Taxpayers foot $4.3M defense bill

American taxpayers have so far paid $4.3 million to defend former Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem J. Williams against the death penalty, according to data the U.S. District Court here released Monday.

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ordered the release in response to a request from the Hono­lulu Star-Advertiser.

Nearly $2.9 million went to pay the fees and costs of Williams’ court-appointed lawyers. The rest, more than $1.4 million, went to pay for defense expert witnesses, paralegals, investigators, overhead and other miscellaneous expenses, according to the data.

Taxpayers are footing the bill for Williams’ legal defense because he could not afford it.

Williams, 34, avoided a death sentence when the jurors reported last week that they could not reach agreement on whether he should be put to death or spend the rest of his life in prison. The deadlock means that Williams will be sentenced in October to a life prison term.

The jurors had previously found him guilty of two capital murder charges, one for killing his 5-year-old daughter, Talia, here in 2005 through child abuse, and the second one for killing the girl after months of torturing her.

The $4.3 million represents only those fees and costs that the defense lawyers have submitted for reimbursement and that Seabright approved from Feb. 15, 2006, when a federal grand jury indicted Williams with the two counts of capital murder, through Friday. There will be more attorney fees and costs from now up until sentencing and more if Williams decides to appeal.

The court data also shows taxpayers paid $76,606 to select the 12 primary and six alternate jurors for the trial and another $131,911 for the jurors’ daily attendance fees, mileage and lunches on days they were in deliberation, plus for parking, taxi, hotel, subsistence and airfare for those jurors from the neighbor islands.

The Star-Advertiser asked the U.S. attorney here what it cost to prosecute Williams.

In response, 1st Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot Enoki said the office does not usually provide nonpublic information such as expenditures.

"We do not track costs in a way that we can provide an accurate figure for any given case," he said.

One of the reasons is that the prosecutors, government investigators and others involved in the case are paid their salaries whether they were working on the Williams case or others.

As with the defense, the government needs to pay its own lawyers and their costs, overhead, investigators, paralegals and other miscellaneous expenses. However, for some expenses, such as expert witnesses, the government is free to pay higher than what the court limits the defense for its experts.

The prosecutor on the case with prior death penalty trial experience is assigned to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. The government paid for his airfare, hotel, meal and ground transportation expenses whenever he needed to be in Hawaii for the trial or pretrial conferences, meetings and hearings.

Each of Williams’ two death penalty-certified lawyers from San Francisco had similar expenses. They are reimbursed $178 per hour just for their legal work.

A 2010 report to the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services shows that the median cost of defense representation in federal death penalty cases that went to trial from 1998 to 2004 was $465,602. That means half of the cases were below that cost and half of them were above.

The low was $67,366 and the high was $1,788,246.

Williams is the first person to stand trial for a death penalty offense in Hawaii since the Territorial Legislature abolished capital punishment in 1957. He was tried under federal law because the actions that led to his daughter’s death occurred at Wheeler Army Airfield.