Study Reveals Maryland’s Death Penalty is Costing Taxpayers $186 Million
A study released on March 6, 2008 found that Maryland tax­pay­ers are pay­ing $186 mil­lion dol­lars for a sys­tem that has result­ed in five exe­cu­tions since 1978 when the state reen­act­ed the death penal­ty. That would be equiv­a­lent to $37.2 per exe­cu­tion. The study, pre­pared by the Urban Institute, esti­mates that the aver­age cost to Maryland tax­pay­ers for reach­ing a sin­gle death sen­tence is $3 mil­lion — $1.9 mil­lion more than the cost of a non-death penal­ty case. The study exam­ined 162 cap­i­tal cas­es that were pros­e­cut­ed between 1978 and 1999 and found that seek­ing the death penal­ty in those cas­es cost $186 mil­lion more than what those cas­es would have cost had the death penal­ty not been sought. At every phase of a case, accord­ing to the study, cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es cost more than non-cap­i­tal murder cases.

The 106 cas­es in which a death sen­tence was sought but not hand­ed down in Maryland cost the state an addi­tion­al $71 mil­lion. Those costs were incurred sim­ply to seek the death penal­ty where the ulti­mate out­come was a life or long-term prison sen­tence.

Rick Abbruzzese, a spokesman for Gov. Martin O’Malley, not­ed, ​“This is a com­pelling argu­ment against the death penal­ty — the enor­mous costs to the state’s tax­pay­ers.” The costs report comes as Maryland law­mak­ers are debat­ing whether to repeal the death penal­ty and hold­ing hear­ings in Annapolis.

What the study found:

  • The death penal­ty has cost Maryland at least $186 mil­lion. This is state spend­ing over and above what Maryland would have spent had there been no death penalty.
  • The cost of a sin­gle death sen­tence in Maryland is approx­i­mate­ly three times high­er – or $1.9 mil­lion more – than the costs of a com­pa­ra­ble non-death penal­ty case, even tak­ing into account the costs of long-term incarceration.
  • The cost for pros­e­cu­tors to seek but not get a death sen­tence is $670,000 more ($1.8 mil­lion total) for a sin­gle case than for a com­pa­ra­ble non-death case – for the same out­come of a life or long-term prison sentence.
  • When the death penal­ty is imposed, the court costs alone jump to almost sev­en times high­er ($1.7 mil­lion com­pared to $250,000).

(“Death penal­ty costs Md. more than life term,” by Jennifer McMenamin, The Baltimore Sun, March 6, 2008). See Costs. Read the entire study here.

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