In May 2009, Nate Carr claimed to have worked 28 of 31 days (including each Sunday in that span) on Garcia-Saenz, including six meetings with co-counsel Johnson.
"Discussion with team about this god-awful mess," Carr wrote on an invoice that month in which he asked for and got $7,300 from the county.
Chris Gash
Nathaniel Carr III
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In September 2009, Carr billed the county $8,250 after supposedly working every day that month — including Labor Day — on the Garcia-Saenz case.
He charged two hours on September 29 for what he called "media review," noting on the invoice, "Found some new old articles, kinda an oxymoron." That would be $150 for reading brief news stories about the home-invasion killing.
Carr also billed 61 hours in the Naranjo case ($7,625), saying he had worked on it for all but four days that month. He also was paid for another alleged 159 hours of work on behalf of other murder clients, for another $14,000.
On Friday, September 17, he billed 10 hours for work on various cases, including Daniel Garcia-Saenz's ("Research-witness questions") and Israel Naranjo's ("Had to listen to confession — not good.")
What makes that date noteworthy is that the Glendale Mountain Ridge High School football team traveled to Chandler late that afternoon for a game against powerful Hamilton.
From 2006 through the end of last season, Carr served as offensive coordinator for Ridge, a time-consuming passion of his from the late summer into December. People at the county courthouse who know the onetime University of Arizona football walk-on tell New Times that coaching seems Carr's true passion.
To put in 10 hours of work that September 17 would have been a tall order for Nate Carr, who often was unavailable to clients and co-counsel on most weekday afternoons during football season — and always on game days.
"He was really into his coaching," says Taylor Fox, Carr's co-counsel in the Naranjo case. "I don't think he missed too many practices, and he never was around on Fridays if he could help it."
Pat Gitre, a Phoenix attorney who worked on Garcia-Saenz on behalf of the Mexican consulate (because of the defendant's nationality), said this when asked about the work of Carr and Johnson in that case:
"Death-penalty work is a lifestyle choice and has to be a passion. If you hop on the money train, don't give a rat's ass about the consequences, and you can get away with it, that's on you. Your client may end up dying, but what the hell."
Jim Logan tried cases as a public defender for years, earning the respect of judges and opposing prosecutors along the way.
These days, as the director of the Office of Public Defender Services, he is a bureaucrat in a rigorous job, part of which is to try to save the county money while overseeing the appointment of supposedly qualified attorneys to represent death-eligible clients.
Logan said at the onset of last week's sometimes-contentious interview with New Times that he suspected a "hit piece" against him was in the works.
"I am very aware that some guys have billed for a lot of money," Logan said shortly after the interview began, "but I have not seen what I would call overly excessive invoices under the circumstances."
He continued, "The buck does stop with me, and I take that responsibility very seriously. When I see discrepancies or I suspect that someone has been overcharging or not billing accurately, I act on it. I have docked people on the contract, more than once. I have stopped assigning people to cases, including Nate Carr — and that was four years ago — just because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time."
At first, Logan hinted at a possible "he said/he said" personality conflict between the defense attorneys in the Naranjo case. But he quickly changed his mind after learning from New Times about Nate Carr's false avowals in the November 2010 "prison interviews" billings, for which the attorney collected almost $2,000.
"That would be serious business, fraudulent," Logan said tersely.
At that point, Maricopa County spokeswoman Cari Gerchick spoke up for the first time late in the interview.
"If we determined that these allegations merit a criminal investigation, we will refer this to the County Attorney's Office," Gerchick said.
For now, Nate Carr and Steve Johnson continue to do fine, money-wise.
Maricopa County paid Carr $125,000 for the first half of this year. Still, this puts him on track for his least lucrative year since 2005, about $250,000 if the second half is about the same as the first.
Steve Johnson collected $133,000 for the first six months of this year.
Last week, when New Times contacted Taylor Fox with follow-up questions, he expressed concern about the rumors he had been hearing about his role in this story.
He said friends in the criminal-defense community have told him that Nate Carr has been trying to sell the "he said/he said" riff that Jim Logan retreated from during his interview.
The circumspect Fox concluded by saying:
"I have thought hard about this, and I'll just say it. If you would ask me if I felt that Nate and Steve's lack of real work on the Naranjo case could have affected the outcome of our client going to death row, my answer would be yes, it could have. There is something fundamentally wrong that happened here — on many levels."