U.S.: Price isn't right for the death penalty

As the country's economic woes continue to mount, frightening many Americans, it has become clear that the United States simply cannot afford capital punishment.

The death penalty is the revenue-guzzling SUV to the cost-efficient hybrid of life without parole. Researchers all over the country are crunching the numbers and coming to the same conclusion - the death penalty is far too expensive.

In its recently released report, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found that California's current death penalty system costs $137 million annually compared with $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty. The commission also reported that California's system is "dysfunctional" and that it will cost an additional $200 million a year to fix it.

In January 2008, New Jersey became the 1st state to abolish the death penalty in 40 years.

The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission's report included the costs of a capital punishment system as 1 of the 7 issues it studied. It noted that costs associated with death penalty cases are significantly higher than those associated with life without parole cases.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections estimated an average savings to the state of over $1 million over each inmate's lifetime. In addition the Commission noted "the devastating emotional costs of the death penalty ... the adverse effects of executions on third parties: judges, jurors, judicial staff, correctional staff, journalists, clergy and spiritual advisors, as well as the families of the victim and the families of the condemned inmate ... these intangible emotional and psychological costs must also be taken into consideration in weighing the costs of the death penalty."

In Maryland, the Urban Institute study of March 2008 noted that it costs the state 3 times more to try a death penalty case than a non-death penalty case. The report stated that "an average capital-eligible case resulting in a death sentence will cost approximately $3 million, $1.9 million more than a case where the death penalty was not sought."

A 2004 study in Tennessee said the findings were the same. Capital trials cost almost 50 percent more than trials where life without parole is sought. Similar findings have been made in Washington, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Kansas and Texas.

The death penalty is a failed government program for many reasons. One is that it is a colossal waste of government resources. Since 1977 we've carried out over 1,100 executions in this country to the tune of what is conservatively estimated over $1 billion. We would have been far wiser using this money to meet our many pressing needs, such as improving our schools, building safer communities, fixing our deteriorating infrastructures, shoring up our social security system, providing health insurance for children, etc.

That money has only purchased a system that doesn't work. In the last 3 decades, 129 individuals have been released from death row because they were innocent. That's 1 exoneration for every 9 executions. Would you buy a car that failed to start one time out of 10?

Whether one believes in the death penalty or not, we have to face the true costs of this policy. Nearly 3,300 men and women sit on death row right now.

Even if the United States were to return to the heyday of the death penalty, 1998 with 98 executions, it would take more than 30 years to kill all of these individuals. What will the cost of execution have risen to by then?

The reality is that most individuals remain on death row for at least 10 years before all state and federal appeals are completed. Based on the 129 exonerations so far we know it takes on average nine years and three appeals to reverse a wrongful conviction.

Many prisoners will die of natural causes before they can be executed. It would be far cheaper to commute these sentences to life without parole than to continue this failed policy of state killing. Indeed juries which now have the option of life in prison without parole in 35 of the 36 death penalty states are increasingly refusing to sentence people to death.

The death penalty is a bankrupting policy. Let's abolish it.

Jack Payden-Travers is the public education associate with the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project.

Source: Pasadena (Calif.) Star-News