A new study of California​’s death penal­ty found that tax­pay­ers have spent more than $4 bil­lion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since it was rein­stat­ed in 1978, or $308 mil­lion for each of the 13 exe­cu­tions car­ried out since then. The study, con­duct­ed by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell esti­mat­ed that cap­i­tal tri­als, enhanced secu­ri­ty on death row and legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for cap­i­tal defen­dants add $184 mil­lion to California’s bud­get annu­al­ly. California has the largest death row in the coun­try and has not had an exe­cu­tion since 2006 due to legal chal­lenges to its lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. The report’s authors con­clud­ed that unless pro­found (and more cost­ly) reforms are made, the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem will con­tin­ue to exist most­ly in the­o­ry while exact­ing an unten­able cost. Judge Alarcon and Professor Mitchell fore­cast the cost of main­tain­ing the death penal­ty will increase to $9 bil­lion by 2030, when the state’s death row will like­ly grow to well over 1,000 inmates. Michael Millman, Executive Director of the California Appellate Project, said more than 300 inmates on death row are await­ing to be appoint­ed attor­neys for their state appeals and fed­er­al habeas cor­pus peti­tions. Millman said there are few­er than 100 attor­neys in the state who are qual­i­fied to han­dle cap­i­tal cas­es because the work is dispir­it­ing and demand­ing, and the com­pen­sa­tion inad­e­quate. Read more of the report’s find­ings below.

Additional find­ings from the forth­com­ing study are as follows:

  • The state’s death row pris­on­ers cost $184 mil­lion more per year than those sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
  • A death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.
  • The least expen­sive death penal­ty tri­al costs $1.1 mil­lion more than the most expen­sive life-without-parole case.
  • Jury selec­tion in a cap­i­tal case runs three to four weeks longer and costs $200,000 more than in life-without-parole cases.
  • The height­ened secu­ri­ty prac­tices man­dat­ed for death row inmates added $100,663 to the cost of incar­cer­at­ing each cap­i­tal pris­on­er last year, for a total of $72 million.

The authors out­lined three pos­si­ble direc­tions for the future: ful­ly pre­serve the sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at an addi­tion­al cost of $85 mil­lion for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the num­ber of death penal­ty-eli­gi­ble crimes for an annu­al sav­ings of $55 mil­lion; or abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and save tax­pay­ers about $1 bil­lion every five or six years. 

(C. Williams, ​“Death penal­ty costs California $184 mil­lion a year, study says,” Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2011). The report will be released next week in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. See Costs and Studies on the death penalty.

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