Ending death penalty could save US states hundreds of millions: study

Source: Alternet



The interior of the San Quentin Prison execution chamber in California. Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released Tuesday found."
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Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/dpic-releases-new-report-costs-death-penalty-and-police-chiefs-views">a study released Tuesday found.

"It is doubtful in today's economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions," argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center and the report's author.

"Surely there are more pressing needs deserving funding," he wrote, noting that execution was rated among the least effective crime deterrents. In just one death penalty trial "the state may pay one million dollars more than for a non-death penalty trial. But only one in every three capital trials may result in a death sentence, so the true cost of that death sentence is three million dollars," the study's author said.

"Further down the road, only one in ten of the death sentences handed down may result in an execution. Hence, the cost to the state to reach that one execution is 30 million dollars," Dieter added in the report entitled "Smart on Crime."

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/95925/ending_death_penalty_could_save_us_millions%3A_study/

to end state sanctioned murder? I guess only MONEY will motivate us to take a more enlightened, compassionate path.

Only revulsion will stop the stupidity.

To feed their blood lust and Racist lower suspicions.

They will always cheer when the "Darkies' neck is stretched.




Indiana 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South.

The same people who don't have a problem spending 100's of billions of dollars to fight pointless wars, but can't spare a dime for health care. They are quick to advocate death, but when it comes to preventing suffering and death, you're on your own.

A few examples:

Jeremiah 51:6
Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD's vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.
Jeremiah 51:5-7 (in Context) Jeremiah 51 (Whole Chapter)

Romans 12:19
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.


Hebrews 10:30
For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
Hebrews 10:29-31 (in Context) Hebrews 10 (Whole Chapter)

Like the European Union, Canada, oddball places like that.

It would also remove us from the group of nations still practicing it, like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the like.
I don't know if the social and economic benefits to be gained by eliminating the death penalty in America are enough
to make up for the loss from being removed of the list with China, Saudia Arabia or Iran.

All those poor Republican caught in the middle. Think of their dilemma! Who do we want to be like more, the "towel-heads,"
or France? For a Republican, that's like being asked to choose between jumping off a 1500 foot cliff and jumping out of
a 747 flying at maximum cruising altitude......

I never could understand that dichotomy.

before birth, a human being is both helpless and innocent and therefore needs "us" to defend his or her right to live. Someone who has committed murder, however, is neither innocent nor helpless, but deserving of punishment.

As to people who are found guilty while being innocent, the view of SOME is "Oh well, mistakes happen. No system on this earth is perfect, yadda yadda."

I am pro-choice and only relaying the explanation, so please "don't kill the messenger."

But, IMO, the argument doesn't hold water because there's the whole 'life in prison with no chance of parole' or 150 year sentences. I think those are punishments worse than death. The real motivation for the death penalty is vengeance. For me, you're either pro-life or not. (Not killing the messenger, BTW)

and leads to the execution of innocent people, but it is very, very expensive.

Seems a sensible society would stop it.

And how to be distinguished as center/right nation if you didn’t kill the convicted people by all methods of execution ,(lethal injection, electrocution,"lethal gas", "firing squad",and hanging).
By the way the US is the only western country that has not outlawed the death penalty ,it seems the middle ages mentality still got influence over the country ,because they just keep execute as many people per year as they do in Iran and China!Not a good company anyway.:shrug:

..... I know a lawyer who does capital cases (pro-bono) and he told me that we are going to
be stuck with the death penalty for a long time. Any judge who says he/she is opposed to
capital punishment will almost always get beat in any election.

Most death penalty supporters like it for the entertainment value. It's a spectator sport. If you televised the executions on Pay-per-View, you could probably make a profit.

.............yet, but I didn't see anything in the piece that showed exactly where they get the figures to back this up. What is it, the appeal process, special housing that drives the cost up? I have always been against the death penalty, but this piece is puzzling in that it doesn't seem to provide backup info for the costs stated. Personally, I don't see how anyone can state that the death penalty actually causes murder rates to increase. My personal opinion is that it wouldn't make a statistical difference one way or the other. I would think that one of the biggest things to be against it would be the new evidence/innocence factor. Once a person is dead they're dead. You can't appeal dead.

I'm against the death penalty because with the flaws in our legal system, innocent people get convicted and guilty ones go free. Nonetheless, I seriously doubt that more money is burnt up over time by death penalty cases than life in prison cases plus the costs of incarceration.

Not to mention the further costs to society, both monetary and otherwise, when lifers get dumped out on the streets again, as so often seems to happen.

