Letting Go of the Death Penalty

Most states are facing drastic cuts in vital services because of the recession. Schools, health care, and law enforcement will have to get by with less. Death penalty cases, however, stand out, demanding more money even as executions become less likely. In this economic climate, they may be a luxury we can no longer afford.

According to a recent report released by the Death Penalty Information Center, the death penalty is being used less and executions are being carried out in only a few states. Yet the costs are becoming more of an issue as the pressure to avoid the mistakes of the past has grown. There were 37 executions in 2008; 95% of them were in the South and almost half were in just one state -- Texas. Executions and death sentences have been steadily dropping throughout the current decade. But millions of taxpayer dollars have to be spent to keep the vast apparatus of capital punishment in place.

California, for example, has 670 people on death row. Each one of them costs the state about $90,000 per year over what it would cost to keep them in prison if they were condemned to permanent imprisonment instead. In total, the state is spending $138 million per year, but only executes less than one person every two years, according to a recent state commission report. In fact, it's been almost three years since the state carried out any executions. California is now planning a new death row that will cost an additional $400 million. At the same time, the state is facing an unprecedented deficit of billions of dollars and is cutting many vital services. The state commission called the death penalty system "broken," "dysfunctional," and "close to collapse." Only more expenditures, they said, could possibly save it.

Almost every state is facing a financial crisis and 36 states have the death penalty. In Maryland, a state commission heard testimony that the costs of the death penalty over the past 28 years amounted to $37 million per execution. In Florida, home to the second largest death row in the country, the cost estimates are $24 million per execution. The Los Angeles Times estimated that California spends $250 million per execution, when all the system's costs are taken into account.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Speeding up the appeals process or not paying lawyers adequate fees will end up costing states even more as trials will have to be done over a second time, or worse, result in the execution of innocent people. One hundred and thirty people have been exonerated from death row since 1973, including four in 2008. It took over 9 years on average between the conviction and the exoneration in these cases.

With all of these mistakes, the death penalty system has become slower and shows no signs speeding up. The average time between sentencing and execution increased to 12.7 years for those executed in 2007, the third year in a row in which the time has been over 12 years. For some cases in California, it took 25 years for a capital case to be completed, according to the state commission.

All of this expense and delay might be justified if there were some tangible benefit resulting from the death penalty. But for many victims' family members and representatives of law enforcement, the frustration and uncertainty of the death penalty make the option of a sentence of permanent imprisonment more reasonable. Only about 1% of the murders committed in this country result in a death sentence, and only a small percentage of those sentenced to death are ever executed many years later. Such a system makes little sense financially, or even retributively.

In the past, people were often scared into believing that the death penalty was needed to be tough on crime. Today, the death penalty is more like a bridge to nowhere--an expensive government program that does not advance the general good. It may be time to let this extravagance go.

Richard C. Dieter is the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Comments

[dudleysharp]

Possibly we have sentenced 25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review.

The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, now 130, are a deception, easily discoverable by fact checking.

The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting much exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.

To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions - something easily discovered with fact checking.

There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.

Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?

Unlikely.

[dudleysharp]

How does Dieter get the huge cost per execution? The same way that I will show how Life Without Parole is much more expensive than the death penalty.

Let's say you have 5000 people in your state that have been senteced to LWOP and when you look at all of the expenses to arrest, prosecute, convict, hear appeals, guard, medicate, house, etc., all of those 5000 LWOP prisoners, thst is turns out that for all 5000 it has cost the state $6 billion for your entire LWOP system, over time.

But, only 100 prisoners have died, meaning only 100 have served their true sentence.

Therefore, following Dieter's highly misleading reasoning, it is costing the state $60 million dollars for each completed LWOP case.

That is, exactly, how Dieter arrives at the cost per execution numbers.

[lancelindsey]

It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
Albert Camus

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.
George Will, conservative columnist.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The practice of executing prisoners is a relic of the past and inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society. We should put an end to this shameful practice.
John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.
Anthony M. Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

[dltb]

I am amazed when I read some of the comments. People stand up every day and profess that they are Christians--What about the ten commandments, "Thou shall not kill".
There are numerous people who have been found not to commit the crime. So after the State kills someone, what do you say, Opps I made a mistake. I think that everything possible should be done before executing a human being that God made. God made man, and God is the only one that can take a life.
It cost less to keep a person in jail for life as opposed to executing someone and going through the appeals process.

[tbolder]

As Mr. Dieter states, the death penalty has seen sustained decline over the last year. This is a trend that will hopefully continue. Not only is the system broken, but in today's economic climate, we should be focusing our resources elsewhere. Mr. Dieter makes a strong argument that it is time to do away with this senseless and expensive practice. Let us spend the money we have on putting more police officers on our streets and teachers in our classrooms.

