The death penalty costs much more than life. The bulk of the high costs of the death penalty are upfront, before and during the initial trial. These costs are for the legal process which is supposed to prevent executions of innocent people. The numbers vary from state to state. Here are excerpts from reports from a few states (with sources) and an explanation of why the death penalty is so expensive. Many people are suprised to find this out - including the people who answered before me.
Washington State “At the trial level, death penalty cases are estimated to generate roughly $470,000 in additional costs to the prosecution and defense over the cost of trying the same case as an aggravated murder without the death penalty and costs of $47,000 to $70,000 for court personnel.” (Final Report of the Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense, Washington State Bar Association, December 2006,
http://www.wsba.org/lawyers/groups/commi...
Kansas: “The study counted death penalty case costs through to execution and found that the median death penalty case costs $1.26 million. Non-death penalty cases were counted through to the end of incarceration and were found to have a median cost of $740,000. For death penalty cases, the pre-trial and trial level expenses were the most expensive part, 49% of the total cost. The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases. The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 for death case; $32,000 for non-death case).” (. Kansas: Performance Audit Report: Costs Incurred for Death Penalty Cases: A K-GOAL Audit of the Department of Corrections)
North Carolina: The most comprehensive death penalty study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than the a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment (
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/northcar...
links to ("The Costs of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina" Duke University, May 1993)
Other states report similar findings.
Why is the death penalty so expensive? The costs of the death penalty begin to accumulate from the very beginning of a death penalty case. Here are just a few of the contributing factors:
• more pre-trial time will be needed to prepare: cases typically take a year to come to trial
• more pre-trial motions will be filed and answered
• more experts will be hired
• twice as many attorneys will be appointed for the defense, and a comparable team for the prosecution
• jurors will have to be individually quizzed on their views about the death penalty, and they are more likely to be sequestered
• two trials instead of one will be conducted: one for guilt and one for punishment
• the trial will be longer: a cost study at Duke University estimated that death penalty trials take 3 to 5 times longer than typical murder trials
That's the numbers I have found, and they seem to jive with the numbers Phishphood has.
