Death penalty latest battlefront in Maricopa County attorney race

PHOENIX -- Tim Nelson's defense of a death row inmate in 1998 provides the foundation for the latest charge against him from the camp of Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, who is running to protect his seat from Nelson's challenge. 

"He has hidden this from the voters and the media," said Thomas at a press conference from the headquarters of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) on Monday. "Not to have acknowledged that he is against the death penalty," said Thomas, is a "violation" of public trust.

Nelson denies he is an opponent of the death penalty. 

The case in question involved Jose Ceja, a man who had been convicted and sentenced to die for the double murder of a Phoenix couple. When Ceja tried to get his sentence commuted from death to life imprisonment, the court assigned the law firm Brown & Bain to Ceja's defense. Nelson, at that time an associate with the firm, took the case.

According to Joshua Kilroy, Nelson's campaign manager, Nelson is "trying hard to remember how all of this happened," but that Nelson's involvement was limited to writing the closing argument in the case, and that he jumped on the assignment because there was a "ticking clock" involved.

Thomas's charge, though, stems not from Nelson's role in the case, but from how he performed it. 

"[Nelson's] criticism was quite extreme and hostile to the death penalty," said Thomas. He pointed to Nelson's argument that carrying out the sentence after 23 years of confinement was of a  "cruel and unusual nature," as was the use of the lethal injection protocol.

For Thomas, Nelson's opposition to lethal injection in the argument as a "cruel and unusual" punishment flies in the face of the public will, and shows he is opposed to the practice altogether.

Nelson's argument also claimed that Ceja had "definitively demonstrated his non-violent character by living without incident and even - as much as is possible on death row - honorably and with dignity." That led Thomas to his harshest attack.

"He vouched for [Ceja]," said Thomas. "That was a misrepresentation to the court." Thomas included a disciplinary report with the court documents in question, which showed Ceja had been found guilty of 18 infractions while on death row, mainly for disobeying orders, throwing objects, refusing to work and narcotics possession.

Kilroy said it was more complicated than Thomas was trying to make it out to be. Ceja had been saddled with a "very poor lawyer" at his first trial, said Kilroy, and the judge who'd initially sentenced Ceja, A. Melvin McDonald, thought executing him 23 years later was "too harsh a punishment."

Kilroy was adamant, though, that Nelson supports the death penalty.

"He supports the death penalty, and he supports it by all constitutionally approved methods," said Kilroy. "Occasionally disputes about methods arise, but lethal injection is currently on the menu, and Tim supports it."

Thomas, on the other hand, is too eager to seek the death penalty, Kilroy said, given the amount of time and money death penalty cases almost always involve.

While he couldn't name a pending or decided death penalty case in which Nelson would have opted to seek a life sentence instead, Kilroy said that was beside the point. 

"Arizona has executed two prisoners in the last 19 years," said Kilroy. "It just doesn't happen that often. From the point of view of a prosecutor, deciding to devote such a huge amount of resources to this set of cases, Tim's concern is it might end up compromising public safety."