[deathwatch]

A recent North Carolina study (details here: http://deathwatch.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/study-das-drive-up-nc-death-penalty-costs/) shows that the primary reason for the exploding cost of the death penalty in NC is district attorney charging decisions. A few quick statistics.

* DAs charge up to 88% of intentional homicides as first degree murder
* 83% of those cases are ultimately resolved with pleas or verdicts of second degree murder or less
* The added expense of handling these cases as first degree murder costs the state $20 million annually in defense spending alone
* 60% of cases once declared capital resolve with pleas or verdicts of second degree murder or less.
* The added expense of needlessly declaring so many cases capital costs the state another $5 million annually in defense spending alone

Finally, while some will argue that we should keep the death penalty as a bargaining tool for prosecutors to obtain sentences of life without parole, the study shows that declaring a case capital to obtain an LWOP plea ends up costing the state twice as much as proceeding non-capitally from the beginning and getting an LWOP sentence from the jury.

[delliotdc]

If we speed up the appeals process, then we invariably execute more innocent people. Doubt that innocent people already have been executed? Look into the cases of Ruben Cantu, Todd Cameron Willingham or Carlos de Luna -- all out of the state of Texas. All executed within the past decade. All innocent.

It's fine to debate the moral question of whether the death penalty should exist. It is certainly a legitimate moral question. What are we to do with a Hitler? A Idi Amin? An Osama bin Laden?

But it is more practical to debate the morality of the death penalty system we have here and now. People are being convicted, sentenced and executed not necessarily on the basis of the crimes they (might have) committed but rather on the basis of whether they had a great lawyer, whether they were given an opportunity to plea bargain, whether a jailhouse informant turned state's witness in exchange for a better deal.

This is the death penalty system we have. We've tried, through the years, to improve it, to make it foolproof. We can't make it foolproof....because we're not foolproof.

We don't need the death penalty in this country. Almost every state now has life in prison without parole. Or, if you will, death in prison.

That's punishment enough. And that keeps the offender off the streets and keeps our families and communities safe.

[HollywoodBill]

Despite the far left's preaching, Californians are in favor of the death penalty by 61%. That's down from the 1980s when it was actually in the 90% brackets. But as many posters have noted, there are many crimes that seem spectacularly suitable for the death penalty.

During the 1980s, Jerry Brown tried to get rid of the death penalty by appointing Supreme Court Justices, notably Rose Bird, who never met a death penalty sentence that she could follow. The California electorate recalled her and 4 of her cohorts. The five new Justices have since followed the will of the people. They have also served as a bellweather for what happens to judicial activists in California.

It is irrelevant that there are 670 people on death row who might never be executed. But tampering with the will of the people is extremely dangerous stuff.

[MargotFriedman]

States seem to be spending an awful lot of money on something that doesn't deter crime. Life without the possibility of parole is less expensive and does the job of removing the person from society. Mr. Dieter's post talks about the high numbers of innocent people who have been released from death row after DNA reveals their innocence. If we make a mistake with the death penalty, there is no way to correct it.

[Catothemuchyounger]

Indeed, the Death Penalty system is broken. Yet, I, and many like me, will fight abolishing it, for a simple reason: for many crimes, death is the only moral punishment. It is intolerable to permit people to live who have done the things so many have done. A year or so ago, here in Connecticut, two ex-cons broke into a house, raped a woman and one of her daughters, strangled the mother, tied the daughters to their beds, sprinkled gasoline around, and lit it on file. They were caught while escaping, there is no doubt whatsoever over their guilt. If we cannot execute people like this, we can forget about any idea of justice. We would be warehousing these people, not punishing them.

I recall reading another case somewhere in which a man raped a woman, tied her to a tree, and burned her alive. In another case, a woman was hog tied and thrown off a bridge into a river.

Sorry, but I am never going to be willing to accept that we cannot execute people who do things like this. It is a disgrace, a shame upon the Nation, that you can commit crimes like this and still be drawing breath.

[BabsfromKansas]

Determining the number of new prisons to build is based, in part, on the number of third graders not reading at third-grade level.

[Mnemanth]

Easier solution: You have enacted the death penalty, presumably for a good reason. Anyone convicted should be taken out and shot/ injected/ gassed/ whatever. No- I'm going to be sick- hundreds of thousands spent on keeping the condemned on the hook, and it send the message I assume you want to send:
Do the crime, you got no time!
Appeals? Come on already! Lawyers make quite enough, thank you, and we all know that's what the "appeals" process is all about.
As for those "sitting" on death row... Just how long to do plan on keeping them? Do them, us, and yourself a favor and do them already!

[jake106]

I don't necessarily agree with your method of delivery, but I agree with your basic premise. Speed up the process and then kill them already. Enough 20 year appeals processes.

[ConstanceReader]

So they can be exoneraged only postmortem? You are ignoring the problem of persons on death row specifically (and in prison generally) who are not guilty. Read the article again, the paragraph on exonerations, and how many years it took for justice to finally be served.