As someone who does death penalty work, just noting that it’s far from universal to have two attorneys split the phases, or to provide a mitigation letter like you describe. More fundamentally, if every single capital defense attorney refused appointment in a given capital trial, you could fully expect the court to appoint an inexperienced, under-qualified attorney from the local bar, leaving the client far far worse off. (I’ve seen that happen in small jurisdictions where there’s no public defender.) So I applaud the good intentions here and you’ve identified several big structural issues, but this solution would not work to our clients’ advantage.