Does the death penalty cost less than life in prison without parole?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
The Office of Legislative Research for the Connecticut General Assembly, in its Apr. 13, 2000 study titled "Comparison of Capital Punishment Costs in Texas and Connecticut," concluded:
"There are several problems involved in trying to determine the cost of a capital case. First, there is a wide variety of costs associated with capital cases. These include costs for prosecuting and defense attorneys, interpreters, expert witnesses, court reporters, psychiatrists, secretaries, and jury consultants.
Another problem is the length and complexity of the process. Cases tend to last several years and can pass through three possible phases. The first phase includes state trial court (two trials - one to determine guilt, the other for sentence), state Supreme Court, and possible appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. The second phase is the state habeas corpus (post-conviction process) and appeals. The final phase is federal habeas corpus, which includes appeals to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and to the U.S. Supreme Court...
A third problem is the way states budget money for entities that are involved with capital cases. For example, Texas and Connecticut allocate specific sums to their judicial departments. It is difficult to separate the costs each department incurs for capital cases from those for other cases. From a data-gathering standpoint, Texas presents yet another problem. Each county (there are 254) must bear the costs of its capital cases. It is extremely difficult to get data from the counties. Dallas is the only county from which we received partial data, and we were unable to determine whether they are representative of other counties."
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), in its Sep. 29, 1989 report titled "Limited Data Available on Costs of Death Sentences," concluded:
"Federal data on the cost of implementing existing death penalty provisions are nonexistent... At the state level, cost data are limited... Few of these states have data on death penalty costs and even when available, the data were incomplete.
In recent years, studies, articles, and reports have been published on the costs associated with the death penalty at the state level. They have generally concluded that, contrary to what many people believe, death sentence cases cost more than nondeath sentence cases. However, we found these conclusions were not adequately supported. Most of the studies did not actually compare death sentence cases with nondeath sentence cases, and some of the studies did not contain actual cost data. Further, even in cases where cost data were cited, these data were incomplete...
In addition, according to studies, reports, and various state officials... Cost data on police investigations for death penalty cases at the state level are almost nonexistent... Death penalty trial cost data vary from state to state... Little data were available on imprisonment costs... Few states had execution cost data, and for those that did, the cost varied from state to state depending on what factors were included."
Frank Zimring, JD, William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, as quoted in a Mar. 6, 2005 Los Angeles Times article titled "Death Row Often Means a Long Life; California Condemns Many Murderers, But Few Are Ever Executed," stated:
"What we are paying for at such great cost is essentially our own ambivalence about capital punishment. We try to maintain the apparatus of state killing and another apparatus that almost guarantees that it won't happen. The public pays for both sides."
Does the death penalty cost less than life in prison without parole?
PRO (yes)
CON (no)
Dudley Sharp, Death Penalty Resources Director of Justice For All (JFA), in an Oct. 1, 1997 Justice for All presentation titled "Death Penalty and Sentencing Information," wrote:
"Many opponents present, as fact, that the cost of the death penalty is so expensive (at least $2 million per case?), that we must choose life without parole ('LWOP') at a cost of $1 million for 50 years. Predictably, these pronouncements may be entirely false. JFA estimates that LWOP cases will cost $1.2 million - $3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases.
There is no question that the up front costs of the death penalty are significantly higher than for equivalent LWOP cases. There also appears to be no question that, over time, equivalent LWOP cases are much more expensive... than death penalty cases. Opponents ludicrously claim that the death penalty costs, over time, 3-10 times more than LWOP."
Chris Clem, JD, Attorney at Samples, Jennings, Ray & Clem, PLLC, in a Jan. 31, 2002 statement in response to a press release about the cost of capital cases as reported by the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing, stated:
"Executions do not have to cost that much. We could hang them and re-use the rope. No cost! Or we could use firing squads and ask for volunteer firing squad members who would provide their own guns and ammunition. Again, no cost."
Edwin Sutherland, PhD, late President of the American Sociological Society, and Donald R. Cressey, PhD, late Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the 1974 revised edition of their book titled Criminology, wrote:
"[The] cost is not inherent in the [death] penalty, but imposed by judges. It is not cheaper to keep a criminal confined, because most of the time he will appeal just as much causing as many costs as a convict under death sentence. Being alive and having nothing better to do, he will spend his time in prison conceiving of ever-new habeas corpus petitions, which being unlimited, in effect cannot be rejected as res judicata. The cost is higher."
Riptide, a www.nvnews.net forum blogger in a Dec. 18, 2007 answer to "whats your stance on the death penalty?", stated:
"Firing squad... You want cheap execution? There you go. If the first shot doesn't do it, the second will. And what does a couple rifle cartridges cost? $1.00?"
