http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?

questionID=001000

Charles M. Harris, JD, Senior Judge of the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Florida,
published the following in an opinion piece for The Gainesville Sun, on Apr. 18, 2012,
available at gainesville.com:
"...[D]eath by execution is excessively expensive. Most people who support the death penalty
believe it is more cost effective than life in prison. Perhaps at one time, when executions were swift
and sure, this may have been the case. It is not now. Most people knowledgeable about the subject
will agree that the delay now built into the system, more trial preparation, much longer time to get to
trial, much longer jury selections and trials, much more complicated and far more frequent appeals,
and continuous motions, have increased the cost of capital punishment so that it is now many times
the cost of keeping a prisoner in prison for life."

Apr. 18, 2012 - Charles M. Harris, JD

Jon B. Gould, PhD, Professor of Justice, Law, and Society at American University, and
Lisa Greenman, JD, Attorney for the Maryland Public Defender Organization, submitted
the following in the "Report to the Committe on Defender Services Judicial Conference of
the United States Update on the Cost and Quality of Defense Representation in Federal
Death Penalty Cases" in Sep. 2010, available at www.uscourts.gov:
"The median amount of $353,185 for authorized cases [of the federal death penalty]... indicates that
cases in which a capital prosecution was authorized cost almost eight times as much as those
death-eligible cases that were not authorized... there is no mistaking the vast increase in cost when
the Department of Justice decides to authorize a capital prosecution."

Sep. 2010 - Jon B. Gould, JD, PhD
Lisa Greenman, JD
Richard C. Dieter, MS, JD, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
said the following on June 7, 2010, in his testimony before the Pennsylvania Senate
Government Management and Cost Study Commission, available at
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org:
"The death penalty is the most expensive part of the system on a per-offender basis. Millions are
spent to achieve a single death sentence that, even if imposed, is unlikely to be carried out. Thus
money that the police desperately need for more effective law enforcement may be wasted on the
death penalty

The principal reason why the death penalty is so expensive can be summed up in one phrase:
death is different' Every stage of a capital case is more time-consuming and expensive than in a
typical criminal case. Jury selection takes much longer; more mental health and forensic experts will
be needed; two trials will be required - one for guilt and one for sentencing; and the appeals will be
far more complex, focusing on both the conviction and the death sentence. Two attorneys are
usually appointed for the defense, so that issues of guilt and sentencing can be separately
explored. The prosecution has to respond with equal or greater resources since they have the
burden of proof...There is no reason the death penalty should be immune from reconsideration,
along with other wasteful, expensive programs that no longer make sense."

June 7, 2010 - Richard C. Dieter, MS, JD



http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=983

Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?
H. Lee Sarokin, LLB, former US District Court and US Court of Appeals Judge, wrote in his
Jan. 15, 2011 article "Is It Time to Execute the Death Penalty? on the Huffington Post
website:
"In my view deterrence plays no part whatsoever. Persons contemplating murder do not sit around
the kitchen table and say I won't commit this murder if I face the death penalty, but I will do it if the
penalty is life without parole. I do not believe persons contemplating or committing murder plan to
get caught or weigh the consequences. Statistics demonstrate that states without the death penalty
have consistently lower murder rates than states with it, but frankly I think those statistics are
immaterial and coincidental. Fear of the death penalty may cause a few to hesitate, but certainly not
enough to keep it in force..."

Jan. 15, 2011 - H. Lee Sarokin, LLB

Michael L. Radelet, PhD, Sociology Professor and Department Chair at the University of
Colorado-Boulder, wrote in his 2009 article "Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?: The
Views of Leading Criminologists in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology:
"Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the worlds top criminologists believe that the
empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth... 88.2% of polled
criminologists do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent... 9.2% answered that the
statement '[t]he death penalty significantly reduces the number of homicides' was accurate...
Overall, it is clear that however measured, fewer than 10% of the polled experts believe the
deterrence effect of the death penalty is stronger than that of long-term imprisonment... Recent
econometric studies, which posit that the death penalty has a marginal deterrent effect beyond that
of long-term imprisonment, are so limited or flawed that they have failed to undermine consensus.

In short, the consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant
deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment."

2009 - Michael L. Radelet , PhD