Jury may be first to decide death penalty

BOISE — Attorneys this week will begin selecting the first Idaho jury that could determine a man should be sentenced to death if found guilty of murder.

The Ada County trial of Azad Abdullah is being watched by prosecutors in other counties to see how jurors react to the responsibility of determining not only guilt or innocence, but also life or death.

More than 150 prospective jurors are being interviewed for the Abdullah case. If those selected to hear the case convict him, they will then be sequestered while they hear more evidence and decide if he should be executed.

The cost of capital cases has always been a major factor for small rural counties in Idaho, but now that is being combined with the uncertainty of a jury’s response to deciding if the death penalty is appropriate — a decision that up to now has been left with Idaho judges.

“These cases are going to cost a lot of money,” Elmore County Prosecutor Aaron Bazzoli said, “and justice should never be a cost-benefit analysis. But you really have to determine if there is a substantial likelihood the jury will convict at the first degree and then the aggravating factors needed for the death penalty.”

“For smaller counties like us, we really have to pick and choose the cases we want to pursue,” Bazzoli said.

Abdullah, 27, is charged with strangling his wife and then setting the house on fire on Oct. 5, 2002, to cover up the crime. The children escaped from the house unharmed, including a 3-week-old infant rescued by a neighbor who kicked in a door.

Ada County Prosecutor Greg Bower is confident the case justifies execution if Abdullah is convicted.

“We have excellent support from our county commission,” Bower said. “That puts us in position to do the right thing. We understand how much this costs local government. It’s important to the community.”

Idaho juries were given the decision over whether the death penalty was warranted last year after the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Idaho’s system of letting the judge alone make that decision.

It came at a time when death sentences seemed to be on the decline.

Richard Dieter of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said juries and judges handed down 279 death penalties in 1999 and only 139 last year.

In Idaho, judges issued twice as many death sentences in the decade before the state created the life-without-parole sentence in 1977 as they did in the decade after. One condemned man, Charles Irvin Fain, was freed from death row after DNA evidence showed he was not the murderer of a 9-year-old Nampa girl.

“Juries are getting more skeptical,” Dieter said. “Certainly, this has to be part of the calculation when prosecutors are considering the death penalty. Juries have heard about innocent people being convicted, the high cost of death penalty cases and the option of giving a life sentence without parole.”