To execute or not: A question of cost?



The Associated Press
Friday, March 6, 2009
After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after
long, twisted journeys to the nation's highest court and back, the
death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having
nothing to do with right or wrong:

Money.

Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute
them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of
dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling
recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits.

So an increasing number of them are considering abolishing capital
punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of
financial necessity.

"It's 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,"
though most Americans believe the opposite, said Donald McCartin, a
former California jurist known as "The Hanging Judge of Orange
County" for sending nine men to death row.

Deep into retirement, he lost his faith in an eye for an eye and now
speaks against it. What changed a mind so set on the ultimate
punishment?

California's legendarily slow appeals system, which produces an
average wait of nearly 20 years from conviction to fatal injection —
the longest in the nation. Of the nine convicted killers McCartin
sent to death row, only one has died. Not by execution, but from a
heart attack in custody.

"Every one of my cases is bogged up in the appellate system," said
McCartin, who retired in 1993 after 15 years on the bench.

"It's a waste of time and money," said the 82-year-old, self-
described right-wing Republican whose sonorous voice still commands
attention. "The only thing it does is prolong the agony of the
victims' families."

In 2007, time and money were the reasons New Jersey became the first
state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the
death penalty in 1972.

Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine commuted the executions of 10 men to life
imprisonment without parole. Legal costs were too great and produced
no result, lawmakers said. After spending an estimated $4.2 million
for each death sentence, the state had executed no one since 1963.
Also, eliminating capital punishment eliminated the risk of executing
an innocent person.

Out of 36 remaining states with the death penalty, at least eight
have considered legislation this year to end it — Maryland, Nebraska,
Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, New Hampshire, Washington and Kansas —
an uncommon marriage between eastern liberals and western
conservatives, built on economic hardship.

"This is the first time in which cost has been the prevalent issue in
discussing the death penalty," said Richard Dieter, director of the
Death Penalty Information Center, a data clearinghouse that favors
abolition of capital punishment.

The most recent arguments against it centered on the ever-increasing
number of convicts cleared by DNA evidence.

Some of the worst cases occurred in Illinois. In 2000, then-Gov.
George H. Ryan placed a moratorium on executions after 13 people had
been exonerated from death row for reasons including genetic testing
and recanted testimony. Ryan declared the system "so fraught with
error that it has come close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's
taking of innocent life."

He commuted the sentences of all 167 death row convicts, most to life
imprisonment without parole. His moratorium is still in effect.

Across the country, the number of prisoners exonerated and released
from death row is more than 130, with thousands of appeals clogging
the courts.

Death penalty trials are more expensive for several reasons: They
often require extra lawyers; there are strict experience requirements
for attorneys, leading to lengthy appellate waits while capable
counsel is sought for the accused; security costs are higher, as well
as costs for processing evidence — DNA testing, for example, is far
more expensive than simple blood analyses.

After sentencing, prices continue to rise. It costs more to house
death row inmates, who are held in segregated sections, in individual
cells, with guards delivering everything from daily meals to toilet
paper.

In California, home to the nation's biggest death row population at
667, it costs an extra $90,000 per inmate to imprison someone
sentenced to death — an additional expense that totals more than
$63.3 million annually, according to a 2008 study by the state's
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

The panel, which agreed with California Chief Justice Ronald M.
George that the state's death penalty system was "dysfunctional, "
blamed exorbitant costs on delays in finding qualified public
defenders, a severe backlog in appellate reviews, and a high rate of
cases being overturned on constitutional grounds.

"Failures in the administration of California's death penalty law
create cynicism and disrespect for the rule of law," concluded the
117-page report.

Some prominent Californians have asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to
get rid of executions. Especially now, as service cuts and tax
increases are pegged to fill a $42 billion budget hole. But it
appears that the Republican governor will not abandon capital
punishment anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the nationwide number of death sentences handed down has
declined over the past decade, from 284 in 1999 to 111 in 2008.
Reasons differ significantly, depending on who's providing them: Pro-
death penalty activists say it's because crime rates have declined
and execution is a strong deterrent; abolitionists say it's because
jurors and judges are reluctant to risk taking a life when future
scientific tests could prove the accused not guilty.

Executions, too, are dropping. There were 98 in 1999; 37 in 2008.

Still, the costs of capital punishment weigh heavily on legislators
facing Solomon-like choices in these dismal economic times.

In Kansas, Republican state Sen. Caroline McGinn is pushing a bill
that would repeal the death penalty effective July 1. Kansas, which
voted to suspend tax refunds, faces a budget deficit of nearly $200
million. McGinn urged fellow legislators "to think outside the box"
for ways to save money. According to a state survey, capital cases
were 70 percent more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases.

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson recently said his longtime
support of capital punishment was wavering — and belt-tightening was
one the reasons. As the state tries to plug a $450 million budget
shortfall with cuts to schools and environmental agencies, a bill to
end executions has already passed the House as a cost-saving measure.
The state supreme court has ruled that more money must be given for
public defenders in death penalty cases, but legislators have yet to
act.

In Maryland, a 2008 Urban Institute study said taxpayers forked out
at least $37.2 million for each of five executions since the death
penalty was re-enacted in 1978. The survey, which examined 162
capital cases, found that simply seeking the death penalty added $186
million to prosecution costs. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who disdains the
death penalty on moral and financial grounds, is pushing a bill to
repeal it.

There are many, of course, who refuse to change their minds,
believing execution is the ultimate wage of the ultimate sin. They
also say that death penalty cases don't have to be so expensive.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation, a pro-capital- punishment group, said, "Having an
effective appeals process might very well cost less."

States "calculate the cost as if these people are going to spend
their whole lives on death row. We should be revamping the appeals
process so that these cases move more quickly," Scheidegger said.

But court systems and their costs vary greatly among states, as does
the time it takes to exhaust appeals. It's doubtful that change could
come quickly enough to generate savings during this roiling recession.

"It's all about money," said McCartin, the former California judge.
"The reasons I changed my mind were between that and how the victims'
families just get raped during appeals."

But if convicted killers get life imprisonment instead of death, is
that letting them off easy?

Not a chance, says 52-year-old Gordon "Randy" Steidl. He lived on
death row and then in the general prison population, after his
sentence was commuted to life. He preferred his former accommodations.

Steidl was released in 2004 after being exonerated of the 1986
stabbing deaths of a newlywed couple in Paris, Ill. He had an alibi
for the night of the murders, corroborated by others. But he was
convicted on eyewitness testimony provided by the town drunk and the
town drug addict. Both later recanted.

The state of Illinois spent $3.5 million trying to execute him, "only
to end up giving me a life sentence," Steidl said. "And then 5 1/2
years after that, I was exonerated."

He spent 12 years in a tiny cell on death row. Then he was thrown
into "gen pop," with its snarling mass of an open cellblock, where
the prospect of being stabbed, raped or worse loomed constantly,
alongside deafening noise and psychotic cell mates.

"If you really want to kill someone, give them life without parole,"
Steidl said in an even voice. He speaks of his troubled past as if it
was trapped under glass or locked behind bars — visible but no longer
able to torture him.

"It's worse than dying."

http://www.iht. com/articles/ ap/2009/03/ 06/america/ Expensive- to-
Execute.php