A recent article in Parade magazine looked at the cost of the death penalty, especially in light of the budgetary crises confronting most states in today's economy. New Mexico and New Jersey recently abolished the death penalty, and costs played a significant role in their decisions. New Mexico State Rep. Gail Chasey (D., Albuquerque) noted, “We can put that money toward enhancing law enforcement, public works, you name it." In New Jersey a commission found that using the alternative sentence of life without parole would save the state $1.3 million per inmate in incarceration costs alone because a death row facility requires more personnel to operate. Finally, a recent study in North Carolina found that the state could save at least $11 million a year by repealing the death penalty.
In 2009, 52 prisoners (out of the total 3,279 on death row across the country) were executed. “People tend to think, ‘Oh, you get the death penalty, then there’s an execution,’” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. “But more often than not, the death penalty turns out to be a very expensive form of life imprisonment." Read full text below.
Georgia Supreme Court's chief justice recently warned that cuts to the state budget are making it increasingly difficult for its courts to carry out their constitutionally mandated duties. Carol Hunstein announced during a state of the judiciary address that the court's backlog has grown as money has dwindled. In 2009, the judicial branch received less than eight-tenths of 1% of the total state appropriations. Hunstein said, "The consequences of these cuts … hit everyone, threatening the basic constitutional rights of civil litigants and criminal defendants as core court functions go by the wayside. And, according to the Wall Street Journal article, while judiciaries are being squeezed nationwide, 'Georgia's situation appears particularly severe.'" Hunstein also indicated that one superior court judge has 16 death penalty cases still pending, partly because of the elimination of funding for senior judges. In Fulton County, there are currently 183 murder cases awaiting trial, half of which are more than a year old. Chief Judge Dee Downs said of the situation, "This isn't justice. We're losing the rule of law."
On March 3, a federal District Court barred the re-prosecution of former Ohio death row inmate Joe D'Ambrosio (pictured) for the murder of Tony Klann over 22 years ago. The court had ruled in 2006 that state prosecutors improperly withheld evidence about their star witness that could have exonerated D'Ambrosio at his 1989 trial. That ruling led to D'Ambrosio's conviction and death sentence being vacated, and he was eventually released on bond pending a possible retrial. But the state delayed reprosecuting him and did not tell the court that its primary witness, their only eyewitness to the murder, had died. The court concluded that these developments biased D'Ambrosio's chances for a fair trial, and hence the state was barred from retrying him. The state may appeal this decision.
The Death Penalty Information Center collects relevant death penalty articles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our annual compilation is a representative sample of the extensive media coverage given to capital punishment for a particular year and is not inclusive of all such articles. For those interested in examining the titles and sources for this coverage, we have prepared an index of the articles from 2009 in Excel format. The index is arranged chronologically and may be sorted or searched after downloading. Each article’s entry gives its author, title, source, and date. It does not include, however, the full text of the articles listed. Click 
On February 24, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence of Charles Dean Hood because the jury was improperly instructed about potentially mitigating evidence at his trial. Hood's case more recently made national news when a prior extramarital affair between the trial judge and the prosecutor was revealed. In 2008, even after the judge and the prosecutor admitted to their intimate relationship, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that Hood should be executed anyway. Hood's attorneys have recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the conflict of interest in this case. Twenty-one former judges and prosecutors and 30 legal ethics experts have filed amicus briefs stating that the relationship between the judge and the prosecutor severely undermined the integrity of the proceedings. The Court has yet to act on the request, which could result in a new trial on guilt, as well as on sentencing, as now required by the Court of Criminal Appeals for other reasons.
On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then summarily reversed, a federal appeals court decision that would have given a Texas defendant a new trial based on improper jury selection. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospective juror was improperly excluded based on the juror's race. Two different judges had presided over the jury selection; one actually observed the juror's demeanor during questioning, and the second listened to the prosecution's explanation for excluding this juror. The Fifth Circuit said that the second judge's decision was not entitled to special deference because he had not observed the actual juror. But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a per curiam decision, held that the lower court had misinterpreted its prior rulings, and deference should have been accorded to the judge's decision. The high court's ruling did not exclude a review of the juror's exclusion under the proper standard.
A bill that would have ended the death penalty in Kansas lost by a tie vote of 20-20 in the state Senate on February 19. The bill would have replaced the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. Republican Senator Carolyn McGinn, the original sponsor of the legislation, argued for repeal, pointing to the high cost of the death penalty: "It costs half a million dollars, or 70 percent more, to try a death penalty case than a non-death penalty case and yet the state hasn’t executed anyone since 1965. We’re not executing anybody. Can we use this money to prevent future heinous, horrible crimes? Can we use it to solve cold cases that are up on the shelf for those families who don’t even know who murdered their family member?" Sen. McGinn also based her opposition to the death penalty on her respect-for-life position: Those who have committed even heinous murders are still children of God, she said. "Tell me, at what point in time did they lose that status and who made that decision," she asked. Twelve of the 20 senators who voted for repeal were Republicans. 