Supporters of a ban on capital punishment say it would save at least $139 million a year, the equivalent of hiring 2,500 new teachers or hiring 2,250 new California Highway Patrol officers.
That is one of the conclusions in a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union, entitled The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Costs of Seeking Executions in California. The study finds capital punishment generates a host of unavoidable costs.
Mandatory appeals and legal fees take up much of the expenditures; however, the largest expenditure is the annual cost associated with housing more than 720 condemned men and women, according to the report.
Death penalty trials cost at least $1.1 million more than non-death penalty trials, the report says. California counties may spend at least $22 million more per year seeking execution than other prosecutorial options, according to the report.
The report also emphasizes that more than 125 innocent people have been freed from Death Row in the U.S. since 1973.
“Executing all of the people currently on Death Row or waiting for them to die naturally – which will happen first – will cost California an estimated $4 billion more than if all of the people on Death Row were sentenced to die of disease, injury or old age,” the report says.
California voters will decide in November whether to eliminate state executions and substitute life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as the state’s harshest punishment.
