Quote :

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620,0,3505671.story

California is perpetually in the midst of an economic crisis. One of these days someone has to find a way to cut a billion here or there. And The Los Angeles Times may have just solved the problem.

Stop executing prisoners.

OK, maybe it won't exactly fix everything that ails the Golden State, but according to a three-year study by a senior federal judge and a law professor, “Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.”

That outrageous amount includes the price of trials, legal representation, additional security on death row and the many years prisoners spend on death row.

The state spends a total of $184 million more each year for death penalty-related costs for its 714 death row inmates than it does for those who are sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, a tab that could rise to a total of $9 billion by 2030 when San Quentin's death row will have more than 1,000 prisoners.

The authors suggest three solutions to the problem: keep things the same with $85 million set aside for funding courts and lawyers every year, reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes and save $55 million a year, or abolish the death penalty and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.

Is California's death penalty worth it?

Isn't does [i]have[i] to be humane, does it? Why can't we just crush people with a wrecking ball?

The reason it costs so much is because everybody gets so many appeals, on average TWENTY SEVEN YEARS' worth of appeals, if it wasn't for that it would be plenty cheaper to just waste them.

Supernova wrote:

The reason it costs so much is because everybody gets so many appeals, on average TWENTY SEVEN YEARS' worth of appeals, if it wasn't for that it would be plenty cheaper to just waste them.

True. It's the 'sitting on death row' part that runs up the bill much moreso than the actual execution itself.

Chris wrote:

Supernova wrote:

The reason it costs so much is because everybody gets so many appeals, on average TWENTY SEVEN YEARS' worth of appeals, if it wasn't for that it would be plenty cheaper to just waste them.

True. It's the 'sitting on death row' part that runs up the bill much moreso than the actual execution itself.

Then the idea that abolishing the death penalty will save money is ridiculous. It's not the executions that cause problems, it's the legal fees. It'd be much cheaper to waste the crooks than to support them for the rest of their lives if that was the only cost factor.

Exactly, because aside from all the appeals, how is feeding them three times a day and housing them for the rest of their life cheaper than a rope, or a few bullets? That's anothre problem I think, does anybody know how much the drugs for the lethal injection cost? Why not hang them? Or bring back the firing squads?

Since you can't have the death penalty without death row lingering and appeals, the article is basically right.

Yeah but how many appeals do they need? 27 years worth of appeals, depending on how old the guy is he could die of old age before he gets the needle, that's not why we have capital punishment.

According to an article I've read the estimated cost to execute someone in Florida is less than $1,000. That includes the last meal, suit to bury them in, executioner's bill, etc. That's the actual cost to put them to death, not the cost of appeals. According to another study that's more than 20 years old (so costs have probably gone up either way) a 25 year old inmate would have to serve a 145 year sentence before the cost to keep then alive equaled the cost to execute them.

I believe that some people are just to evil to live but because of witness misidentification, police errors/misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective council for the accused, I also believe that there is too high a number of wrongly convicted people on death row. If the government want to execute people, fix the system.

As others say if the window for appeals was cut in half, the cost wouldn't be so great. Still that doesn't mean I agree with executing people.

AtownPeep wrote:

As others say if the window for appeals was cut in half, the cost wouldn't be so great. Still that doesn't mean I agree with executing people.