...............I think it was Texas, where a majority of people thought it alright that a innocent person was executed once in a while if it meant that "all" the guilty people got put to death. I thought at the time, "what a bunch of sick motherfuckers". What a fucking country, huh? I gotta move to a "sane" country.

You almost have to factor RW Texans and, often, RW Floridians, out of most discussions. Especially discussions about sanity.

j/k. Sort of.

..............40 or 50%. Hell, I'll take France, Germany, Spain...........................

I mean, if they're guilty of deliberately killing someone, then... naaah, never gonna work.

First, they inflate the cost of the death penalty by saying since every execution isn't carried out, the ones that are are multiplied by the costs of those that didn't?

Then, let's not gloss over the fact that the cost of executing an individual has to be more expensive than food, housing and medical care for the remainder of that persons life. Sorry, those two costs aren't equal and the expensive one isn't execution.

The reason for that is because $1 million more is spent on a death penalty trial rather than a non-death penalty trial and since 1/3 DP trials result in someone actually getting the DP that is to say $3 million on that alone is spent to put someone on death row.

People here doubt the numbers but I doubt they read the 28 page study. I haven't either except for page 14 but I won't pass judgment on an entire study without reading it in it's entirety.

And it cites one study done in one state. The study doesn't do it's own research on this. The problem is how many trials *don't* cost one million more? What is the average cost? These data points are needed to make this conclusion and the study doesn't research or answer them. It's doubtful that the costs of the death penalty trials are that expensive in every state and those trials that aren't as expensive are going to draw that number down considerably. It's not going to be cheaper to allow the person to live in a box for the rest of their life.

.............all the poor people that have a PD for a lawyer. Those trials are quick and more than likely don't cost the state all that much, kind of like an assembly line if you will. I commend ANYONE trying to oppose the death penalty, but if you use flawed statistics you will only give the RW ammo to make you look stupid and more importantly make it harder to end it.

a criminal for life. However, I won't use bad logic or data to argue against it. I'd rather use the argument that innocent people are definitely executed and saving even a few innocent lives with the chance of discovering that they are innocent and setting them free is far more valuable than the cost of housing the truly guilty ones for life.

previous ones. Most of the cost is not in carrying out the sentence, but in trying to ensure that no innocent person ie executed.

Sometimes an incompetent PD for a lawyer costs more, in the long run, than a competent private attorney. There are always two sets of appeals in a death penalty trial (direct and habeus corpus) - the state pays for both sides of all appeals of right. If incompetent bungling results in errors part or all of the trial must be repeated (with both tracks of appeals being paid for by the state - and if the trial was redone because of errors the first time, the person sentenced to be executed is entitled to the full range of appeals the second time because there might be errors in the second trial). Even after the appeals of right for which an individual sentenced to death have been exhausted, there are many private attorneys working for organizations like the Innocence Project that may file a challenge - in that case the state only bears the cost for one side of the legal process, but there are additional legal costs.

These costs are in addition to the cost of housing and feeding the person for 10-20 years prior to execution during the appeals process - generally in a more expensive "super max" facility - or in segregated wing of a "regular" prison - which typically costs more because of the need to isolate the person from the remainder of the prison population.

In contrast, because the stakes are not so high there are very few (relatively speaking) appeals of life sentences - so the legal bills associated with a life sentence are significantly lower than those associated with a death sentence. There will be added costs for room and board for the years beyond the date at which the person would have been executed - but the fact that there is so long between sentencing and execution makes that difference less than one would expect.

So - before you condemn the study for using false statistics, you should read it. Given past studies, which I have read, I would expect it to be pretty accurate.

DP trials are much more expensive than regular trials.

In 2008, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released an exhaustive report on the state’s capital punishment system, concluding that it was “dysfunctional” and “broken.” The report found that the state was spending $137 million per year on the death penalty. The Commission estimated a comparable system that sentenced the same inmates to a maximum punishment of life without parole would cost only $11.5 million per year. 39 Since the number of executions in California has averaged less than one every two years since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, the cost for each execution is over $250 million. The state has also indicated it needs another $400 million to construct a new death row.
• In New York and New Jersey, the high costs of capital punishment were one factor in those states’ recent decisions to abandon the death penalty. New York spent about $170 million over 9 years and had no executions.40 New Jersey spent $253 million over a 25-year period and also had no executions.41 In such states the cost per execution obviously cannot be calculated, but even assuming they eventually

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In Maryland, where a legislative commission recently recommended abolishing the death penalty, a comprehensive cost study by the Urban Institute estimated the extra costs to taxpayers for death penalty cases prosecuted between 1978 and 1999 to be $186 million.42 Based on the 5 executions carried out in the state, this translates to a cost of $37 million per execuion.
It is important to emphasize the high costs per execution do not mean that executions themselves are expensive, or that pursuing one execution will cost tens of millions of dollars. Rather, these costs reflect the reality that most capital prosecutions never result in a death sentence, and most death sentences do not result in an execution. The extra expenses begin mounting as soon as counsel are appointed in a potential death penalty case.

