Robert B. Evnen, JD Biography

"Much of the cost, indeed, much of the criticism of the death penalty, is attributed to ‘decades of appeals.’ It is unsurprising that the loudest complaints about death penalty delays come from death penalty opponents who have created them...

Claimed 'cost studies,' often performed by or at the behest of death penalty opponents, are frequently so incomplete as to be false and misleading. For example, they don’t take into account the increase in the cost of life without parole cases if there were no death penalty. Criminal defendants who are facing the death penalty — which today must be pleaded by prosecutors up front — often want to make a deal by pleading guilty to first degree murder in exchange for a sentencing recommendation of life without parole. The existence of the death penalty as a possible sentence leads to guilty pleas that save the money spent on trials and limit the opportunity for appeals."