Costs

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 8^th over­all in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the United States. 

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.