sentences:  But long-term incarceration is rarely a county responsibility, execution of capital punishment is never a county responsibility, and the state's responses to prisoners' appeals are the responsibility of the state attorney general, who has to defend before the state appellate courts the prosecutions conducted by locally elected district attorneys in the name of the state.Furthermore, county-level trial court judges are officers of the judicial branch of the state government rather than county governments.In many states, the county controls all unincorporated lands within its boundaries.