On June 6, 1986, Graham Saunders Henry and an accomplice kidnapped an elderly disabled man and killed him in a remote desert area north of Kingman. After his capture, Henry went on trial for the murder, and on March 16, 1988, he was sentenced to death.

More than 20 years later, his case continues to grind its way through the system, with new proceedings scheduled in federal court later this month.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” said Jace Zack, assistant county attorney for Mohave County. “None of the county’s death penalty cases are anywhere close to finalization.”

Eight prisoners from Mohave County currently sit on death row in the state prison at Florence, where 86 men and one woman have been executed since 1910.

Yet whether they will ever receive the ultimate sanction—or will instead remain trapped in a Kafkaesque legal limbo of appeals, rule changes and reversals, with death always just beyond the horizon—is questionable.

A recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of lethal injection appeared to clear the way for the execution of Jeffrey Landrigan, who was convicted of a brutal murder in Phoenix two decades ago. It would be Arizona’s first execution since the execution of Robert Comer by lethal injection in 2007.

Comer’s execution was itself Arizona’s first in more than seven years.

Yet one must travel even further back—into Arizona’s Wild West past—to find the last recorded execution of a Mohave County prisoner.

That execution, which took place in 1928.at the state penitentiary in Florence, was likely a gruesome sight—a rare quadruple hanging. The executed were four Chinese immigrants convicted of the murder of a fellow immigrant in Kingman, in 1926. The immigrants—allegedly assassins tied to China’s feared Tong gang—burst into Tom King’s restaurant in Kingman, shot him dead, and were apprehended by authorities in Topock.

Fast-forward more than eighty years, and not a single Mohave County prisoner has since shared their fate.

It is not from lack of trying. Beginning with Henry’s conviction and death sentence in 1988, seven other Mohave County prisoners have joined him on death row. Yet proceedings on all eight continue, with no apparent end in sight.

“The worst effect is on the victims, who have to wait to see justice meted out,” said Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith. “There is a great deal of frustration.”

Zack laid the blame on capital defense lawyers. “New procedure laws were supposed to streamline the death penalty,” he said. “However, defense attorneys are working overtime figuring out how to thwart justice in many cases.”

Jim Belanger, president of Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and a capital defender himself, said the state and counties had no one to blame but themselves for the slow pace of executions. “In Arizona, you have a reversal rate and an error rate approaching 60 percent,” he said. “If you’re going to have a death penalty, you’ve got to have an adequately funded and competent defense.”

Death penalty opponents point to those on Arizona’s death row who have ultimately been proven innocent as proof of major flaws in the administration of capital punishment in the state.

At least six death row inmates have been exonerated and released in Arizona since 1976. Most recently, in 2002 Ray Krone, a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier with no prior criminal record, was released from prison after having previously been sentenced to death. After two convictions and 10 years imprisonment, DNA evidence clearly pointed to another killer, who was already in custody.

Arizona continues to wrestle with the cost of properly funding capital defenders.

“In a lot of the counties—Mohave County among them—the resources devoted to the defense of capital cases was historically inadequate,” said Belanger. “Arizona has generally not met its obligation to adequately fund capital defenses.”

Smith, however, said that his office mitigates the expense of capital defense—which must be largely borne by county governments—by only seeking the death penalty against the most heinous offenders. “It minimizes the cost to the county by seeking the death penalty in an appropriate case,” Smith said. “Not every first-degree murder case is a death penalty case.”

One estimate pegs the cost of simply defending a capital case at $250,000, but over the long life of some cases costs can spiral up into the millions of dollars.

The Graham Henry case, while now handled by the Arizona Attorney General’s office, is still costing Mohave County money, 20 years after conviction and sentencing. “It still requires some of our resources,” said Zack. “These things take years.”