
DPIC Report: The 2% Death Penalty
How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All

DPIC Report: Smart on Crime
Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis
Overview
The death penalty is a moral issue for some and a policy issue for others. However, it is also a government program with related costs and possible benefits. Many people assume that the state saves money by employing the death penalty since an executed person no longer requires confinement, health care, and related expenses. But in the modern application of capital punishment, that assumption has been proven wrong.
The death penalty is far more expensive than a system utilizing life-without-parole sentences as an alternative punishment. Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case, and the relative rarity of executions. Most cases in which the death penalty is sought do not end up with the death penalty being imposed. And once a death sentence is imposed, the most likely outcome of the case is that the conviction or death sentence will be overturned in the courts. Most defendants who are sentenced to death essentially end up spending life in prison, but at a highly inflated cost because the death penalty was involved in the process.
The Issue
How much the death penalty actually costs and how that compares to a system in which a life sentence is the maximum punishment can only be determined by sophisticated studies, usually at the state level. Many such studies have been conducted and their conclusions are consistent: the death penalty imposes a net cost on the taxpayers compared to life without parole. The question is whether the assumed benefits of the death penalty are worth its costs and whether other systems might provide similar benefits at less cost. The assessments of law enforcement experts are particularly relevant in identifying what expenditures are most effective in reducing crime.
What DPIC Offers
This section contains summaries of each of the main cost studies on the death penalty and links to many of the entire studies. In addition, DPIC has prepared a number of reports that relate to the question of costs and to the opinions of police chiefs and other experts in this field.
Why is the death penalty so expensive?
- Legal costs: Almost all people who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign public defenders or court-appointed lawyers to represent them (the accepted practice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well.
- Pre-trial costs: Capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases and take longer to go to trial. Experts will probably be needed on forensic evidence, mental health, and the background and life history of the defendant. County taxpayers pick up the costs of added security and longer pre-trial detention.
- Jury selection: Because of the need to question jurors thoroughly on their views about the death penalty, jury selection in capital cases is much more time consuming and expensive.
- Trial: Death-penalty trials can last more than four times longer than non-capital trials, requiring juror and attorney compensation, in addition to court personnel and other related costs.
- Incarceration: Most death rows involve solitary confinement in a special facility. These require more security and other accommodations as the prisoners are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells.
- Appeals: To minimize mistakes, every prisoner is entitled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at taxpayers’ expense. These appeals are essential because some inmates have come within hours of execution before evidence was uncovered proving their innocence.
News & Developments
News
Mar 27, 2023
COSTS: Louisiana Spent $7.7 Million on Death Penalty Defense in One Year. It Hasn’t Executed Anyone in 13 Years

According to the Louisiana Public Defender’s Office, the state spent $7.7 million on the legal representation of defendants in death penalty cases just in 2022. That total does not include the costs of prosecutors, judges, and other criminal justice personnel. The state has not carried out an execution in 13 years and has had only one execution in the past 21 years. State officials have attributed the most recent execution delays to difficulties obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injection and has stopped setting execution dates.
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Jul 18, 2023
Ohio Joins Fifteen Other States Without an Execution in 5 Years
Today marks the five-year anniversary of Ohio’s last execution, which took place on July 18, 2018. Ohio now joins 15 other states without an execution in the past five years. Although there is no formal moratorium, Governor Mike DeWine has issued several reprieves due to concerns about the lethal injection protocol and the difficulty the state has had obtaining lethal injection drugs. Ohio has executed 56 people in the modern death penalty era, placing it 8th overall in the number of executions in the United States.
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Jul 06, 2023
Execution Costs in Idaho Take Center Stage with New Firing Squad Law
A bill that Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law in March 2023, authorizing the use of the firing squad as a method of execution, went into effect on July 1, 2023. This law grants the director of Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) the authority to determine if lethal injection is available and, if deemed unavailable, to carry out the execution by firing squad.
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Apr 17, 2023
Ohio’s 2022 Capital Crimes Report Calls State Death Penalty a ‘Broken System’
On March 31, 2023, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released the state’s annual Capital Crimes report for 2022. According to the report, the average time prisoners spend on the state’s death row before an execution date is set is nearly 21 years – a number that has consistently increased with each annual report. Even when an execution date is set, a prisoner “is more likely to die of suicide or natural causes than as a result of execution,” due to the ongoing difficulty in obtaining lethal injection drugs. The report…
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Sep 08, 2022
Commentary: Indiana Death Penalty — Expensive, Unreliable, and Withering on the Vine
With no executions in more than a decade and no new death sentences since 2014, Indiana’s costly death penalty has reached a “de facto moratorium,” says Indiana Capital Chronicle editor-in-chief Niki Kelly. “[M]aybe it’s time to be intellectually honest and admit Indiana no longer has the death penalty,” Kelly wrote in a September 2, 2022 commentary.
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Jun 24, 2022
Idaho Falls Will Pay $11.7 Million to Exoneree Coerced Into False Confession by Threat of the Death Penalty
The city of Idaho Falls, Idaho has agreed to a settlement of $11.7 million with an exoneree who spent 20 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit.
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Feb 21, 2022
56 Prosecutors Issue Joint Statement Calling for End of ‘Broken’ Death Penalty
Calling capital punishment in the U.S. “broken,” 56 elected prosecutors from across the country have issued a joint statement urging systemic changes to end the death penalty nationwide. As an initial step, the prosecutors pledged to not seek the death penalty “against people with intellectual disabilities, post-traumatic stress disorder, histories of traumatic brain injury, or other intellectual or cognitive challenges that diminish their ability to fully understand and regulate their own actions.”
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Jan 12, 2022
DPIC Podcast: Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton on Bringing Fairness and Equity to Criminal Legal Reform and Ending the Death Penalty
In the January 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Contra Costa County, California District Attorney Diana Becton (pictured), speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the rise in reform prosecutors across the country, the inherent flaws in capital punishment that led her to work alongside other reform prosecutors to end the death penalty, and her efforts as district attorney to bring fairness and equity to the criminal legal system.
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Nov 23, 2021
California Penal Code Committee Recommends Repealing State’s Death Penalty
The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, created by the California state legislature to review the state’s criminal laws, has issued a report unanimously recommending that the state repeal its death penalty. The six-member committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers intermediate recommendations for reducing the size of California’s nearly 700-person death row — the largest of any state in the country.
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Sep 15, 2021
Four Utah Prosecutors Urge Legislature to Repeal and Replace Death Penalty
Four Utah district attorneys, representing counties that comprise 57.5% of the state’s population, have urged the state legislature and Utah Governor Spencer Cox to enact legislation to repeal and replace Utah’s death penalty.
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Jul 15, 2021
Hidden Costs: Liability Judgments for Wrongful Capital Prosecutions Cost Taxpayers in Death-Penalty States Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Studies have consistently found that a system of criminal law in which the death penalty is available as a punishment is far more expensive than a system in which the most severe punishment is life without parole or a long prison term. Now, as the number of murder exonerations mounts across the United States, a previously hidden cost is emerging: the cost of liability for police and prosecutorial misconduct associated with the wrongful use or threatened use of the death penalty.
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