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The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Costs of Seeking Execution in California

By Natasha Minsker

Heads up, Californians. Your state's death row is a money pit, and the government is throwing tons of taxpayer cash into it despite a wealth of evidence that it is a bad investment.

On Friday, March 28, the ACLU of Northern California released two reports on the state's capital punishment system. The Hidden Death Tax reveals for the first time the exorbitant cost of death penalty trials. In its analysis, the report tallies up a total post-conviction prosecution and law enforcement bill of $117 million to California taxpayers every year.

And it's no wonder the price is so steep, when you consider all of the hours prosecutors work on these cases. In the death penalty trial of Scott Peterson, for example, prosecution staff spent more than 20,000 hours on the case. In the death penalty trial of Rex Allen Krebs, prosecution staff spent more than 8,700 hours on the case. In the non-death penalty trial, prosecution staff logged only 1,600 hours.

The report also finds that executing all of the people currently on death row, or waiting for them to die there of other causes, will cost Californians an estimated $4 billion more than if they had been sentenced to life in prison. In fact, merely housing prisoners on death row costs the state $90,000 more per year, per inmate, than housing them with the general prison population.

The Hidden Death Tax also reveals some startling figures that you wouldn't expect to find on an expense sheet for prosecuting a death penalty case. But there it is, on Page 26 of the report, a dry-cleaning bill of $937.45, and a $387 worth of oil changes, car washes and smog checks.

The second report, Death by Geography, looks at county-by-county disparities in death sentencing. For instance, the report finds that a resident of Alameda County is eight times more likely to be sentenced to death than a resident of nearby Santa Clara. And counties that sentence people to death do not experience lower homicide rates or higher rates of solving homicides. What pursuing a death sentence does do is waste money that could be used for important programs that are proven to effect positive changes in crime and violence, like hiring more teachers for the public schools or more CHP officers to stop drunk drivers.

California’s death penalty is arbitrary, ineffective and a waste of critical resources. What's that other familiar saying? Three strikes and you're out?

Related Resources:

• Watch online video “Crime Victim to Panel: No to Death Penalty, No to Revenge” -- Aundre Herron talks about why California’s death penalty has to go. As both a former prosecutor and murder victim survivor, Herron has a unique and incisive perspective on the death penalty, which she shared recently with the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the state commission reviewing California’s death penalty.

• Find a one-page fact sheet on your county, excerpted from the Death by Geography report: Alameda // Contra Costa // Kern // Los Angeles // Orange // Riverside // Sacramento // San Bernardino // San Diego // San Francisco // San Mateo // Santa Barbara // Santa Clara // Tulare // Ventura

• Download the full reports: 1) The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Costs of Seeking Execution in California; 2) Death by Geography: A County by County Analysis of the Road to Execution

Natasha Minsker is the ACLU-NC’s Death Penalty Policy Director. Previously, Ms. Minsker spent five years at the Alameda County Public Defender's Office, the first year as a research attorney in the Capital Defense Unit and the remaining four years as a Deputy Public Defender, handling all types of misdemeanor, felony, and juvenile cases. Ms. Minsker also served as staff attorney to the Judicial Council of California's Task Force on Criminal Jury Instructions, helping the committee research and draft more than 700 new criminal jury instructions. She clerked for the Honorable Martha Vazquez, Chief Judge of the Federal District Court of New Mexico, and is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Posted on April 01, 2008

Comments

I'm well aware the death penalty costs more, but that's irrelevant. Justice is not up for sale to the lowest bidder

Posted by: Ben at April 1, 2008 06:14 PM

Agreed: “Justice is not up to the lowest bidder.” But given the always scare (and with the current budget crisis, contracting) resources, what is the most we can accomplish?

The reports tell us that we can do more.

Take Riverside County for example. The $22 million dollars wasted on 20 death sentences in Riverside County since 2000 could have paid the salaries of 49 experienced teachers or 46 new homicide investigators for that same period of time. Riverside County ranks 23 out of 24 counties on per pupil expenditures on education, and solved only 50 percent of homicides in 2005.

Or take Santa Clara County. District Attorney Dolores Carr has recently decided to close the office's cold case unit but continues to pursue expensive death penalty cases. Is this keeping with the values of Santa Clara voters?

We want to arm the public and policy-makers with all the tools to make the tough calls.

The reports do not present every reason why we should abolish the death penalty in favor of permanent incarceration. They do, however, take us a step closer to breaking down the “pro-this,” “con-that” and move us towards “smart.”

--Ravi Garla, Communications Fellow, ACLU-NC

Posted by: Ravi Garla, ACLU-NC at April 2, 2008 05:56 PM

Where is the discussion of the case of Jamiel Shaw and the left's acceptance of criminals?

Posted by: Erik Kengaard at April 18, 2008 04:59 PM

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