State auditors this afternoon are expected to release findings from a study on the cost of administering the death penalty in Nevada.
The capital punishment debate here tends to draw more fiscal than moral objections from critics, who point to an overburdened criminal justice system whose corrections department spends nearly $300 million per year. By comparison, Utah — whose general population is about 4 percent higher than Nevada's — spends about $260 million per year on corrections.
The audit, which is due by Jan. 31, is expected to calculate not just incarceration costs, but also expenses for legal counsel — both defense and prosecution — for all court proceedings and for associated costs such as investigators, mitigation specialists and experts.
A 2012 UNLV study backed by the Clark County Public Defender's Office found that public defense attorneys spent double the time on capital murder cases as opposed to noncapital murder cases. Clark County's caseload is the largest in the state.
Source: Las Vegas Sun, December 2, 2014