what
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Actually the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison, and this is well documented. The high costs are for the legal process and the upfront costs (pre trial and trial level) are the largest part. Here is part of a report that spells some of this out- it is from the Kansas Dept of Corrections:
“The study counted death penalty case costs through to execution and found that the median death penalty case costs $1.26 million. Non-death penalty cases were counted through to the end of incarceration and were found to have a median cost of $740,000. For death penalty cases, the pre-trial and trial level expenses were the most expensive part, 49% of the total cost. The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases. The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 for death case; $32,000 for non-death case).” (Performance Audit Report: Costs Incurred for Death Penalty Cases: A K-GOAL Audit of the Department of Corrections)
Other states report the same thing. (Links below)
It is hard to understand why the legal costs are so great. Here are a few of the contributing factors:
• 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 estimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials
Sources:
Final Report of the Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense, Washington State Bar Association, December 2006,
http://www.wsba.org/lawyers/groups/commi…
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/northcar… links to "The Costs of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina" Duke University, May 1993
The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research's Report, "Tennessee's Death Penalty: Costs and Consequences."
http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/orea/…
and, from California, the most recent report at
http://www.ccfaj.org/documents/reports/d…
