Effective January 17, 2025, United States Attorney General Garland denied Arizona's application for certification that it was compliant with the requirements for the expedited federal habeas corpus procedures in Chapter 154 of title 28 of the United States Code. Click here to view the notice of the denial.
One of the requirements of Chapter 154 is that a State has "established a mechanism for the appointment, compensation, and payment of reasonable litigation expenses of competent counsel in State postconviction proceedings brought by indigent prisoners who have been sentenced to death." 28 U.S.C. 2265(a). After having reviewed Arizona’s submissions pursuant to the governing statute and regulations, Attorney General Garland "determine[d] that the record does not demonstrate that [Arizona's] postconviction capital counsel mechanism adequately provides for the compensation of counsel." Arizona had "declined to address public comments questioning the sufficiency of its $100 maximum hourly rate for capital counsel, nor did it respond to any of the Department’s requests for information on that issue." Although then-Attorney General Barr concluded in 2020 that Arizona’s compensation mechanism satisfied the “otherwise reasonably designed” criterion of 28 CFR 26.22(c)(2), "intervening developments have unsettled the basis on which he reached that determination."
Based on the recent rates of inflation, Arizona’s $100 maximum hourly rate has lost approximately 20 percent of its purchasing power since then-Attorney General Barr’s assessment, see U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI Inflation Calculator,
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm (last visited Jan. 12, 2025) (“Inflation Calculator”), and would likely continue to diminish in value over the 5-year certification period, 28 CFR 26.23(e).