
One of the most common myths about the death penalty is that it costs less than sentencing someone to spend the rest of their life in a maximum security prison, because many assume that the state saves money when an executed person no longer requires confinement in prison, health care, or related expenses.
But this assumption has been repeatedly proven to be wrong.
Several factors contribute to the high cost of the death penalty, including prosecution and defense costs at trial, high security, the cost of incarceration at a special death row and costs associated with execution. This financial burden falls on local taxpayers.
Fact: Capital cases take longer and incur much higher trial costs than non-capital cases.
Numerous studies show that capital trials are more lengthy and expensive than non-capital cases. A 2014 Kansas Judicial Council study found death penalty cases were consistently more time-intensive than non-death penalty cases. According to the study, capital cases average 40 days in court, while capital-eligible cases where the death penalty was not sought averaged just under 17 days. State supreme court justices participating in the study reported devoting 20 times as many hours to write the lead opinion for a death penalty case as compared to a non-death penalty case. The Kansas study found that even capital cases that result in plea agreements take longer when the death penalty is threatened, taking an average of 13.5 days compared to 8.8 days.
A 2013 University of Denver Criminal Law Review study found Colorado death penalty cases require six times as many days in court than non-death penalty cases, averaging 147.6 days and 24.5 days of in-court time respectively. When evaluating the entire legal process¾from charging a defendant to final sentencing¾the study found that death cases took almost four times longer (1,902 days for capital cases versus 526 days for non-capital cases).
Longer cases result in higher costs. The Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s 2021 report evaluated both quantitative and qualitative studies from a variety of states and found that death penalty cases cost between 2.5 and 5 times more than non-capital cases. In some states, capital cases require between $1 million and $3 million more per case than cases seeking life imprisonment.
Trials in which prosecutors seek the death penalty also incur higher legal costs than cases without the death penalty because of the intensive prosecution and defense efforts required to investigate and present the case. In a document prepared for the Kentucky legislature in 2019, Damon Preston, the Public Advocate of Kentucky, noted that capital cases typically involve two to three attorneys during the entire duration of the case, as well as experienced professionals such as capital investigators, mitigation specialists that must investigate the defendant’s life history, and others. Prosecution expenses are similarly high, but a breakdown of costs is not typically made public. In contrast, non-capital cases usually appoint only one defense attorney with a second attorney sometimes added during trial and one investigator, with limited use of other experts. A cost comparison of attorney, expert, court staff, and jury-related expenses undertaken by the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio between two murder cases, one involving the death penalty and one not, found costs involving the death penalty were $267,875, compared to the non-death-penalty case, which were $19,365.
Fact: Incarcerating people who are sentenced to death requires more resources.
Many states’ death rows are housed in special, high-security facilities, and individuals sentenced to death are often in solitary confinement. According to an Urban Institute Justice Policy Center research report, supermax prisons are 2 – 3 times costlier to construct and operate than maximum security prisons due to single-capacity prison cells and enhanced security requirements. In other situations, such as Kansas, where individuals sentenced to death are instead placed in administrative segregation instead of a separate death row, the cost of housing prisoners doubles, at a cost of $49,380 each year to house death-sentenced prisoners versus $24,690 to house prisoners in general population.
Fact: Non-capital trials do not involve the additional expenses associated with executions.
The cost of the barbiturate pentobarbital, the drug commonly used to perform lethal injection executions, is extremely high. According to records obtained by The Guardian, in October 2020, Arizona spent $1.5 million on 1,000 one-gram vials of pentobarbital. Under Arizona’s execution protocol, five grams of the drug are required to be administered per execution, costing the state $7,500 each. These costs are significantly higher in other states, with Tennessee reportedly spending $95,000 on lethal injection drugs per execution between 2017 and 2020, and Missouri spending an average of $16,000 per execution between 2015 and 2020. According to reporting by the Indiana Capital Chronicle, in late 2024, the Indiana Department of Correction spent $900,000 on pentobarbital with a 90-day shelf-life in preparation for the execution of Joseph Corcoran. In light of this cost, Indiana Governor Mike Braun has said he does not intend to renew the state’s supply. According to reporting by The Guardian, Harvard medical school lecturer Prashant Yadav estimates that some states pay as much as a 1,000% markup on execution drugs in comparison to the typical market price, due to lack of regulation.
Idaho is taking a different — yet still costly — approach to executions. A 2023 law passed by Governor Brad Little authorized the use of the firing squad as a method of execution. The law included an estimated cost of $750,000 to renovate Idaho’s Maximum Security Institution to make it suitable for this new execution method.