Originally posted by speedracer:
I find this hard to believe.
Could you point me to figures indicating how much it costs to execute someone, and how much it costs to keep someone locked away for 20-50 years? It didn't seem to cost Dr. Jack Kevorkian a whole lot to administer lethal injections to his patients.
This is taken from the ACLU's website.
It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment."56 A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs ? including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs ? are mostly borne by the taxpayer. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison.57
In Maryland, a comparison of capital trial costs with and without the death penalty for the years 1979-1984 concluded that a death penalty case costs "approximately 42 percent more than a case resulting in a non-death sentence."58 In 1988 and 1989 the Kansas legislature voted against reinstating the death penalty after it was informed that reintroduction would involve a first-year cost of "more than $11 million."59 Florida, with one of the nation's most populous death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence."60
A 1993 study of the costs of North Carolina's capital punishment system revealed that litigating a murder case from start to finish adds an extra $163,000 to what it would cost the state to keep the convicted offender in prison for 20 years. The extra cost goes up to $216,000 per case when all first-degree murder trials and their appeals are considered, many of which do not end with a death sentence and an execution.61
From one end of the country to the other public officials decry the additional cost of capital cases even when they support the death penalty system. "Wherever the death penalty is in place, it siphons off resources which could be going to the front line in the war against crime?. Politicians could address this crisis, but, for the most part they either endorse executions or remain silent."62 The only way to make the death penalty more "cost effective" than imprisonment is to weaken due process and curtail appellate review, which are the defendant's (and society's) only protection against the most aberrant miscarriages of justice. Any savings in dollars would, of course, be at the cost of justice: In nearly half of the death-penalty cases given review under federal habeas corpus provisions, the murder conviction or death sentence was overturned.63
In 1996, in response to public clamor for accelerating executions, Congress imposed severe restrictions on access to federal habeas corpus64 and also ended all funding of the regional death penalty "resource centers" charged with providing counsel on appeal in the federal courts.65 These restrictions virtually guarantee that the number and variety of wrongful murder convictions and death sentences will increase. The savings in time and money will prove to be illusory.
References
56. Spangenberg and Walsh, in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (1989), p. 47.
57. N.Y. State Defenders Assn., "Capital Losses" (1982).
58. U.S. Govt. Accounting Office, Limited Data Available in Costs of Death Sentences (1989), p. 50.
59. Cited in Spangenberg and Walsh, note 56.
60. David von Drehle, "Capital Punishment in Paralysis," Miami Herald, July 10, 1988.
61. Cook and Lawson, The Costs of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina (1993), pp. 97-98.
62. Dieter, Millions Misspent: What Politicians Don't Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty (1992), p. 9.
63. Greenhouse, "Judicial Panel Urges Limits on Appeals by Death Row Inmates," The New York Times, Sept. 22, 1989.
64. See Tabak, in Seton Hall Law Review (1996); Yackel, in Buffalo Law Review (1996); Coyle, in National Law Journal (May 20 1996); and the Panel Discussion in Loyola University Chicago Law Journal (1996).
65. Carol Castenada, "Death Penalty Centers Losing Support Funds," USA Today, Oct. 24, 1995, p. 38; Coyle, in National Law Journal (Sept. 18, 1995 and Jan. 15, 1996).
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Sorry the referencing is so confusing the part I've quoted is taken from a longer article which you can find here:
http://www.aclu.org/library/case_against_death.html
