Press Release: 11-21-05 Death Penalty Costs Taxpayers Over a Quarter Billion Dollars Since Reinstatement

TRENTON-Capital punishment is an emotional issue that invokes moral and criminal justice questions and political debate. From a strictly financial perspective, however, it is an example of public policy that can be analyzed just as any other.

Such an analysis yields the conclusion that over the past 23 years New Jersey taxpayers have spent over $250 million on a capital punishment system that has executed no one. That is the main finding from Money for Nothing? The Financial Cost of New Jersey's Death Penalty. The report was written by New Jersey Policy Perspective Research Director Mary E. Forsberg.

The report cautions that its findings in all likelihood understate the total costs to various government entities at the state and county level. This is because many state officials were reluctant to provide important data and there is an apparent lack of attention given to keeping track of how much money is allocated specifically to capital punishment-related government expenses. NJPP believes, however, that the report provides a credible analysis that involved going through the many phases of death penalty cases and looking at the roles played by the tax-funded entities involved in the process. The report also made use of research conducted in other states, in most cases by the states themselves.

THE COSTS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Since New Jersey reinstated its death penalty in 1982, it has spent the following on capital punishment:

County Prosecutors/State Attorney General		$180 million
State Public Defender's Office		60 million
State Corrections Department		6.8 million
Identified Court Costs		6.5 million

Over the course of 23 years that comes to $253,300,000, or just over $11 million a year- which, on average, is $4.2 million for each death sentence.

Many of the costs are associated with the nature of capital cases. They take longer and involve many more levels of procedure than non-capital cases-ranging from having both a guilt and a punishment trial and presentation of aggravating and mitigating factors that require intensive investigation, to automatic appeals and court reviews, to the higher expense of maintaining death row compared to housing other maximum security prisoners.

And while in many areas of government finance there are debates over whether a program or service could be maintained for less money, it seems remote that serious proposals could be put forward to streamlining or spending less on capital punishment. Built into the system is a complex, expensive and reasonable network of checks, balances and protections of rights that does not lend itself to comparison with other government activities. As the report notes, "Nothing else that state and county government do has the ultimate aim of taking someone's life."

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 voided the 40 state death penalty statutes that existed at the time. Ruling on Georgia's law, the Court said giving juries complete discretion over sentencing conflicted with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." New Jersey, which first adopted capital punishment in 1796, in 1982 adopted a death penalty law that conformed to the Court's mandates. Since then, New Jersey jurors have returned death verdicts 60 times. Ten people are now on death row at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. Most of the others have had their death sentences overturned and replaced with life in prison. One died of natural causes and another was killed by a fellow death row inmate.