Maricopa County declined to hire candidate Gina Godbehere years ago due to her defense of a violent murderer that terrorized the Valley in the early 90s.
Just before she graduated law school, Godbehere worked for the better part of a year on a legal defense team to reduce the charges and sentencing for Damon Kerl, who murdered three and committed a whole host of other violent crimes by the young age of 17.
Godbehere would claim over the years that she was only a law clerk in the Kerl case, but she was much more involved: a reality that led county prosecutors to reject Godbehere’s application to work for them nearly three decades ago.
Godbehere worked as a mitigation specialist on Kerl’s case from 1994 to 1997 through the Capital Defense Project. Mitigation specialists are critical in cases like Kerl’s: they build a close relationship with the client in order to extract any additional or potentially sensitive information that could assist the client. In Kerl’s case, the goal was to secure a reduced sentence.
It was her work on the Kerl case that gave the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office pause when Godbehere sought a job with them not long after in 1995. All three interviewers flagged Godbehere’s work on the Kerl case, with the second interviewer writing, “Concern with her work on the Kerl case.”
The attorney’s office then rejected Godbehere solely due to her work on the Kerl case.
“While your credentials are excellent, we are not able to offer you a position at this time,” read the rejection letter. “Prior to any offer of employment by our office, we would need to resolve the conflict created by your work on State v. Kerl.”
The import of Godbehere’s defense of Kerl would come to mind later on in her career, when she offered an unsolicited plea deal to a criminal in 2009, Quan Chaney (Laquanza Young) who would later attempt to murder multiple police officers in Scottsdale. Prior to Godbehere’s intervention in Chaney’s case, he was headed to trial on three felony counts.
In April 1993 at just 17 years old, Kerl murdered three in a killing spree during armed robberies: 26-year-old Carlos Bustamante-Grijalva, 27-year-old Stephen Simpson, and 20-year-old Patrick Hill. Even while awaiting trial, Kerl exhibited violence and had no modicum of remorse. Reports show that he repeatedly threatened to murder more, assaulted at least two detention officers, and hid a strangling device in his cell.
According to a 1994 feature in the Arizona Republic, Kerl was well known to law enforcement before the two murders. Kerl had been a frequent offender as a minor, with repeat juvenile court engagements for “increasingly serious crimes” and time spent at Adobe Mountain School, a corrections facility reserved for the most delinquent, violent, and mentally ill minors.
Kerl’s earliest crimes included multiple bouts of theft and burglary, unlawful firearm possession, participating in a drive-by shooting at a family home containing a mother and six children, assaulting his mother and vandalizing her car, and aggravated assault on two youths he threatened with a shotgun.
Kerl has an active criminal appeal against the state. The current Maricopa County Attorney, Rachel Mitchell, is opposed to the appeal.
