the standard rate for court-appointed attorneys - $60 per in-court hour and $40 per out-of-court hour - Leven said an "extremely conservative" cost for their efforts would be $65,740.
Dalton's estimates had him working an average of 26 out-of-court hours a week on the case, in addition to his regular caseload, from the time May was charged, Jan. 1, to when his life sentence was pronounced, Aug. 4.
"There were an awful lot of evenings and weekends put in," he said.
The estimated time it took to prosecute May was considerably less. Branscom, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell and a third prosecutor spent about 533 total hours both in and out of court, Branscom estimated. "Each of us had a full caseload going at the same time," he said.
Using the same hourly rate that May's attorneys did, the prosecution's cost comes to $23,380.
But figures by both the defense and prosecution may be misleading, in that they are based on the statewide fee of $60 per in-court-hour that is paid to court-appointed attorneys in felony cases.
Virginia ranks near the bottom of the nation in what it pays court-appointed attorneys. The state has a limit of $575 that lawyers can be paid for representing defendants charged with felonies punishable by more than 20 years - except for capital murder, which does not have a limit and is set by the judge. The cap is $265 for all other felonies.
The hourly rate for capital murder defense work by court-appointed attorneys, which demands far more time than any other kind of case, is closer to a flat fee of $100 an hour. That was the rate David Damico said he was paid for representing a man accused of killing and robbing a Roanoke County real estate agent, and it is considered the standard rate for capital cases in Virginia.
Damico said the $100,000 estimate for the May cases sounded low. "I would guess it costs about $250,000" for a typical capital murder case, he said.
And that's just for the trial. Add the cost of more than 10 years of appealing a death sentence, and the ballpark estimate grows to between $700,000 and $800,000, said William Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor who heads the Virginia Capital Case Clearing House.
That figure, estimated at closer to $1 million in other states, does not include the costs of incarcerating and executing a death row inmate.
Based on those figures, keeping May locked up for the rest of his life might be cheaper than executing him.
The alcoholic house painter was sentenced by Weckstein to five life terms plus 28 years for killing three men and two women during a petty argument at a New Year's party. Because the shooting in an Old Southwest carriage house happened Jan. 1, when the state's no-parole laws took effect, May will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Assuming that May, 27, lives to be 72, the average life expectancy for white males, it will cost $765,000 to incarcerate him, based on the average annual cost of $17,000 per inmate in Virginia.
"As expensive as it is to lock people up," Dalton said, "it's a whole lot more expensive to try to kill them."
Keywords:
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