[Editor's note: Despite many hours of additional research, ProCon.org was unable to find additional Pro comments suitable for this question as of Aug. 29, 2008]
Richard C. Dieter, JD, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in a Feb. 7, 2007 testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the Colorado State House of Representatives regarding "House Bill 1094 - Costs of the Death Penalty and Related Issues," stated:
"In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently, the death penalty system is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. ...the most expensive system is one that combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials followed by incarceration for life...
Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so: • More pre-trial time will be needed to prepare: cases typically take a year to come to trial more pre-trial motions will be filed and answered. • More experts will be hired. • Twice as many attorneys will be appointed for the defense, and a comparable team for the prosecution. • Jurors will have to be individually quizzed on their views about the death penalty, and they are more likely to be sequestered. • Two trials instead of one will be conducted: one for guilt and one for punishment. • The trial will be longer: a cost study at Duke University(752KB) estimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials • And then will come a series of appeals during which the inmates are held in the high security of death row."
Death Penalty Focus, an abolition of capital punishment advocacy organization, in its website section accessed Aug. 4, 2008 and titled "The High Cost of the Death Penalty," offered the following:
"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 [...] 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."
Eight members of the 23-member California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice study titled "Report and Recommendations on the Administration of the Death Penalty in California," signed a June 30, 2008 supplement indicating their personal objections to the death penalty. Those eight members were Diane Bellas, JD, Alameda County Public Defender; Rabbi Allen I. Freehling, Executive Director at the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission; Michael Hersek, JD, California State Public Defender; Bill Ong Hing, JD Professor at UC Davis School of Law; Michael P. Judge, JD, Los Angeles County Public Defender; Michael Laurence, JD, Executive Director of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center; John Moulds, JD, US Magistrate Judge of the US District Court – Eastern District of California; and Douglas Ring, Businessman Founder of The Ring Group. The supplement stated in part:
"The resources that go into a death penalty case are enormous. The pursuit of execution adds millions at each phase of the process, from trial, to appeal, and habeas proceedings. For example, a death penalty trial costs counties at least $1.1 million more than a conventional murder trial. The state spends at least an additional $117 million a year on capital punishment, about half of it on prison expenses that exceed the usual costs of housing inmates and the rest on arguing and judging death penalty appeals.
The costs mount because death penalty trials and appeals take far longer than others, involve more lawyers, investigators and expert witnesses, and displace other cases from courtrooms. In contrast, adopting a maximum penalty of life without possibility of parole (for which there is growing sentiment) would incur only a fraction of the death penalty costs, including prison expenses."
"For comparative purposes, the Commission adopted a very conservative estimate that seeking the death penalty adds $500,000 to the cost of a murder trial in California. The costs of a second defense lawyer, the background investigation for the penalty phase, and the added duration and expense of the trial for jury selection and penalty trial alone would easily add up to $500,000 in most cases. The current rate of 20 death sentences per year would require 40 death penalty trials per year, for a total added cost of $20 million...
The costs of confinement can also be estimated with some precision, based upon the Department of Corrections estimate that confinement on death row adds $90,000 per year to the cost of confinement beyond the normal cost of $34,150."
The Washington State Bar Association, adopted the Apr. 13, 2007 "Final Report of the Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense," which stated:
"It costs significantly more to try a capital case to final verdict than to try the same case as an aggravated murder case where the penalty sought is life without possibility of parole.
At the trial level, death penalty cases are estimated to generate roughly $470,000 in additional costs to the prosecution and defense over the cost of trying the same case as an aggravated murder without the death penalty and costs of $47,000 to $70,000 for court personnel. · On direct appeal, the cost of appellate defense averages $100,000 more in death penalty cases, than in non-death penalty murder cases. · Personal restraint petitions filed in death penalty cases on average cost an additional $137,000 in public defense costs.
On direct appeals and personal restraint petitions, the prosecutor spends significant attorney time responding to the issues raised by the defendant to the Washington Supreme Court. If a death penalty defendant does not succeed before the Washington State Supreme Court, additional defense costs will be incurred in a habeas corpus petition to the federal court and appeals to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Washington State Attorney General must provide attorneys to defend the death penalty sentence before the federal courts."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a 2002 presentation from its Capital Punishment Project titled "The High Costs of the Death Penalty," concluded:
"The available evidence is clear: the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. At every step in the process, a capital defendant receives greater constitutional guarantees than non-capital defendants, which costs time and resources. As a result, total costs for each capital case run into the millions of dollars.
While it is the politicians and legislators who often support the death penalty, local counties and communities must bear the financial burden of imposing a capital punishment system, often to the detriment of other health and social services.
With life imprisonment available at a much cheaper, fairer, and more humane form of punishment, the high costs of the death penalty, and their burdens on local governments, simply are not worth whatever benefits may be claimed for it."
(752KB) estimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials