Officials in Indiana recent­ly dis­cussed how rarely the death penal­ty is applied in the state and the issues that rais­es regard­ing its pur­pose. Professor Joel Schuum of the McKinney School of Law in Indiana chaired a study by the American Bar Association that found ​“only a few of Indiana’s mur­der cas­es result in a pros­e­cu­tor seek­ing a death sen­tence, few­er still result in the impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence by a jury or judges, and only a hand­ful over the past 3 decades have result­ed in the exe­cu­tion of a defen­dant.” Schuum added, ​“It’s Indiana’s oth­er lot­tery, because it’s hard to decide. You have all these hor­ri­ble mur­der cas­es. Who is the worst per­son? If only 1 % of these peo­ple are going to get the death penal­ty, what makes some­one espe­cial­ly deserv­ing of that?” Indiana Public Defender Council Executive Director Larry Landis agreed, ​“The ratio­nal­iza­tion that the pro­po­nents give is that: we need the death penal­ty for the worst of the worst. But, if you look at all the peo­ple who have been charged and the peo­ple who get the death penal­ty, no ratio­nal per­son can say – that’s the worst of the worst.” The dis­cus­sion arose because pros­e­cu­tors in Marion County recent­ly elect­ed not to seek death against 3 defen­dants charged with mur­der. There has not been a death penal­ty tri­al in Marion County in over a decade. The cost of the death penal­ty may be one rea­son. A 2010 fis­cal report by the Legislative Services Agency found that the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty tri­al was around $450,000. Some cas­es have cost more than $1 mil­lion. In con­trast, the same study found that the aver­age tri­al and cost of appeal of a life-with­out-parole case was one-tenth as much, $42,658. ​“As soon as they file that notice that they’re seek­ing death, that defen­dant is going to get 2 lawyers paid at tax­pay­er expense at over $100 per hour. They’re going to get unlim­it­ed experts. If there is a jury, it’s going to have to be sequestered. There’s going to be all sorts of added costs to that,” Prof. Schuum noted.

(T. Kehoe, ​“Officials talk death penal­ty,” WISH-TV, February 12, 2013). See Artbitrariness and Costs. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Arbitrariness.

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