Costs and Geography Contribute to Death Penalty’s Arbitrariness

The death penal­ty is rarely sought in the city of Baltimore, but in adjoin­ing Baltimore County almost every eli­gi­ble case becomes a cap­i­tal case. Presently, there are 7 active death-penal­ty cas­es in Baltimore County, more than the city of Baltimore has had over­all in the past 2 decades. In addi­tion to the dif­fer­ent philoso­phies of the respec­tive State’s Attorneys, the costs of the death penal­ty are a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. Prosecutors esti­mate that a death penal­ty case costs tax­pay­ers $500,000, just for the tri­al and penal­ty phas­es. Donald Giblin, one of Baltimore’s pros­e­cu­tors, not­ed: ​“I don’t have a moral prob­lem with the death penal­ty; I have a resource prob­lem with it.”

Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy also not­ed that the years of appeals in a cap­i­tal case leave the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly with con­stant uncer­tain­ty. ​“Most of the time,” she said, ​“the death penal­ty does­n’t give you clo­sure.” By tak­ing the death penal­ty off the table in a prospec­tive case, she says she can offer some degree of final­i­ty to the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly by uti­liz­ing the sen­tence of life without parole.

(Baltimore Sun, Sept. 3, 2006). 

See Costs, Arbitrariness, and Life witout parole.