Canis,
Court costs for Capital Punishment cases, with all of the appeals involved, are massive and wholly absorbed by the taxpayer. If people were denied fair trials and appeals, things would be cheaper, but those are the breaks. If we really want to reduce the money we spend keeping people in prison, and I think we should, there are better ways than executing prisoners.
The real motivation for Capital Punishment, like I said, has nothing to do with these utilitarian arguments. It's a visceral emotional reaction: These People Must Pay. There's an opposite emotional reaction that some anti-death penalty folks derive their assumptions from - the pacifists as you call them, who say: All Life Is Sacred. I don't like either of these emotional arguments, I think they make for bad policy and bad government.
In the way it was derived, the pacifist stance is closer to the pro-death penalty stance than mine is. Since my position is entirely utilitarian, I really could go either way. Show me a way to be 100% sure that every person condemned to die is guilty, and I will withdraw my objection.
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Okay, I found some actual figures on this... here we go. It turns out it's far far more expensive to execute than to imprison for life.
This is from testimony given to the Judiciary Committee of the Colorado House of Representatives, with appropriate sources.
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HOW MUCH DOES THE DEATH PENALTY COST?
The major cost studies on the death penalty all indicate that it is much more
expensive than a system where the most severe sentence is life in prison:
⇒ The most comprehensive study conducted in this country found that the death
penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-
death penalty system imposing a maximum sentence of imprisonment for life.9
These findings are sensitive to the number of executions the state carries out.
However, the authors noted that even if the death penalty were 100% efficient, i.e.,
if every death sentence resulted in an execution, the extra costs to the taxpayers
would still be $216,000 per execution.
⇒ Some years ago, the Miami Herald estimated that the costs of the death penalty in
Florida were $3.2 million per execution, based on the rate of executions at that
time.10 Florida's death penalty system bogged down for a number of reasons,
including a controversy over the electric chair. As a result, a more recent estimate of
the costs in Florida by the Palm Beach Post found a much higher cost per execution:
9
. P. Cook, "The Costs of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina," Duke University (May 1993).
10
. D. Von Drehle, "Bottom Line: Life in Prison One-sixth as Expensive," The Miami Herald, July 10,
1988, at 12A.
Florida spends $51 million a year above and beyond what it would cost to punish all
first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44
executions Florida had carried out from 1976 to 2000, that amounts to a cost of $24
million for each execution.11
⇒ In Texas, the Dallas Morning News concluded that a death penalty case costs an
average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a
single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.12
⇒ In 1988, the Sacramento Bee found that the death penalty costs California $90 million
annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is
incurred at the trial level.13 But the costs have increased much more since then.
According to state and federal records obtained by The Los Angeles Times in 2005,
maintaining the death penalty system now costs taxpayers more than $114 million a
year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. This figure
does not count the millions more spent on court costs to prosecute capital cases. The
Times concluded that Californians and federal taxpayers have paid more than $250
million for each execution.14
11
. S. V. Date, "The High Price of Killing Killers," Palm Beach Post, Jan. 4, 2000, at 1A.
12
. C. Hoppe, "Executions Cost Texas Millions," Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992, at 1A.
13
. S. Maganini, "Closing Death Row Would Save State $90 Million a Year," Sacramento Bee, March
28, 1988, at 1.
14
. Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005 (California has now had 13 executions).
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