One possibility might be the high cost of prosecuting 2 perps for death penalty offenses. Dallas County is a small, somewhat rural county. There are a lot of extra expenses involved in prosecuting BP cases, not the least of which is appointing DP qualified defense attorneys, usually at taxpayer expense.
Pike County, Ohio recently went through this with the 4 Wagner family members who killed 8 members of the Rhoden family. The cost of doing pretrial, trial, etc. expenses for 4 people was estimated to be well over a million dollars. The Ohio governor and General Assembly had to put funding into the state budget to help the county cover some of the costs.
Just guessing. Maybe prosecuting attorney Barker is also balking at those costs. At some point, the state AG's office should get involved, as these are state crimes. Missouri's AG, Eric Schmitt, needs to be involved and offering assistance to local prosecutors, especially in a high profile case like this. JMO
Right now Missouri's AG seems more interested in other matters, like mask mandates. It doesn't appear he has any experience in the criminal justice system, law enforcement or even court room experience. Let's hope he's on a learning curve and will show some leadership on this.
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