Facing huge budget deficits, eight states are considering repealing the death penalty to save money. Pennsylvania isn't one of them.
But there hasn't been an execution in Pennsylvania in nearly a decade, and that has critics questioning the program's cost.
Capital punishment has been debated in the nation's highest courts, fueled by political and moral arguments, with powerful influences from religion. But in some states, the death penalty is being abandoned for reasons that have nothing to do with right or wrong.
"This is the first time cost has taken center stage," said Richard Dieter.
Dieter is the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. He said studies show administering the death penalty is more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life.
"It's not that the execution costs much, but every step of a death penalty case is much more expensive than a typical trial," said Dieter.
Dieter said capital cases are expensive because the trials tend to take longer. They require more lawyers and more costly experts, and are far more likely to lead to multiple appeals.
"You've got to look at the cost of this," said Dieter. "What else could this be spent on?"
But in Pennsylvania, there is no central state agency that regulates or collects information about all capital punishment cases. As a result, it is nearly impossible to add up the cost of administering the death penalty in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania has the 4th largest death row, housing 224 inmates.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, only 3 convicts have been executed, but all 3 waived their rights to appeal.
In more than 30 years, no one in Pennsylvania has been executed after exhausting their appeals. Every case has been overturned by a higher court.
"It's hard to know what to make of a state that has the death penalty and doesn't have executions," said Dieter.
"It's an incredibly specialized, complex area of law," said Jules Epstein.
A former Philadelphia defense attorney, Epstein has overseen more than 100 death penalty cases.
He said one of the reasons there hasn't been an execution in Pennsylvania for so long lies in how the state's judicial system is funded.
"When you don't have the lawyers who don't have the money, they don't have the training or resources and you have a very good question as to whether the result is reliable," said Epstein.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that does not provide any state funding for attorneys of capital defendants who can't afford one themselves.
That leaves counties with less money with no option but to appoint less experienced lawyers who are more prone to making mistakes when handling complex capital cases.
"And if you didn't get it right the 1st time, it gets overturned on appeal sometimes years or tens of years later," Epstein said.
More than 1/2 of Pennsylvania's death sentence reversals, 117 of 214, have been overturned because of mistakes attorneys made during trial.
And as the process repeats, the cost to taxpayers continues to rise.
"What you are doing is sentencing people to death, most of the cases are overturned and the second time around they get a life sentence," said Dieter. "So you have the revolving door where the death penalty is meaningless, yet still very expensive."
While Pennsylvania hasn't studied the cost of the death penalty other states have.
New Jersey estimates it spent $253 million on the death penalty without executing anyone for decades, before repealing it in 2007.
Earlier in March, lawmakers in New Mexico also abolished the death penalty after determining their death penalty cases cost 6 times more than murder trials involving life in prison without parole.
As long as Pennsylvania's cost remains unknown, the debate over whether the death penalty is worth the money will likely continue.
Supporters of the death penalty said the system is supposed to be complex, and expensive, because deciding whether someone should be put to death is a weighty issue.
They also said repealing the death penalty could result in a spike in crime, because it would remove the most serious form of punishment.
As the economy continues to struggle, it is becoming harder for states to ignore cost when it comes to capital punishment.
Source: WGAL News, March 31, 2009
