Pressing for abolition of the barbaric death penalty on moral grounds isn't an argument that has worked in most states. Execution is still on the books in 35 of them. That includes Texas, which, as was recently reported, has put to death at least one innocent man among the hundreds it has officially killed in the past 33 years. Everybody who has followed that state's dismal record of sleeping defense lawyers, evidence-withholding prosecutors, incompetent testing laboratories and expert witnesses who aren't very expert have always suspected that the state snuffed a few innocents.
But, as the Chicago Tribune proved a decade ago, Texas isn't the only state where innocents have no doubt been executed on account of racial discrimination, fabricated and coerced confessions, false testimony of jailhouse snitches, forensics screw-ups and incompetent lawyering. The newspaper uncovered scores of cases of people who wound up on death row for crimes they didn't commit. The governor subsequently ordered a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty, and many convicts awaiting the executioner were exonerated. One of those, Anthony Porter, was within 48 hours of being killed, having already been fitted for his burial suit and having ordered his final meal.
For most people who aren't otherwise opposed, the knowledge that innocents have been executed and that others await their turn on death row calls the very existence of capital punishment into question. But even the likelihood that innocents will get the needle or the noose doesn't convince some people that we should do away with the death penalty.
Perhaps then, especially in this time of strapped state budgets, money will be persuasive. Citing statistics from the Death Penalty Information Center, The New York Times focused on the costs of the death penalty in an editorial Monday:
According to the organization, keeping inmates on death row in Florida costs taxpayers $51 million a year more than holding them for life without parole. North Carolina has put 43 people to death since 1976 at $2.16 million per execution. The eventual cost to taxpayers in Maryland for pursuing capital cases between 1978 and 1999 is estimated to be $186 million for five executions.
Perhaps the most extreme example is California, whose death row costs taxpayers $114 million a year beyond the cost of imprisoning convicts for life. The state has executed 13 people since 1976 for a total of about $250 million per execution. This is a state whose prisons are filled to bursting (unconstitutionally so, the courts say) and whose government has imposed doomsday-level cuts to social services, health care, schools and parks.
Money spent on death rows could be spent on police officers, courts, public defenders, legal service agencies and prison cells.
Or better yet, as Jeralyn at TalkLeft says:
Instead of more jail cells, how about spending the money on mental health and drug treatment and vocational and life-skills training for inmates, which are likely to reduce recidivism, save us money in the long run and make society a safer place?
Other ways to save money: Impose fewer life sentences and charge fewer juveniles as adults.
The money saved by abolishing the death penalty could also be used for non-crime purposes - like providing health care and better education. In times like these when there isn't enough money to go around, wasting precious dollars and scant criminal justice resources on the death penalty, a punishment that is discriminatorily applied, fraught with potential for killing an innocent person and does not serve to deter others, makes no sense.
Makes no sense, indeed. When can we join the civilized world?