The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has released two reports on California’s death penal­ty deal­ing with the high costs and arbi­trari­ness of the sys­tem. The report on costs, ​“The Hidden Death Tax,” found that a cap­i­tal tri­al costs coun­ties at least $1.1 mil­lion more than a non-cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al, and that the state spends an addi­tion­al $117 mil­lion a year pur­su­ing the exe­cu­tion of those already on death row. One tri­al alone cost California $10.9 mil­lion. The ACLU writes, ​“coun­ties that send many peo­ple to Death Row are wast­ing resources that could be spent on oth­er coun­ty needs,” such as teach­ers or police offi­cers. The $22 mil­lion spent on 20 death penal­ty tri­als per year could pay for the salaries of 358 police offi­cers or 395 expe­ri­enced teach­ers. Executing all of the peo­ple on death row will cost California an esti­mat­ed $4 bil­lion more than if they were all sen­tenced to die in prison of dis­ease, injury or old age.

The ACLU’s sec­ond study, ​“Death by Geography,” exam­ined the vari­a­tion among California coun­ties in seek­ing the death penal­ty. The study report­ed that 10 coun­ties pro­duced 83% of the 166 death sen­tences from 2000 – 2007. Tulare County, which had the most death sen­tences per capi­ta, issued death sen­tences at 13 times the rate of neigh­bor­ing Fresno County. The ACLU not­ed, ​“The coun­ty bor­der has become the divid­ing line between those sen­tenced to exe­cu­tion and those sen­tenced to per­ma­nent incar­cer­a­tion.” Factors such as homi­cide rates and pop­u­la­tion den­si­ties did not cor­re­late with death sentencing.

The ACLU’s reports were pre­sent­ed at the final hear­ing of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice on March 28. California cur­rent­ly leads the nation with 669 death row inmates and has exe­cut­ed 13 inmates since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed there in 1977.
(​“Death sen­tences vary by coun­ty, study finds,” by Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2008). Copies of the reports are avail­able here. See Studies, Costs, and Arbitrariness.

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