Does the Death Penalty Cost Less Than Life Without Parole?

One of the most com­mon myths about the death penal­ty is that it costs less than sen­tenc­ing some­one to spend the rest of their life in a max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison, because many assume that the state saves mon­ey when an exe­cut­ed per­son no longer requires con­fine­ment in prison, health care, or related expenses.

But this assump­tion has been repeat­ed­ly proven to be wrong.

Several fac­tors con­tribute to the high cost of the death penal­ty, includ­ing pros­e­cu­tion and defense costs at tri­al, high secu­ri­ty, the cost of incar­cer­a­tion at a spe­cial death row and costs asso­ci­at­ed with exe­cu­tion. This finan­cial bur­den falls on local taxpayers.

Fact: Capital cas­es take longer and incur much high­er tri­al costs than non-cap­i­tal cas­es.

Numerous stud­ies show that cap­i­tal tri­als are more lengthy and expen­sive than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. A 2014 Kansas Judicial Council study found death penal­ty cas­es were con­sis­tent­ly more time-inten­sive than non-death penal­ty cas­es. According to the study, cap­i­tal cas­es aver­age 40 days in court, while cap­i­tal-eli­gi­ble cas­es where the death penal­ty was not sought aver­aged just under 17 days. State supreme court jus­tices par­tic­i­pat­ing in the study report­ed devot­ing 20 times as many hours to write the lead opin­ion for a death penal­ty case as com­pared to a non-death penal­ty case. The Kansas study found that even cap­i­tal cas­es that result in plea agree­ments take longer when the death penal­ty is threat­ened, tak­ing an aver­age of 13.5 days com­pared to 8.8 days.

In some states, cap­i­tal cas­es require between $1 mil­lion and $3 mil­lion more per case than cas­es seek­ing life imprisonment.

A 2013 University of Denver Criminal Law Review study found Colorado death penal­ty cas­es require six times as many days in court than non-death penal­ty cas­es, aver­ag­ing 147.6 days and 24.5 days of in-court time respec­tive­ly. When eval­u­at­ing the entire legal process from charg­ing a defen­dant to final sen­tenc­ing the study found that death cas­es took almost four times longer (1,902 days for cap­i­tal cas­es ver­sus 526 days for non-capital cases).

Longer cas­es result in high­er costs. The Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s 2021 report eval­u­at­ed both quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive stud­ies from a vari­ety of states and found that death penal­ty cas­es cost between 2.5 and 5 times more than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. In some states, cap­i­tal cas­es require between $1 mil­lion and $3 mil­lion more per case than cas­es seek­ing life imprisonment.

Trials in which pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty also incur high­er legal costs than cas­es with­out the death penal­ty because of the inten­sive pros­e­cu­tion and defense efforts required to inves­ti­gate and present the case. In a doc­u­ment pre­pared for the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture in 2019, Damon Preston, the Public Advocate of Kentucky, not­ed that cap­i­tal cas­es typ­i­cal­ly involve two to three attor­neys dur­ing the entire dura­tion of the case, as well as expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als such as cap­i­tal inves­ti­ga­tors, mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ists that must inves­ti­gate the defendant’s life his­to­ry, and oth­ers. Prosecution expens­es are sim­i­lar­ly high, but a break­down of costs is not typ­i­cal­ly made pub­lic. In con­trast, non-cap­i­tal cas­es usu­al­ly appoint only one defense attor­ney with a sec­ond attor­ney some­times added dur­ing tri­al and one inves­ti­ga­tor, with lim­it­ed use of oth­er experts. A cost com­par­i­son of attor­ney, expert, court staff, and jury-relat­ed expens­es under­tak­en by the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio between two mur­der cas­es, one involv­ing the death penal­ty and one not, found costs involv­ing the death penal­ty were $267,875, com­pared to the non-death-penal­ty case, which were $19,365.

Fact: Incarcerating peo­ple who are sen­tenced to death requires more resources.

Many states’ death rows are housed in spe­cial, high-secu­ri­ty facil­i­ties, and indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death are often in soli­tary con­fine­ment. According to an Urban Institute Justice Policy Center research report, super­max pris­ons are 2 – 3 times cost­lier to con­struct and oper­ate than max­i­mum secu­ri­ty pris­ons due to sin­gle-capac­i­ty prison cells and enhanced secu­ri­ty require­ments. In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, such as Kansas, where indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death are instead placed in admin­is­tra­tive seg­re­ga­tion instead of a sep­a­rate death row, the cost of hous­ing pris­on­ers dou­bles, at a cost of $49,380 each year to house death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers ver­sus $24,690 to house pris­on­ers in general population.

Fact: Non-cap­i­tal tri­als do not involve the addi­tion­al expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with exe­cu­tions.

The cost of the bar­bi­tu­rate pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drug com­mon­ly used to per­form lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions, is extreme­ly high. According to records obtained by The Guardian, in October 2020, Arizona spent $1.5 mil­lion on 1,000 one-gram vials of pen­to­bar­bi­tal. Under Arizona’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, five grams of the drug are required to be admin­is­tered per exe­cu­tion, cost­ing the state $7,500 each. These costs are sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in oth­er states, with Tennessee report­ed­ly spend­ing $95,000 on lethal injec­tion drugs per exe­cu­tion between 2017 and 2020, and Missouri spend­ing an aver­age of $16,000 per exe­cu­tion between 2015 and 2020. According to report­ing by the Indiana Capital Chronicle, in late 2024, the Indiana Department of Correction spent $900,000 on pen­to­bar­bi­tal with a 90-day shelf-life in prepa­ra­tion for the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Corcoran. In light of this cost, Indiana Governor Mike Braun has said he does not intend to renew the state’s sup­ply. According to report­ing by The Guardian, Harvard med­ical school lec­tur­er Prashant Yadav esti­mates that some states pay as much as a 1,000% markup on exe­cu­tion drugs in com­par­i­son to the typ­i­cal mar­ket price, due to lack of regulation.

Idaho is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent — yet still cost­ly — approach to exe­cu­tions. A 2023 law passed by Governor Brad Little autho­rized the use of the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion. The law includ­ed an esti­mat­ed cost of $750,000 to ren­o­vate Idaho’s Maximum Security Institution to make it suit­able for this new execution method.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Bella Sasselli, July 9, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde