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InCASE Newsletter
August 7, 2009
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Editorial
High Cost of Death
Row
September 27, 2009
To the many
excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter
murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an
economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.
Times Topics:
Capital Punishment It is far from a national trend, but some legislators have
begun to have second thoughts about the high cost of death row. Others would do
well to consider evidence gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center, a
research organization that opposes capital punishment.
States waste
millions of dollars on winning death penalty verdicts, which require an
expensive second trial, new witnesses and long jury selections. Death rows
require extra security and maintenance costs.
There is also a
15-to-20-year appeals process, but simply getting rid of it would be
undemocratic and would increase the number of innocent people put to death.
Besides, the majority of costs are in the pretrial and trial.
According to the
organization, keeping inmates on death row in Florida costs taxpayers $51 million a year
more than holding them for life without parole. North Carolina has put 43 people to death
since 1976 at $2.16 million per execution. The eventual cost to taxpayers in Maryland for pursuing
capital cases between 1978 and 1999 is estimated to be $186 million for five
executions.
Perhaps the most
extreme example is California,
whose death row costs taxpayers $114 million a year beyond the cost of
imprisoning convicts for life. The state has executed 13 people since 1976 for a
total of about $250 million per execution. This is a state whose prisons are
filled to bursting (unconstitutionally so, the courts say) and whose government
has imposed doomsday-level cuts to social services, health care, schools and
parks.
Money spent on
death rows could be spent on police officers, courts, public defenders, legal
service agencies and prison cells. Some lawmakers, heeding law-enforcement
officials who have declared capital punishment a low priority, have introduced
bills to abolish it.
A Republican state
senator in Kansas,
Carolyn McGinn, pointed out that her state, which restored the death penalty in
1994, had not executed anybody in more than 40 years. In February, she
introduced a bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole. The
bill gained considerable attention but stalled. Similar arguments were made,
unsuccessfully, in states such as New Hampshire
and Maryland.
Colorado
considered a bill to end capital punishment and spend the money saved on solving
cold cases. But this year, only New
Mexico went all the way, abolishing executions in March.
If lawmakers
cannot find the moral courage to abolish the death penalty, perhaps the economic
case will persuade them to follow the lead of New Mexico.
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