Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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Los Angeles Times

March 6, 2005 Sunday
Home Edition

SECTION: CALIFORNIA; Metro; Metro Desk; Part B; Pg. 1

...The public cost of maintaining the death penalty, meanwhile, continues to mount. The annual bill breaks down like this:

* According to Corrections Department spokeswoman Margot Bach, it costs $90,000 more a year to house an inmate on death row, where each person has a private cell and extra guards, than in the general prison population. That accounts for $57.5 million annually.

* Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, whose deputies represent the counties during appeals, estimates that he devotes about 15% of his criminal division budget to capital cases, or about $11 million annually.

* The California Supreme Court, which is required by law to review every death penalty case, spends $11.8 million annually for court-appointed defense counsel.

* The Office of the State Public Defender, which represents some death row inmates, has an annual budget of $11.3 million. The San Francisco-based Habeas Corpus Resource Center, another state-funded office, represents inmates and trains death penalty attorneys on a budget of $11 million.

* Finally, federal public defenders offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento, and private attorneys appointed by the federal court system for California cases, receive about $12 million annually.

The resulting $114-million annual cost does not include the substantial extra funds needed to try the complicated capital cases in county courts.

Research by the UC Berkeley School of Public Policy in 1993, the most recent study of its type available, showed that in Los Angeles County, a capital murder trial costs three times more to try than a noncapital murder case, $1.9 million compared to $630,000. One reason for the extra costs is that capital cases require a jury trial for sentencing after guilt has been determined in the first trial.

Typically, capital cases have four times as many pretrial motions, more investigators and expert testimony and much more exhaustive jury selection.

Other spending not included in the total are courtroom, staff and filing costs at the California Supreme Court, four federal district courts and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an interview, (CA Supreme Court Chief Justice) George estimated that the state's highest court spends about 20% of its time and resources on death penalty cases alone. Federal habeas corpus appeals in death cases are so expensive that the 9th Circuit assigns a U.S. district judge just to review the budgets of each capital case...


That is how it costs more to execute someone. And you know what they say, "The leading cause of death on death row is old age." We are paying a hell of a lot to not kill people. If most people who are sentenced to death are not executed, then there is no teeth to the threat of the death penalty. If we execute people sooner we run an even higher risk of killing innocent people.