DPI Series: Facts About the Death Penalty — Does the Death Penalty Cost Less Than Life Without Parole?

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.