According to a study by the Independent Weekly, North Carolina con­ser­v­a­tive­ly spent at least $36 mil­lion dol­lars by seek­ing the death penal­ty instead of life in prison with­out parole over the past 7 years, just on defense costs. The state’s Indigent Defense Services orga­ni­za­tion said the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty defense was $63,700, and the state sought the death penal­ty 733 times between 2001 and 2008. The aver­age cost of the 1,785 poten­tial­ly cap­i­tal cas­es where the state instead sought life in prison was $14,500. Based on these fig­ures, the state would have saved $49,200 on each of the 733 death penal­ty cas­es, total­ing $36.1 mil­lion, if a life sen­tence was sought instead. This esti­mate is very con­ser­v­a­tive since it does not include the pros­e­cu­tion, death row, appeals, and oth­er addi­tion­al costs found in capital cases. 

The Indigent Defense Services costs were high­er for cap­i­tal cas­es in part because the state requires that cap­i­tal defen­dants have two attor­neys, there is a greater need for expert tes­ti­mo­ny, and there is a sep­a­rate sen­tenc­ing phase. ​“The attor­neys have to treat their cas­es as seri­ous cap­i­tal cas­es, unless they’re told it’s not,” says Thomas Maher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of N.C Indigent Defense Services. ​“The result is, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey is spent on cap­i­tal cas­es, although at the end of the day, dis­trict attor­neys as a group only find a dozen in a year they even think are wor­thy of putting in front of a jury — and of that group, the major­i­ty don’t get death.” Of the 733 defen­dants who faced the death penal­ty, less than 3% (20) received death sen­tences. The paper esti­mat­ed that the cost of the lethal injec­tion sup­plies used in an exe­cu­tion was $168.

(M. Saldana, ​“The high cost of the death penal­ty,” The Independent Weekly, June 24, 2009). See Costs, Studies, and DPIC’s Podcast on Costs.

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