Topeka ? A state fund that helps pay the cost of defending clients in capital murder cases is nearly out of money, mostly because of the record costs of defending murderers John E. Robinson Sr. and Reginald and Jonathan Carr.

So far, Kansas taxpayers have spent a record $771,240 defending Robinson, who was convicted in October in Johnson County of two counts of capital murder and one count of first-degree murder. He is to be sentenced Jan. 21.

Also this year, the Kansas Board of Indigents’ Defense Services spent $569,862 defending Reginald Carr in five murders in Wichita, and $566,111 defending his brother Jonathan Carr in the same case. The two were sentenced to die Nov. 15.

Patricia Scalia, executive director of the board, said Thursday that the three cases depleted the fund the board had for defending death-penalty cases during this fiscal year, which ends June 30. On Thursday, the board asked for an emergency allocation of $600,000 from the state budget office, she said.

“We have a stack of bills we cannot pay,” she said.

The board is advising attorneys and experts in its death-penalty cases that it will be out of money in December.

The bulk of the money spent defending Robinson, $462,688, paid for attorney fees, Scalia said, with experts getting $170,179.

Johnson County Dist. Atty. Paul Morrison, meanwhile, estimated his office’s costs at $18,000 to $23,000, with most of the money going toward airline tickets and hotels for witnesses.

The state was involved in eight death penalty cases this year, including those of Robinson and the Carr brothers. The board has spent about twice as much money as usual this year defending death penalty cases, Scalia said.

The defense services board provides legal defenses for all indigents in Kansas who are accused of felonies. It requested $16.7 million for the current fiscal year. Of that, $1.9 million was to go to capital cases, Scalia said.

Because of state budget cutbacks, she said, the board has received about $1.3 million for capital cases. Besides the $600,000 requested Thursday, she said, the board also asked for the $550,000 it hasn’t received from its original request.

The costs to take a death-penalty case to completion can run much higher than those incurred so far in the Kansas cases. In Texas, for example, it was estimated in 1992 that a death-penalty case cost an average of $2.3 million to complete.

Nationally, it takes 10 to 12 years for a capital defendant to exhaust all legal appeals, Scalia said.