What Is the Financial Cost of a State Execution?
Question by sporritt: What is the financial cost of a state execution?
What is the total cost of processing a state execution, including legal fees, prison costs, medical costs, doctors bills, equiptment etc….
How does this compare with the cost of keeping someone imprisoned for life?
Best answer:
Answer by Susan S
Significantly more than life in prison. The legal costs account for most of the increased cost. Here are some examples-
In New York State, it costs an average of 35,000 per year to incarcerate someone. New York State spent over 200,000,000 in 12 years for a death penalty system that sentenced 7 men to death. Four of these men had their first appeal and the others had not had any. (Hearings in the NY State Assembly, winter 2004-2005)
The numbers are striking in other states as well- California spends an average of 250,000,000 per execution. (A study done by the Sacramento Bee argued that California would save $ 90 million per year if it were to abolish the death penalty.)
The average cost of a capital trial in Texas is $ 2.3 million–three times the cost to incarcerate an individual for 40 years.
Check the website of the Death Penalty Information Center for other states.
Why does the death penalty cost so much more?
The work of a juror is much more complicated. They need to know about aggravating and mitigating circumstances. It is much harder to selct a jury.
Defendants must have a a 2 stage trial, –one to decide between guilt and innocence and if guilty a second trial to determine the sentence.
Death penalty trials take much longer.
Many more motions (up to 4 times more) each of which must be answered.
A need for more witnesses, including more expert witnesses and more investigators, more lawyers on both sides, automatic appeals.
The cost of the actual execution (that is the dollar cost) is a very small part of the financial picture. The cost to participants in the execution is another thing entirely.
Answer by eyegub
The High Cost of the Death Penalty
The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. This process is needed in order to ensure that innnocent men and woman are not executed for crimes they did not commit, and even with these protections the risk of executing an innocent person can not be completely eliminated.
If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole*, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an irreversible mistake, the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live. The millions of dollars in savings could be spent on: education, roads, police officers and public safety programs, after-school programs, drug and alcohol treatment, child abuse prevention programs, mental health services, and services for crime victims and their families.
*More than 3500 men and woman have received this sentence in California since 1978 and NOT ONE has been released, except those few individuals who were able to prove their innocence.
2005 Los Angeles Times Study Finds California Spends $ 250 Million per Execution
Key Points
The California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $ 114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. (This figure does not take into account additional court costs for post-conviction hearings in state and federal courts, estimated to exceed several million dollars.)
With 11 executions spread over 27 years, on a per execution basis, California and federal taxpayers have paid more than $ 250 million for each execution.
It costs approximately $ 90,000 more a year to house an inmate on death row, than in the general prison population or $ 57.5 million annually.
The Attorney General devotes about 15% of his budget, or $ 11 million annually to death penalty cases.
The California Supreme Court spends $ 11.8 million on appointed counsel for death row inmates.
The Office of the State Public Defender and the Habeas Corpus Resource Center spend a total of $ 22.3 million on defense for indigent defendants facing death.
The federal court system spends approximately $ 12 million on defending death row inmates in federal court.
No figures were given for the amount spent by the offices of County District Attorneys on the prosecution of capital cases, however these expenses are presumed to be in the tens of millions of dollars each year.
Source:
Tempest, Rone, “Death Row Often Means a Long Life”, Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005
Get your life back – California Drug Treatment Center Testimonial — Meet Shay. Upon entering Forterus, Shay didn’t know who she was. Today, Shay has discovered more about herself and her self-identity than she ever thought po…