However, capital-case trial funding hasn't been needed since 1996, when Ron Lafferty had a retrial for the murder of his sister-in-law Brenda Wright Lafferty, 24, and her daughter, Erica Lafferty, 15 months, in their American Fork apartment.

IIn 1996, the Deseret News reported that the costs associated with Lafferty's second trial, including court costs, jury fees and investigative fees ,was nearly $400,000 — a cost absorbed by the county and eventually passed on to taxpayers.

And now, 12 years later, Lafferty is still on death row winding his way through the appeals process.

Lafferty and the eight other men on Utah's death row have been there an average of 17.89 years.

"The message to come from that is (that) appellate courts take a very close look at death penalty sentences," Means said. "The last two cases to have gone to trial — which, by the way, was before our office existed — required retrials. It's gotta be done correctly the first time."

Douglas Stewart Carter, another death-row inmate, has been through several appeal-based hearings in 4th District Court after being convicted in 1985 of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of a Provo police chief.

Utah has only executed six people. The last was Joseph Parsons in October 1999 at a cost of $45,000, according to information from the Department of Corrections.

Parsons was sentenced in February 1988 for fatally stabbing a man who had picked him up as a hitchhiker, then stealing his car and dumping his body in a trash bin.

After a federal appeal petition was denied, he chose not to pursue an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Had Parsons pursued it, he would most likely be in the same place as Lafferty and Carter.

All attorneys agree the appellate process after a conviction is necessary, but many believe it's become too long and ponderous, exorbitantly expensive and emotionally draining to victims hoping for closure.

"The only closure in a criminal context has got to come from within one's self," Hart said. "As long as a victim's family hangs on to the hope of execution, their lives are going to be in turmoil while this execution is pending."

Buhman said when they file an aggravated murder case, they talk with the victims' families about the potential of a lengthy process.

"We think about that a lot," Buhman said. "They want closure ... and there is an issue with capital cases under the current scheme, they're very hard to get closure. So it's definitely a factor."

Gary Olesen has been waiting 23 years to see justice for his mother, Eva. He's attended numerous hearings for Carter, only to be told there are new filings or more delays.

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous the way it's going," Olesen told the Deseret News. "My mother hasn't had any appeals at all. Carter's been through how many now? I don't know how many. He's had his time, his day in court. It's time to end."

Olesen knows that punishing Carter won't bring his mother back or ease the pain he feels when he thinks about her brutal murder, but he said he stands behind the death penalty.

"The way he killed my mother he deserves it," he said. "I don't like to see people dead, that's not what I'm trying to get at, but if anybody deserves it, he does."

---

E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com