Study finds that California spends $184 million a year on funding the death penalty

A recently published study on the cost of capital cases in California, conducted over three years by US 9^th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, reveals that taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund the death penalty since reinstating it in 1978.

The 714 prisoners currently on death row cost the taxpayer $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.

The least expensive death penalty trial costs $1.1 million more than the most expensive life-without-parole case.

At a time where cuts aimed at reducing California’s budget deficit endanger the provision and quality of public services, the authors forecast that the cost of maintaining the death penalty will in fact rise to $9 billion by 2030.

All this to fund a dysfunctional system.

Capital inmates languish on San Quentin’s death row for decades waiting for their cases to be resolved. Dozens of them have died still waiting for lawyers to be assigned to their appeals.

Of the 92 death row inmates who have died since 1978, only 13 were executed in California and one was executed in Missouri, while 54 died of natural causes, 18 by suicide and six by inmate violence or undetermined causes.

According to the California Appellate Project, more than 300 prisoners on death row are currently waiting to have attorneys assigned to work on their state appeals and federal corpus petitions.

The study also uncovers the rise in public expenditure caused by the expansion of the types of crimes that attract the death penalty. It reveals that the corrections department and the Legislative Analyst’s Office failed to honestly assess and disclose to the public the cost of increasing death-eligible crimes.

The authors approach their analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row. They outline three options for tackling the defects of the current system: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for course and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual saving of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.

It goes without saying that I am strongly in favour of abolition. Even from a purely economical perspective however, it is hard to see how any option other than abolition makes sense.