A cost assess­ment pre­pared for the New Mexico leg­is­la­ture pri­or to its vote on repeal­ing the death penal­ty indi­cat­ed some of the mon­ey that would be saved if the bill was passed. The state will save sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars each year, accord­ing to the fis­cal impact report by the Public Defender Department. For exam­ple, in the case of State v. Young, the pub­lic defend­er office expend­ed $1.7 mil­lion. They esti­mat­ed that the total cost to the state would be three times that much when the costs to the pros­e­cu­tion and to the courts are fac­tored in. In the end, the state Supreme Court barred the state from pur­su­ing the death penal­ty fur­ther because insuf­fi­cient resources were being pro­vid­ed for the defense.

Citing just one part of the death penal­ty process, jury selec­tion, the report not­ed, ​“Jury selec­tion is a long, ardu­ous process that poten­tial­ly touch­es on the con­sti­tu­tion­al and reli­gious rights of New Mexicans, and costs at least four times as much as a non-death first-degree mur­der case.”

The report stat­ed that the costs of the death penal­ty impact many depart­ments: ​“The costs of the death penal­ty are borne sys­tem­i­cal­ly, impact­ing the Public Defender Department, the Attorney General’s office, the var­i­ous District Attorney offices, and the tri­al and the appel­late courts.” The state gets almost noth­ing as a result of these high expen­di­tures since ​“only 7% of the cas­es in which the pros­e­cu­tor seeks the death penal­ty end in a death sen­tence. and … 68% of all these con­vic­tions are over­turned on appeal.”

(Fiscal Impact Report to the New Mexico Legislature on HB285-355, Public Defender Department, January 28, 2009) (empha­sis added). See Studies and Costs.

FILING AND DISPOSITION OF DEATH PENALTY CASES
July 1, 1979 — December 31, 2007 — 211 death penal­ty cases filed:

  • Two-hun­dred and three of those cas­es resolved by December 31, 2007.
  • Nine of those resolved cas­es dis­missed before tri­al with­out a conviction.
  • Almost one-half of the resolved cas­es end­ed with a plea bar­gain pre­clud­ing death penalty.
  • Approximately one-half of the resolved cas­es went to trial.
  • About one-fourth of the resolved cas­es pro­ceed­ed to a penalty phase.
  • Juries sen­tenced 15 men to death from 1979 through 2007:

1. One defen­dant died before his appeal was resolved
2. Five com­mut­ed by then-Governor Anaya
3. Five over­turned on direct appeal
4. Two over­turned dur­ing state habeas pro­ceed­ings
5. As of the end of 2007, only two men on death row

(Source: Marcia J. Wilson, ​“The Application of the Death Penalty in New Mexico, July 1979 through December 2007: An Empirical Analysis,” New Mexico Law Review (Spring 2008)).

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