People often ask “why should I have to pay for the meals and lodgings of criminals? Wouldn’t it be much cheaper to just execute them?” Because of the complex judicial process involved in comparison to keeping someone in prison for life without parole, capital punishment is much more expensive. According to Capital Punishment: Second Edition by Michael Kronenwetter, “[s]imply charging a defendant with a capital crime escalates the cost of the trial” (38). When people think of the death penalty, they do not think of everything it entails. According to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California,
A capital case requires two trials (one to determine guilt and another to determine penalty), automatic state supreme court review, postconviction proceedings, and Supreme Court appeals, all of which are extremely costly to the state both in money and human resources. Jury selection and pretrial motions are also more lengthy in capital cases, and expert consultants such as psychiatrists often must be retained. The cost of maintaining death rows in state prisons, clemency hearings, and the execution itself must also be added to the price of executions. (San Francisco: ACLUF, October 1992)
The cost of capitally prosecuted cases varies from each state, but the cost in each state is irrefutably more than what it would cost to keep someone in prison for the rest of their lives. In Texas, the state with the most executions, a usual death penalty case costs taxpayers about $2.3 million. This is almost three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for forty years. ("Executions Cost Texas Millions," Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992). Virginia, the state with the second most executions is also spending an unnecessary amount of money employing the death penalty. In 2009, Virginia suffered a $3.5 billion gap in its budget, along with a dozen capital murder cases under way. The fees for the defendants' legal representation during a capital trial were $150 per hour out of court, and $200 per hour in court. These cases routinely reached six figures each, which did not include other court costs and the prosecutions themselves. ("Is an execution worth the price?," The Virginian-Pilot, December 11, 2009) Florida, also in the top five execution states, spends