A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Virginian-Pilot called for elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty as a good way to address the $3.5 bil­lion gap in the state’s bud­get. ​“Doing away with the option of a death sen­tence makes sense on sev­er­al lev­els,” the edi­tors wrote. ​“It would save the state from hav­ing to pay fees asso­ci­at­ed with lengthy tri­als and years of appeals. It would end the agony of repeat­ed court hear­ings for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims. It would elim­i­nate the four per­pet­u­al­ly under­staffed cap­i­tal defend­er’s offices, whose attor­neys han­dle appeals auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed when peo­ple are sen­tenced to death row.” The paper sug­gests that the $2 mil­lion spent per exe­cu­tion could be bet­ter put toward edu­ca­tion, pub­lic safe­ty and crime pre­ven­tion efforts. ​“Is the cost of an exe­cu­tion real­ly worth it when, for less than half the price, we could put a killer in a prison cell, locked away from soci­ety for life?” Read the full editorial below.

Is an exe­cu­tion worth the price?
The Virginian-Pilot

A man­ag­er of a state agency has a com­mon-sense solu­tion for sav­ing Virginia a few mil­lion dol­lars in this grim econ­o­my: Sentence killers — those found to have com­mit­ted pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der — to spend the rest of their lives in prison, with no chance ever of getting out.

Doing away with the option of a death sen­tence makes sense on sev­er­al lev­els. It would save the state from hav­ing to pay fees asso­ci­at­ed with lengthy tri­als and years of appeals. It would end the agony of repeat­ed court hear­ings for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims. It would elim­i­nate the four per­pet­u­al­ly under­staffed cap­i­tal defend­er’s offices, whose attor­neys han­dle appeals auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed when peo­ple are sen­tenced to death row.

When pros­e­cu­tors decide not to pur­sue a pun­ish­ment of death, defen­dants are more like­ly to plead guilty, The Pilot’s Shawn Day report­ed this week. Even if defen­dants go to tri­al, the court costs, borne by tax­pay­ers, are much less expen­sive, the hear­ings less like­ly to be delayed.

At the moment, more than a dozen cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es are under way across Virginia. The fees for the defen­dants’ legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing a cap­i­tal tri­al — $150 per hour out of court, $200 per hour in court — rou­tine­ly reach six fig­ures, and that does­n’t include oth­er court costs, includ­ing the prosecution’s.

Given the $3.5 bil­lion gap in the state’s bud­get, David Baugh, who has man­aged the Richmond-area cap­i­tal defend­er’s office for 18 months, told Day that Virginia ​“ought to give seri­ous thought to a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty until the bud­get gets straight.”

A mora­to­ri­um would be a good start. Eliminating the penal­ty alto­geth­er would be bet­ter. Besides oth­er valid rea­sons for end­ing the prac­tice, includ­ing the most com­pelling — that it would keep the state from killing some­one lat­er found to be inno­cent — get­ting rid of the penal­ty would free up mon­ey at a time the state is see­ing so many needs.

If law­mak­ers won’t lis­ten to the moral argu­ments for abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty, they should con­sid­er the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits. For what it costs to exe­cute one per­son — in North Carolina, the most recent esti­mate is more than $2 mil­lion — Virginia could edu­cate hun­dreds of chil­dren. It could fill pot­holes. It could shore up pub­lic safe­ty and crime prevention efforts.

Is the cost of an exe­cu­tion real­ly worth it when, for less than half the price, we could put a killer in a prison cell, locked away from soci­ety for life?

(“Is an exe­cu­tion worth the price?,” The Virginian-Pilot, December 11, 2009). See also Costs and Editorials.

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