The Death Penalty Information Center has pre­pared a sum­ma­ry of a com­pre­hen­sive cost study of California​’s death penal­ty sys­tem recent­ly pub­lished by fed­er­al Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell. The orig­i­nal study is enti­tled Executing the Will of the Voters?: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion Dollar Death Penalty Debacle, and it was pub­lished in a spe­cial issue of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Using charts, graphs, and per­ti­nent quotes, DPIC’s sum­ma­ry shows how the authors arrived at the $4 bil­lion price tag for the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The sum­ma­ry illus­trates the per­cent­age of costs attrib­ut­able to tri­als, appeals and incar­cer­a­tion, and explains why the sys­tem is so expen­sive. It also pro­vides the leg­isla­tive his­to­ry of the state’s statute and why the authors believe the law may be sub­ject to rever­sal by the courts. The report and sum­ma­ry con­clude with the authors’ rec­om­men­da­tions for sav­ing the state hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by either sharply cur­tail­ing the use of the death penal­ty or doing away with it com­plete­ly. See DPIC’s Summary of the Study or read the entire arti­cle.

(DPIC Summary, post­ed August 5, 2011). See Costs and Studies. Despite the state’s enor­mous expen­di­tures on the death penal­ty, the sys­tem has pro­duced only 13 exe­cu­tions in over 30 years and none in over 5 years. Over 700 peo­ple remain on death row.

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