According to Gary Syphus of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office in Utah, seek­ing the death penal­ty costs the state an addi­tion­al $1.6 mil­lion per inmate from tri­al to exe­cu­tion com­pared to life-with­out-parole cas­es. Syphus offered this esti­mate to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee of the Utah leg­is­la­ture on November 14. Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Handy had asked for an exam­i­na­tion of the state and local gov­ern­ment costs asso­ci­at­ed with imple­ment­ing the death penal­ty in Utah. Although he has not pro­posed any leg­is­la­tion, Handy said that the com­par­a­tive costs of life with­out parole and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should nev­er­the­less be exam­ined. Ralph Dellapiana, a defense attor­ney and the direc­tor of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the cost esti­mate offered did not ade­quate­ly cap­ture the full expense incurred by the state, since it did not include costs such as those asso­ci­at­ed with cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought but not ultimately imposed.

(B. Adams, ​“Utah’s death penal­ty costs $1.6M more per inmate,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 15, 2012). See Costs. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Costs.

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