What to Know: Costs and the Death Penalty

DPI’s ​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. This install­ment looks at the costs asso­ci­at­ed with pur­suit of death sen­tences and executions. 

Why it mat­ters: The ques­tion at the heart of this issue is whether the assumed ben­e­fits of the death penal­ty are worth its costs and whether oth­er sys­tems might pro­vide sim­i­lar ben­e­fits at less cost. 

Key Facts: 

• According to recent esti­mates, the death penal­ty costs tax­pay­ers 2.5 to 5 times more than life imprisonment. 
• Studies have con­sis­tent­ly con­firmed cap­i­tal cas­es take longer and incur much high­er tri­al and appeal costs than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. In a recent case, a Texas dis­trict attor­ney aban­doned a six-year quest for the death penal­ty before the start of a tri­al on state charges after spend­ing $6 million. 
• Compensation for wrong­ful con­vic­tion can also be high in death penal­ty cas­es: Glynn Simmons received $7.15 mil­lion in con­nec­tion with his exon­er­a­tion in 2024. 
• Incarcerating peo­ple who are sen­tenced to death requires 2 – 3 times more resources than average prisoners. 
• Non-cap­i­tal tri­als do not involve the addi­tion­al expense asso­ci­at­ed with executions. 
• Costs esti­mates for states seek­ing to rein­state the death penal­ty are considerable. 

Overview: What Makes the Death Penalty so Expensive?  

Studies con­sis­tent­ly show that the death penal­ty is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive than life impris­on­ment, with recent esti­mates around the coun­try rang­ing from 2.5 to 5 times the cost. Factors con­tribut­ing to high­er costs in cap­i­tal cas­es include the need for a larg­er, unique­ly qual­i­fied legal defense team; more com­plex pre­tri­al pro­ce­dures, tri­als, appeals and retri­als; addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty and staff dur­ing tri­al and incar­cer­a­tion; com­pen­sa­tion for wrong­ful con­vic­tions; and expen­sive drugs and mate­ri­als for exe­cu­tion. Trial costs can be fur­ther com­pound­ed when pros­e­cu­tors decide to pur­sue anoth­er death sen­tence even after their own mis­con­duct has result­ed in an order for a new trial. 

Studies Confirm: Capital Cases Take Longer and Incur Much Higher Trial and Appeal Costs Than Non-Capital Cases 

How much the death penal­ty actu­al­ly costs in time and mon­ey and how that com­pares to a sys­tem in which a life sen­tence is the max­i­mum pun­ish­ment has been deter­mined by many sophis­ti­cat­ed research stud­ies, most at the state lev­el. The con­clu­sions are con­sis­tent: cap­i­tal tri­als are more lengthy and expen­sive than non-capital trials. 

Death penal­ty cas­es are unques­tion­ably more time inten­sive. Studies show cap­i­tal cas­es take any­where from twice to six times longer in court than oth­er homi­cide cas­es. One study found the time from charg­ing a defen­dant to final sen­tenc­ing in death cas­es took almost four times longer than in non-cap­i­tal cas­es (1,902 days ver­sus 526 days). State supreme court jus­tices par­tic­i­pat­ing in a study by the Kansas Judicial Council report­ed devot­ing 20 times as many hours to write the lead opin­ion for a death penal­ty case, com­pared to a non-death penalty case. 

Longer cas­es nec­es­sar­i­ly result in high­er costs. A 2021 report by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission eval­u­at­ed both quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive stud­ies from a vari­ety of states and found that death penal­ty cas­es cost between 2.5 and 5 times more than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. According to the report, in some states, cap­i­tal cas­es require between $1 mil­lion and $3 mil­lion more per case than cas­es seek­ing life impris­on­ment. A 2025 review by the non­par­ti­san Legislative Services Agency com­piled in response to House Bill 1030, found that try­ing a death penal­ty case in Indiana costs eight times more than a case seek­ing to impose life with­out parole ($290,022 ver­sus $36,173). 

Trials in which pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty also incur high­er legal costs than cas­es with­out the death penal­ty because of the inten­sive pros­e­cu­tion and defense efforts required to inves­ti­gate and present the case. In a doc­u­ment pre­pared for the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture in 2019, Damon Preston, the Public Advocate of Kentucky, not­ed that cap­i­tal cas­es typ­i­cal­ly involve two to three attor­neys dur­ing the entire dura­tion of the case, as well as expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als such as cap­i­tal inves­ti­ga­tors, mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ists that must inves­ti­gate the defendant’s life his­to­ry, and oth­ers. Prosecution expens­es are sim­i­lar­ly high, but a break­down of costs is not typ­i­cal­ly made public. 

The gen­er­al­ly high cost of the death penal­ty is com­pound­ed when pros­e­cu­tors decide to pur­sue anoth­er death sen­tence — some­times even after their own mis­con­duct has result­ed in an order for a new tri­al. In 2025 Death Penalty Information Center ana­lyzed nine indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death four or more times for the same crime who were per­ma­nent­ly removed from death row. The analy­sis found the indi­vid­u­als col­lec­tive­ly expe­ri­enced at least 43 cap­i­tal tri­als or sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings — only for juries, courts, or pros­e­cu­tors to ulti­mate­ly deter­mine that life in prison was the appro­pri­ate sen­tence.¹

Compensation for Wrongful Convictions Also Drives Up the Cost of Death Penalty Cases 

Not every­one sen­tenced to death is guilty, and com­pen­sat­ing those who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed adds anoth­er lay­er of expense to the cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. At least 202 indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death in 30 states have been exon­er­at­ed since 1973, with as many as 12 exon­er­a­tions in a giv­en year (2003). DPI has iden­ti­fied anoth­er 21 indi­vid­u­als who were exe­cut­ed where there is strong evi­dence of their inno­cence. At least 20 more have been declared inno­cent posthu­mous­ly since 2000. 

