On December 4, the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty held a hear­ing in Concord to exam­ine the cost of the death penaty in the state. The twen­ty-two mem­ber Commission, led by retired Judge Walter Murphy, has been charged with con­sid­er­ing sev­er­al issues, includ­ing whether the death penal­ty is a deter­rent, if it is arbi­trar­i­ly applied, and if it cov­ers the appro­pri­ate crimes. The Commission is con­sid­er­ing alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the relat­ed ques­tion of whether the state spends more on a death penal­ty case than on a first-degree homi­cide case result­ing in a life sen­tence. The state spent more than $5.3 mil­lion on two cap­i­tal cas­es last year, and has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1939. Deputy Attorney General Orville Fitch told the com­mit­tee that his office spent $1.6 mil­lion while pros­e­cut­ing Michael Addison, who was ulti­mate­ly sen­tenced to death. The state spent an addi­tion­al $1.2 mil­lion for the pub­lic defend­er who rep­re­sent­ed Addison, a large sum when com­pared to the $70,000-$100,000 it costs to defend a typ­i­cal first-degree case. Fitch also tes­ti­fied that his office spent $2.4 mil­lion pros­e­cut­ing anoth­er defen­dant in a mur­der-for-hire case, in which a life sen­tence was returned.

Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, was also invit­ed to tes­ti­fy before the Commission. He not­ed that some states have spent over $30 mil­lion per exe­cu­tion, when all costs of the death penal­ty are tak­en into account. ​“I think one of the most com­mon mis­per­cep­tions is the notion that (the death penal­ty) saves mon­ey because the exe­cut­ed defen­dant does­n’t have to be cared for at the state’s expense. Sums like these are caus­ing offi­cials to rethink the wis­dom of such expen­di­tures,” he said.

(A. Timmins, ​“Counting costs in death penal­ty cas­es,” Concord Monitor, December 05, 2009). See also Costs; read DPIC’s lat­est report, ​“Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis.”

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