Yes, the Death Penalty is More Expensive

by Matt Kelley · 2010-07-09 06:40:00 UTC
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Questions about the death penalty's cost-effectiveness are percolating across the country, and death penalty backers must feel threatened, because they're starting to make some absurd claims.

The award for the most ridiculous comment of the week goes to Nevada Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens, who claimed that it costs the same to try a death-penalty case and one seeking life without parole. "I don't see any difference. If there is one, I'd like to see some evidence of it," Owens told KLAS in Las Vegas. Riiiiiiiggght.

Owens has dug himself a hole here. First of all, even though death penalty opponents in Nevada fought and defeated a state-funded study of the costs of capital punishment (I wonder why?), I have little doubt that he's wrong.

Repeated studies in several states have shown that trials in death-penalty cases cost more than 10 times as much as non-death penalty cases. For evidence, you can look to Indiana, Maryland and California — to name just a few states. California, for example, spends more than $100 million a year on its death penalty (it's executed 13 people since 1976).

But even if Owens is right, and death-penalty trials cost the same in Nevada, that's a scary thing, too. Death is supposed to be different. When we seek to end the life of a defendant, states should have to go to greater lengths to ensure that all the facts are heard. That's why such trials are typically longer. The sentencing phase in death cases is much longer. Forty-nine states — all but Alabama — provide defense counsel on appeal all the way through the higher courts.

Owens is the first person I've heard in a long time try to dispute the fact that death sentences cost more, but the Nevada legislators who blocked a study of capital punishment's cost last year probably had an idea of how it would turn out.

Even if you don't agree with me (and with the overwhelming evidence) that the death penalty is applied unequally to the poor and minorities, or that it's an ineffective deterrent, or that it's a cruel, unusual violation of human rights — you can't deny we're spending millions of taxpayer dollars on it. The evidence (in states that don't deny it, like Nevada) is right in front of us.

Owens is just blowing smoke, but he can't hide the real issue from taxpayers for long. Pretty soon, Nevadans will start wondering whether taxpayer dollars are better spent executing murderers, or on improving schools.

Photo Credit: hive

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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