[Beety]  The Cost of Death

by Valena Beety
July 14, 2010

On July 21, the state of Mississippi is scheduled to put Joseph Daniel Burns Mississippian, murderer and father of three—to death. Our state has executed only 10 men over the past 30 years; yet, if all goes as planned, Burns will be the third Mississippian executed this year.

The death penalty has always been an emotional, contentious issue, around which people have deeply held beliefs. Surprisingly, our current economic crisis is bringing to the surface an aspect of the death penalty long drowned by passionate, ethical arguments: the cost. Running death row, pursuing a capital conviction, appealing capital cases and executing prisoners take a significant toll on our annual local and state budgets. As citizens of Mississippi, we should consider the decision to provide funding for the Mississippi Department of Corrections to carry out executions and maintain death row, instead of hiring police officers, employing capable teachers and funding Boys & Girls Clubs.

Anyone with an eye on our state’s current and future fiscal budgets knows the shortfalls we face. This spring, Mississippians accepted 12 percent to 17 percent budget cuts across the board and 9.4 percent budget cuts the previous year. These cuts force many of us to accept the limitations of government and to consider the exorbitant cost of the death penalty. Experts estimate that a single death-penalty trial costs a state $1 million more than a non-death-penalty trial. A Death Penalty Information Center study shows that nationally, only one in every three capital trials results in a death sentence, meaning the true cost of the death sentence is $3 million.

One county has already faced this fiscal reality. Last fall, Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith told The Clarion-Ledger his office would not pursue as many death-penalty cases because of budget cuts. Just as Smith’s decision was a responsible acceptance of an economic reality, the state of Mississippi should also consider its similar predicament. The Mississippi Legislature balanced next year’s budget after Gov. Haley Barbour cut the fiscal year 2011 budget five times and ultimately tapped into Mississippi’s rainy-day fund. When questioned as to why he gave discretionary funds to MDOC during the budgetary struggle, Barbour retorted: “Why am I doing that? So some convict doesn’t move next door to your momma.”

We all recognize the importance of public safety, but the elimination of spending for death row would mean life in prison; no convict would ever live outside the prison walls.

Other states have already been forced to examine the death penalty through a financial lens. In 2007, New Jersey became the first state Legislature in 40 years to repeal the death penalty. New Jersey had spent $253 million over a 25-year period on costs associated with the death penalty—a period during which the state executed not a single prisoner. And in March 2009, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a longtime supporter of the death penalty, signed a bill eliminating the death penalty in New Mexico. Richardson worried about the financial toll the death penalty took on his state.

He also recognized the undeniable truth that four men had been exonerated from New Mexico’s death row through newly found evidence not available at the time of their convictions.

To be sure, one could argue the death penalty is costly because there are so many legal safeguards. The national average for how long an inmate spends on death row after sentencing is 15 years. A system that time-consuming will be expensive.

Yet, despite all our safeguards, a startling fact remains: Innocent people continue to be sentenced to death. Just as in New Mexico, Mississippi had at least one innocent man on death row: Kennedy Brewer, who was exonerated as recently as 2008 by DNA testing. The DNA evidence showed conclusively that Brewer had nothing to do with the murder. The sad fact is that with all our legal safeguards, juries wrongfully convict innocent people, and judges wrongfully place innocent people on death row.

Mississippi’s difficult fiscal reality highlights that many will have to make additional sacrifices in the upcoming year’s budget, all while we continue to spend enormous financial resources to keep the death penalty. Those who struggle most directly with death-penalty cases are the victims’ families. One might be surprised to know some victims’ families speak out against a death sentence for the perpetrators who harmed their loved ones, while others seek closure through the death of the convicted.

We must consider our system is flawed in terms of victims’ rights as well. Families can be re-victimized through waiting indefinitely for the execution of the perpetrator, only to have the perpetrator re-tried, re-sentenced to life imprisonment or die of natural causes while awaiting execution. I believe a life sentence without parole may also allow the emotional wounds from the tragedy to heal and bring a conclusion to a family’s painful journey. While the decision is always difficult, commuting death sentences to life in prison and ending the death penalty in Mississippi may have found a new proponent: the economy.

Valena Beety is a staff attorney at the Mississippi Innocence Project; she is also a former federal prosecutor.

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