In most of these cas­es, those wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed seek com­pen­sa­tion for their time on death row. Given the loss of lib­er­ty, rep­u­ta­tion, and oppor­tu­ni­ty for employ­ment, com­pen­sa­tion amounts are jus­ti­fi­ably high. According to a fis­cal note com­plied by the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) to accom­pa­ny a bill intro­duced in 2025 that sought to com­pen­sate both cap­i­tal­ly and non-cap­i­tal­ly-charged exon­er­at­ed indi­vid­u­als, the cost to com­pen­sate an indi­vid­ual for ​“past erro­neous con­vic­tions” would be $937,5001. This esti­mate is low for cap­i­tal­ly charged indi­vid­u­als. In 2024, the city of Edmond, Oklahoma agreed to pay $7.15 mil­lion to Glynn Simmons, the longest-incar­cer­at­ed inno­cent per­son in the United States. 

Incarcerating People Who are Sentenced to Death Requires 2 – 3 Times More Resources 

Many states’ death rows are housed in spe­cial, high-secu­ri­ty facil­i­ties, and indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death are often in soli­tary con­fine­ment. According to an Urban Institute Justice Policy Center research report, super­max pris­ons are 2 – 3 times cost­lier to con­struct and oper­ate than max­i­mum secu­ri­ty pris­ons due to sin­gle-capac­i­ty prison cells and enhanced secu­ri­ty require­ments. In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, such as Kansas, where indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death are instead placed in admin­is­tra­tive seg­re­ga­tion instead of a sep­a­rate death row, the cost of hous­ing pris­on­ers dou­bles, at a cost of $49,380 each year to house death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers ver­sus $24,690 to house pris­on­ers in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Florida’s Broward County jail report­ed spend­ing more than $2.5 mil­lion to house and super­vise Nikolas Cruz dur­ing his cap­i­tal tri­al in which he was ulti­mate­ly sen­tenced to life without parole. 

Non-Capital Trials Do Not Involve the Additional Expenses Associated With Executions 

The cost of the bar­bi­tu­rate pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drug com­mon­ly used to per­form lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions, is extreme­ly high. In October 2025, Indiana Governor Mike Braun dis­closed the state had spent $1.175 mil­lion on drug sup­plies over the past two years. Between 2017 and 2020, Tennessee report­ed­ly spent $95,000 on lethal injec­tion drugs per exe­cu­tion. According to records obtained by The Guardian, in October 2020, Arizona spent $1.5 mil­lion on 1,000 one-gram vials of pen­to­bar­bi­tal. According to the same report­ing by The Guardian, Harvard med­ical school lec­tur­er Prashant Yadav esti­mates that some states pay as much as a 1,000% markup on exe­cu­tion drugs in com­par­i­son to the typ­i­cal mar­ket price, due to lack of regulation. 

Idaho is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent — yet still cost­ly — approach to exe­cu­tions. A 2023 law passed by Governor Brad Little autho­rized the use of the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion. The law includ­ed an esti­mat­ed cost of $750,000 to ren­o­vate Idaho’s Maximum Security Institution to make it suit­able for this new exe­cu­tion method, in line with leg­is­la­tion passed in 2025 mak­ing this the state’s pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion, effec­tive July 1, 2026. 

The Cost of Reinstating the Death Penalty is Also Considerable  

No state that has abol­ished the death penal­ty in the mod­ern era (since 1973) has rein­stat­ed it sub­se­quent­ly, but in some states, leg­is­la­tors con­tin­ue to try to do so. Over the past two leg­isla­tive ses­sions, West Virginia has con­sid­ered two bills, SB 1037 and SB 264 that pro­pose to rein­state the death penal­ty, which was abol­ished in the state 60 years ago. Estimates that accom­pa­nied both bills sug­gest the cost of rein­state­ment would be con­sid­er­able. The West Virginia Division of Corrections (WVDOC) and Rehabilitation esti­mates $25 mil­lion for new facil­i­ties (“a 75 bed unit for Death Row inmates”) and at least $1.4 mil­lion for new per­son­nel and train­ing and hous­ing of pris­on­ers (with infla­tion dri­ving those costs ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er”), plus an addi­tion­al $200,000 in annu­al costs to hire an expe­ri­enced attor­ney to han­dle death penal­ty cas­es for the WVDOC, and an unspec­i­fied amount for ​“an exe­cu­tion cham­ber to be con­struct­ed.” The WVDOC esti­mat­ed that ​“It would cost the agency approx­i­mate­ly $1,418,080.00 based on today’s cost per inmate to house and car­ry out the exe­cu­tion of sen­tence.” The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia esti­mat­ed that it would cost rough­ly $117,000 for an addi­tion­al staff attor­ney to handle appeals.