The same gruesome murder, with the same sympathetic victims, would tempt the government to cut the same corners. The problem of inadequate representation is also particularly acute in, but hardly special to, capital cases. A weak lawyer can always damage a defense by failing to investigate facts surrounding the alleged crime. In a capital case, a weak lawyer can also damage his client by failing to collect evidence that might convince the sentencer, after reaching a guilty verdict, not to impose death. The extra work required to defend a capital case effectively means that taking on these cases is even more of a financial hardship for a conscientious lawyer - who will earn considerably less money defending indigent defendants than engaged in almost any other line of legal work.
Low rates deter many skilled lawyers from taking non-capital cases, too.
Funding for independent factual investigation is often non-existent. Only a little. As the study points out, the total cost of each capital case may be as much as five times the total cost of life imprisonment. But capital cases are only a small fraction of total felonies. For example, during the period of the study, nationwide there were 6,000 death sentences, but a staggering number of homicides - about 500,000.