Records Disclose Taxpayers Picked Up a Nearly Million Dollar Price Tag for Each Federal Execution

The Federal Bureau of Prisons spent near­ly $4.7 mil­lion dol­lars on the first five exe­cu­tions car­ried out by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in July and August 2020, accord­ing to redact­ed gov­ern­ment finan­cial records recent­ly obtained by the ACLU.

The government’s January 2021 dis­clo­sures in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act law­suit, detailed the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high price tag absorbed by tax­pay­ers as a result of the administration’s choice to con­duct exe­cu­tions dur­ing the worst glob­al pan­dem­ic in more than a cen­tu­ry. With an aver­age annu­al fed­er­al incar­cer­a­tion cost of $37,449.00, the bur­den to U.S. tax­pay­ers for each exe­cu­tion exceed­ed the price tag of incar­cer­at­ing a fed­er­al pris­on­er for 25 years. 

The bulk of the expen­di­tures were spent on pay­ments relat­ing to assem­bling, trans­port­ing, and hous­ing mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tion teams. The BOP paid round-trip trav­el and relat­ed expens­es to bring dozens of staff to Terre Haute from more than 20 out-of-state pris­ons for train­ing, to per­form dai­ly func­tions nor­mal­ly under­tak­en by Terre Haute staff, and to par­tic­i­pate in the exe­cu­tions. The doc­u­ments iden­ti­fied $3.1 mil­lion in uniden­ti­fied costs relat­ed to the new exe­cu­tion staff. BOP spent $107,000 on hotels for the wit­ness­es and out-of-state staff.

Cassandra Stubbs, the direc­tor of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said the expen­di­tures reflect­ed ​“a gross mis­place­ment of resources.” Pointing to heavy redac­tions in the dis­closed record, she said that the near­ly mil­lion dol­lar per exe­cu­tion price tag like­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­states the actu­al costs. ​“The gov­ern­ment is doing so much of this in the dark, so we don’t always get to see the full weight of what it’s up to,” Stubbs said. ​“They’re will­ing to go to extra­or­di­nary lengths in terms of spend­ing our mon­ey and then hid­ing the foot­prints of it.”

BOP offi­cials declined to answer media ques­tions on the payment records.

In a court fil­ing in November, BOP’s region­al coun­sel Rick Winter indi­cat­ed that teams involv­ing more than 40 employ­ees from around the coun­try would be assem­bled for the exe­cu­tions, remov­ing them from their day-today func­tions, ​“which include a wide range of cor­rec­tion­al and admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions with­in the BOP.” He indi­cat­ed that the Bureau brings anoth­er 50 mem­bers of BOP Special Operations Response Teams and Disturbance Control Teams from across the coun­try to Terre Haute for enhanced secu­ri­ty dur­ing the exe­cu­tions. BOP also paid pri­vate con­trac­tors to pro­vide unspec­i­fied ser­vices in con­nec­tion with the executions. 

The exe­cu­tion costs includ­ed the increased expens­es for secu­ri­ty and run­ning the rest of the prison while the exe­cu­tions were tak­ing place. A lack of prison staff at Terre Haute, which Stubbs attrib­uted to the pan­dem­ic, meant that guards had to be pulled away from their usu­al duties dur­ing the exe­cu­tions, send­ing the prison into semi-lock­down. During these lock­downs, alter­na­tive brown-bag meals were pro­vid­ed to the around 2,600 pris­on­ers at an increased cost.

While BOP paid for staffing costs and trav­el and hous­ing expens­es for the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims, it did not make sim­i­lar expen­di­tures for the fam­i­lies of the indi­gent pris­on­ers who were being exe­cut­ed. Lisa Brown, whose son Christopher Vialva was exe­cut­ed in September, told The Marshall Project, ​“What they pay for on our side is the ship­ping of the body of our loved ones, the embalm­ing, a suit for them to wear and the cas­ket.” Brown was forced to take out a loan to be able to be present to sup­port her son at his exe­cu­tion, she said. Her con­gre­ga­tion and her son’s friends pooled togeth­er dona­tions to pay for her gas and hotel room. After her son’s death, she said that ​“We feel that they go out of their way to not accommodate us.”

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has been the only U.S. juris­dic­tion to car­ry out exe­cu­tions since ear­ly July 2020, and it, like the two states that car­ried out exe­cu­tions ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic, expe­ri­enced a COVID-19 out­break fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tions. ​“There was no need to restart exe­cu­tions and cer­tain­ly no need to car­ry out so many exe­cu­tions dur­ing a pan­dem­ic when each exe­cu­tion brings togeth­er and pos­es an enor­mous risk to so many cir­cles of peo­ple,” Stubbs said. 

Stubbs crit­i­cized the administration’s pri­or­i­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, say­ing they rep­re­sent­ed ​“a gross mis­place­ment of resources at a time when there are staffing short­ages, crises and lack of per­son­nel because so many BOP staff are becom­ing sick.” Instead of pro­tect­ing pub­lic health, Stubbs said, BOP decid­ed ​“that they’re going to dou­ble down and pull des­per­ate­ly need­ed staff to car­ry out exe­cu­tions and poten­tial­ly make more indi­vid­u­als sick and unable to go to work — and to do it all on the taxpayer dime.”

If the cost of car­ry­ing out the eight oth­er fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in November and December 2020 and in January 2021 are com­pa­ra­ble to the first five exe­cu­tions, the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions will have cost tax­pay­ers at least $12.2 mil­lion dol­lars. That fig­ure does not include the cost of the exten­sive lit­i­ga­tion over the legal­i­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the exe­cu­tions in each of the cases.