By S.V. Date: Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
Palm Beach Post, A SECTION, Pg. 1A
January 4, 2000

What price for vengeance on soci­ety’s worst killers?

In Florida, try $51 mil­lion a year.

That, accord­ing to a Palm Beach Post esti­mate, is how much Florida spends each year to enforce the death penal­ty — above and beyond what it would cost to pun­ish all first-degree mur­der­ers with life in prison without parole.

And at the rate at which Florida is exe­cut­ing its killers (there have been only 44 since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1979), it’s cost­ing about $ 24 mil­lion per elec­tro­cut­ed mur­der­er. ​“That is an astound­ing fig­ure,” said Mike McCarron, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Florida Catholic Conference and, on behalf of the church, a peren­ni­al death penalty opponent.

“It’s cost­ing the state of Florida a small for­tune,” said Elliott Metcalfe, pres­i­dent of the Florida Public Defenders Association and the pub­lic defend­er in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

“It is much cheap­er to put these peo­ple in prison and leave them there until they die. Simple as that.”

According to The Post’s esti­mate, it is about $ 23 mil­lion cheap­er, even for an inmate who is impris­oned in his 20s and dies in his 70s.

The Post’s fig­ure was derived using esti­mates of how much time pros­e­cu­tors and pub­lic defend­ers at the tri­al courts and the Florida Supreme Court, which devotes approx­i­mate­ly half its time to death penal­ty cas­es, spend on the extra work need­ed in cap­i­tal cas­es. It accounts also for the time and effort expend­ed on defen­dants who are tried but con­vict­ed of a less­er mur­der charge and whose death sen­tences are over­turned on appeal as well as those hand­ful of con­demned inmates who are actually executed.

And while the actu­al cost of pros­e­cut­ing, con­vict­ing and exe­cut­ing an indi­vid­ual killer in Florida has been esti­mat­ed at about $ 3.2 mil­lion, some law­mak­ers con­tend the death penal­ty is worth what­ev­er it takes.

“Can you put a price on jus­tice?” asked Katie Baur, spokes­woman for House Speaker John Thrasher. ​“We have no qualms about that whatsoever.”

Sen. Locke Burt, R‑Ormond Beach and a con­sis­tent sup­port­er of the death penal­ty, ques­tioned The Post’s analy­sis, say­ing he thought it over­es­ti­mat­ed the amount of time and effort that pros­e­cu­tors and pub­lic defend­ers spent on the ​“death” por­tion of death penal­ty cas­es at the trial level.

He also point­ed out that if the death penal­ty were elim­i­nat­ed tomor­row, Florida would save only about $ 11 mil­lion a year — the cost of spe­cial­ized lawyers hired exclu­sive­ly to work on death penal­ty appeals. Prosecutors, pub­lic defend­ers and the courts would con­tin­ue to cost just as much as before, although their work­load would shift to oth­er cas­es that now get lower priority.

“If you did­n’t have the death penal­ty, how much mon­ey would you save? The answer is not much,” Burt said.

Rep. Victor Crist, R‑Temple Terrace and the House’s main death penal­ty afi­ciona­do in recent years, said he, too, does­n’t care how much it costs to speed up the death penal­ty process in Florida.

“If Texas can exe­cute 25 a year, why can’t Florida?” he asked, adding that he believes the appeals changes the leg­is­la­ture will con­sid­er this week will, in com­ing years, make the process cheap­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the state clears its Death Row backlog.

“We should be exe­cut­ing more peo­ple a year than we send to Death Row, in order to catch up.”

Senate staffers research­ing the issue came up with sev­er­al rea­sons why Texas has been exe­cut­ing inmates 10, even 20 times as frequently:

* Judges in Texas and those on the fed­er­al appeals court that cov­ers Texas seem far more com­fort­able with the death penal­ty than judges han­dling Florida’s death cases.

* Texas spends a mere frac­tion per inmate that Florida does on rep­re­sen­ta­tion for condemned killers.

* Texas juries must agree by at least a 10 – 2 mar­gin (Florida mere­ly requires a sim­ple major­i­ty) for the death penal­ty, which cuts down on appeals.

But it’s that ​“let’s-do-it-like-Texas” atti­tude, said ACLU lob­by­ist Larry Spalding, that illus­trates why Florida will con­tin­ue to spend many times the cost of impris­on­ing mur­der­ers for life by instead jump­ing through the expen­sive legal hoops to put them to death.

“It is fis­cal­ly irre­spon­si­ble to have the death penal­ty. So what? People don’t care,” said Spalding, for­mer chief of the state agency that rep­re­sents con­demned mur­der­ers in their appeals.

“This real­ly is a revenge issue. It’s a political issue.”