A new, but lim­it­ed, study of the costs of the death penal­ty in Idaho found that cap­i­tal cas­es are more cost­ly and take much more time to resolve than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. One mea­sure of death-penal­ty costs was reflect­ed in the time spent by attor­neys han­dling appeals. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typ­i­cal death penal­ty appeal than on a life sen­tence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per cap­i­tal defen­dant com­pared to about 180 hours per non-death penal­ty defen­dant). Capital cas­es with tri­als took 20.5 months to reach a con­clu­sion while non-cap­i­tal cas­es with tri­als took 13.5 months. The study was com­mis­sioned by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and per­formed by the Office of Performance Evaluations.The study also not­ed how infre­quent­ly the death penal­ty was applied in Idaho: of the 251 defen­dants who were charged with first-degree mur­der since 1998, the death penal­ty was sought against 55 (22%) of them, and just 7 were sen­tenced to death. More than half of the 40 peo­ple sen­tenced to death since 1977 have received less­er sen­tences after their death sen­tences were overturned.

The study of the costs of the death penal­ty was lim­it­ed by the fact that courts, attor­neys, and oth­er stake­hold­ers did not sep­a­rate­ly track time spent on capital cases.

(“Financial Costs of the Death Penalty,” Office of Performace Evaluations, Idaho Legislature, March 17, 2014). Idaho has 13 peo­ple on death row and has car­ried out 3 exe­cu­tions since 1976. See Costs and Studies.

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