• In Maryland, the 106 cases in which a death sentence was sought but not imposed will cost the state $71 million. This extra cost is solely due to the fact that the death penalty was pursued, even though the ultimate outcome was a life or long-term prison sentence.47
• The average cost for the defense at trial in a federal death case is $620,932, about 8 times that of a non-capital federal murder case.48
• In Kansas, 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). The appeal costs for death cases were 21 times greater.

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How can the RW argue with a warden who has experience in this certain aspect?

I worked in corrections for 30 years. . . I came to believe that the death penalty should be replaced with life without the possibility of parole. I didn’t reach that conclusion because I’m soft on crime. My No. 1 concern is public safety. I wish the public knew how much the death penalty affects their wallets.
California spends an additional $117 million each year pursuing the execution of those on death row. Just housing inmates on death row costs an additional $90,000 per prisoner per year above what it would cost to house them with the general prison population.v
-Jeanne Woodford, former Warden of San Quentin

I'm not going to post the entire study but the numbers are there and it is very thorough. If you have a problem with this study do a better one.

The point that one section of the entire study is trying to make is that many states spend millions of dollars pursuing executions that never happen.

Seriously, where's the headline that reads "Ending marijuana prohibition will save US states Billions: Common Sense" *sigh*

In other words, we'd save a lot more by reducing the number of "criminals" needing to be locked up. This is yet another study which focuses on one symptom of our prison-industrial system without acknowledging the rapid growth of our prison population. That's like spending nine months examining the role of health insurance companies for "health reform," while ignoring safety concerns over our food supplies, teaching our young proper eating habits, and discussing the value of preventative measures before needing to turn to the insurance companies and the hospitals. It's so annoying...

Which is Unconstitutional,Unconscionable and nothing less than a war on its own citizens.

............I can tell you that I'm against it because it DOESN'T do precisely the things death penalty proponents claim it does. This is yet another issue where I went into it with one belief, did the research, came to a completely different conclusion, and changed my mind. Now I'm fervently AGAINST the death penalty.

It doesn't deter crime. All the evidence suggests that death penalty States have HIGHER rates of violent crime, across the board.

It doesn't save the State money. That's been known for a long time, but this study is yet more proof of that. Pro-death penalty people will decry the amount of money the State spends to house, feed, and clothe criminals for the rest of their lives, but the fact of the matter is that it costs something like 10 times MORE to kill them.

And contrary to popular belief, the death penalty is NOT sanctioned by the Bible. All the Bible thumpers love to cite the "eye for an eye" section. But what they fail to recognize is that section is in the Old Testament. If you're one to quote the Bible as your authority for anything, you should know that the laws of the Old Testament (also known as the Mosaic Laws) were rendered moot the second Jesus died (that's why there's a New Testament). They also fail to recognize that the CENTRAL TENET to Christianity, the thing that Jesus preached more than anything else, is FORGIVENESS. The Bible is rife with references to forgiving your enemies. The "vengeance is mine" section is often misinterpreted. It actually means HUMANS are not to take revenge on people who have wronged them because vengeance is for God only(i.e. "vengeance is His," when you remove the first-person perspective). "Never repay evil for evil," and "If a man strikes your right cheek, offer him your left," are also Bible passages that the "eye for an eye" folks tend to ignore. Besides, if you want to follow the Mosaic Laws of the Old Testament, you better either be Jewish (because Jews don't believe in the New Testament), or you better be prepared to enact a law making it legal to stone your child to death if he's disrespectful of his parents. That's in there too, you know.

I would love to see the wing nuts go crazy oin this one.

Who would not get paid?..... Bush Buddies that are making all the "arrangements" to kill people!

Except to kill criminals and deny a woman's right to control her own body.

Basically the republicans only support government intrusion into people's lives if it results in people getting hurt or killed.

I need to see them die!!!! :sarcasm:

They'd be horrified if we saved money by not killing people and then spent the money we saved on awful humanitarian things like health care, education, or even practical things like balancing federal/state budgets.

Thanks for the thread, depakid.