Another reason to abolish the death penalty.
By: Hank Kalet
New Jersey-based think-tank has found a new reason to close the door on capital punishment.
New Jersey Policy Perspective, a non-partisan research group based in Trenton, issued a report last week saying that the state’s death penalty system has cost taxpayers about $250 million since the Legislature reinstated capital punishment in 1983 about $11.3 million per year or $4.2 million per death sentence.
That’s a lot of money for a system that, in its 23-year history, has resulted in no executions and that provides an at-best negligible deterrent effect.
I have made the anti-death penalty argument on more than one occasion and my opinion on it has not changed. I oppose it on both moral and civil liberties grounds that capital punishment is essentially state-sanctioned and premeditated murder and that history shows it cannot be applied in anything but a biased manner.
So, I acknowledge that I tend to be more receptive to the conclusions drawn by NJPP than death penalty advocates appear to be.
That said, the NJPP report adds a new wrinkle to the discussion. As NJPP points out, cost is an important factor in nearly every other policy discussion, whether at the federal, state, county or local level. The death penalty rarely is discussed within this context.
The issue, as the group makes clear in its report, is that unlike some government programs that "could be maintained for less money, it seems remote that serious proposals could be put forward to streamline or spend 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."
Generally, the report found, capital crimes are more costly because:
Lawyers need more preparation time, including time to review mitigating and aggravating factors that might not be applicable in trials in which the death penalty is not sought.
Juries take longer to seat because jurors must be "death-qualified," "meaning he or she neither adamantly opposes or favors the death penalty and would be willing under some circumstances to vote to sentence someone to death."
Trials take place in two phases, one to determine guilt and the other to impose punishment.
Capital cases rarely end in plea bargains.
Capital defendants require more security than non-capital prisoners.
"Having the death penalty on the books has cost the State of New Jersey more than $250 million since capital punishment was reinstated in 1982," the report says. "That is, at best, a very conservative estimate. Given the difficulty in obtaining precise information from the various state and county entities that play a role in capital cases and what appear to be decisions by those entities not to keep track there is considerable reason to believe the figure is higher."
The question, ultimately, should be whether this price tag is worth what we get in return. Given the paucity of evidence that the death penalty has any deterrent effect the states with the highest number of executions also have among the highest murder rates and a racial and class bias that seems interwoven with the death-penalty system, it appears pretty clear that the answer is no.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].