Bio- Dale A. Baich
Dale Baich spent 22 years as the head of the Capital Habeas Unit in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Arizona. During that tenure, the teams he supervised and represented nearly one hundred people condemned to death from around the country, sometimes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And since 2007, he led the extensive federal litigation that established and continually revised execution protocols in Arizona and other states. At question: the nature and origin of the drugs used, the qualifications of the executioners, the medical procedures employed, and what the media and other witnesses can see during the execution. This became more and more crucial after botched executions in Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma. He fought for transparency and public education along the way, becoming a source of death penalty information for countless local and national journalists. Dale has taught a course on the “Death Penalty” at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU since 2004.
A native of Cleveland, Dale started his career as an assistant state public defender in Ohio. There, he led efforts to obtain evidence and information withheld by the state in death penalty trials through the state public records act and the federal Freedom of information Act. He challenged the clemency process in Ohio death penalty cases to make the process fairer. He moved to Arizona and joined the Federal Defender in 1996 and was appointed to head the Capital Habeas Unit in 2000. Through his work at the Federal Defender, Dale became a watchdog over the execution process, repeatedly pointing out violations of protocols. He exposed a doctor/executioner in 2008 who had been banned from performing executions by a federal judge in Missouri and yet still was hired to administer one in Arizona. Twice he helped reveal that the Arizona Department of Corrections had sidestepped FDA, DEA, and U.S. Customs regulations to illegally import execution drugs from overseas: from the United Kingdom in 2010 and India in 2015. Dale also headed a team that challenged the Oklahoma execution protocol in light of the problematic execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014. That litigation culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Glossip v. Gross. As a result, executions in Oklahoma were put on hold from 2015 until 2021.
Dale witnessed the executions of 15 of his clients, including one by electrocution. He was present at the 2014 execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona; it took nearly two hours because of an experimental drug cocktail used by the state, against the advice of experts. An hour into the execution, Dale sent an attorney to contact a federal judge to try to stop the execution. Mr. Wood died. But because of the failed procedure, the state put a moratorium on executions, and the ensuing litigation made new changes to the protocol to improve transparency and prevent further disasters.
Dale retired in early 2022. That year, Arizona resumed executions. And the state carried out three executions that encountered the same problems as in 2010 through 2014; the inability to set a February 1, 2023 - 3 - peripheral IV lines. This, and the exorbitant costs of obtaining the drug used for execution, suggest that more fixes and transparency are needed before executions may move forward.
Dale has been interviewed extensively by local and national media. He has appeared on 60 Minutes; the CNN series “Death Row Stories”;“ The Beat with Ari Melber”; “The Rachel Maddow Show”; “Hannity” and other programs. He has been a frequent source for journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Arizona Republic, and The Associated Press. In 2018, Dale was profiled in the ABC Docu-series “The Last Defense” produced by Viola Davis and Julius Tennon.
Dale has served on the boards of the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, where he was Board President for three terms. He currently serves on the Capital Defense Review Committee established by the Maricopa County Superior Court to review qualifications of lawyers seeking appointment to death penalty cases. In 2022, Dale received the Arizona Public Defender Association’s Gideon Award for his career-long commitment to ensuring the protection of Constitutional Rights. In 2018, he was recognized by the American Jewish Committee Arizona and received the prestigious Judge Learned Hand Public Service Award. Death Penalty Focus acknowledged Dale’s work on death penalty issues with its Abolition Award in 2015. That same year he also was awarded the President’s Commendation for Outstanding Service to Criminal Justice by the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice. He lives in Phoenix
On March 4, 2023 I sat down with Dale Baich at his home in Phoenix, Arizona to learn more details about his experiences serving as a witness to the executions of 15 condemned men. He has witnessed the executions of 15 condemned men over the years of his work as a federal public defender. In 1996, Mr. Baich had his first experience as a witness, when he witnessed the electrocution of John Joubert in Nebraska. The execution of Joubert was the only electrocution that Baich has witnessed. Another 14 years passed before Dale Baich would witness another execution. All of the remaining 14 executions that Mr. Baich has witnessed were carried out through the mode of lethal injection. In 2010, Mr. Baich witnessed the execution of two men, including one on Ohio's death row, named Michael Beuke. Mr. Baich witnessed two more executions in 2011. He witnessed the highest number of executions during a year's time in 2012, when he witnessed five executions. He witnessed another two executions in 2013, one in 2014, one in 2018 and one in 2020. Most of these 15 total executions that Mr. Baich witnessed took place in Arizona, though he also witnessed one in Nebraska, one in Ohio, one in Texas, and the last execution that he witnessed (August 2020) was the federal execution of Keith Nelson in Terre Haute, Indiana. While each of these executions came with their own unique set of issues and challenges, they each carried the potential to evoke traumatic responses among those bearing witness at these executions. As Mr. Baich detailed his recollections of each of the executions that he witnessed, the execution that came across as the one that seemed to be the most traumatizing for those in attendance took place in 2014 with the execution of Joseph Wood. Mr. Wood's execution grabbed the attention of the nation because it was severely botched, given that it took nearly two hours for the lethal drugs administered to kill him. The MSNBC article and video link above focuses on the botched execution of Joseph Wood, including an embedded video of Dale Baich's reaction to witnessing Wood's execution, which he deems a "failed social experiment."
Click on the links below to learn more about Dale Baich, containing just a sampling of the death penalty cases that he has litigated over the years, the executions he has witnessed, and the expertise that he possesses as a capital defense attorney.
Ariz. attorney Dale Baich fights for right to humane death
Botched Executions: Infamous Examples of Trouble on Death Row
PFIZER’S DEATH PENALTY BAN HIGHLIGHTS THE BLACK MARKET IN EXECUTION DRUGS