Tennessee Death Penalty Cost Study
Admitted Deficiencies in Study Help Account for Underestimation of Death Penalty Costs
Nashville, TN: By its own admission the death penalty costs study released by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury’s office yesterday lacked sufficient data to accurately account for the total cost of capital trials. Despite this handicap the report concluded that, “death penalty trials cost an average of…48.6 percent more than the…average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek penalties of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.“
It turns out to be relatively difficult to put a precise cost on the death penalty. According to recent testimony before the legislature in Massachusetts, “it is like trying to put a figure on heart disease – it is easy to state the question, but complicated to answer.”
Despite this difficulty the report’s figures for the costs of a non-death case was equal to that stated in a Kansas death penalty cost study released last year: roughly $32,000.
However, the Kansas study listed the trial costs of a death penalty case at $508,000. The Tennessee study listed them as roughly $47,000, a difference of over 1000%.
“The hidden costs of capital trials are a given in these types of studies,” said Randy Tatel, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing. “The huge discrepancy between the Kansas and Tennessee figures may lie with the failure of the state of Tennessee to maintain accurate trial records for capital and non-capital cases. This made the research much more difficult for the Comptroller’s staff to carry out.”
John Shiffman wrote in the Tennessean (7/22/01) that, “A key research tool the Tennessee Supreme Court created to ensure the fairness of death sentences is riddled with errors and omissions.”
The report states that, “because cost and time records were not maintained, the Office of Research was unable to determine the total, comprehensive cost of the death penalty in Tennessee,” (p. 12) and that, “no reliable data exists concerning the cost of prosecution or defense of first-degree murder cases in Tennessee.” (p. 46)
Death Penalty cost studies have been conducted by other state government agencies, newspapers and independent researchers and all have concluded that the death penalty is much more expensive than its closest alternative – life without parole.
David Raybin, a Nashville lawyer and chief author of Tennessee’s primary death penalty statute, said lawyers generally expect a death penalty case to cost a total of $1 million to $2 million more than a murder case in which life imprisonment is the maximum possible punishment.
Raybin told the Tennessean’s Kirk Loggins in April 2000, "every time a prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty, he or she is in effect appropriating a million dollars out of the treasury."
“As the report itself concludes capital trials are longer and more expensive at every step compared to other murder trials,” said Tatel. “Pre-trial motions, expert witness investigations, jury selection, the necessity for two trials – one on guilt and one for sentencing – make capital cases extremely costly even before the appeals process begins.”
Most of these costs occur in every case for which capital punishment is sought, regardless of the outcome. Thus, the true cost of the death penalty includes all the added expenses of the "unsuccessful" trials in which the death penalty is sought but not achieved. If a defendant is convicted but not given the death sentence, the state will still incur the costs of life imprisonment, in addition to the increased trial expenses.
Further, a recent Columbia University Law School study found that 2/3 of all death sentences nationally are overturned on appeal. The Comptroller’s study cites the 29% overturned upon direct appeal in Tennessee. http://justice.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=18200 (click on VIII A – state comparisons).
However in July 2001 Shiffman reported in the Tennessean that, “Half of the 151 Tennessee death sentences reviewed on appeal since 1977 have been overturned, primarily because of trial errors or poor lawyering.” Of those, four of every five inmates (80%) who have completed a new trial or sentencing hearing received a sentence of less than death.
“The typical death penalty case has all the expenses of its early stages and if it results in a death sentence, the appeals,” said Tatel. “It is then overturned and a life sentence is imposed, resulting in all the costs of 30 to 40 years of incarceration. Only one person has been executed in Tennessee since 1960. One person who served 15 years on death row is out on bond and could be exonerated this year.”
Thus the report contains at least one unsupportable contention – that executions save taxpayers money in housing costs in the long run.
“Because so few capital cases result in an execution the so-called ‘savings’ disappear,” continued Tatel. “The proper question for taxpayers (and the legislators who serve them) to ask is, ‘does a criminal justice system that employs capital punishment cost more to operate than a criminal justice system that has ended the use of capital punishment as a public policy tool?’ And the unchallengeable answer to that question is an unequivocal YES!”
So what are taxpayers spending all of this additional money for? The report notes that, “in states where capital punishment is both legal and practiced, the murder rate is significantly higher per capita when compared to states that have abolished capital punishment.” (p. 43-44)
“Tennessee has installed an exorbitantly expensive system of capital punishment which has been a failure by any measure of effectiveness,” concluded Tatel. “A single capital trial can exhaust a small county’s resources while a Shelby County can waste huge chunks of taxpayer’s money. In the end the death penalty system costs the taxpayer more money while he or she may end up being less safe.”
In one widely publicized Tennessee case -- in which Courtney Mathews was accused of murdering four employees at a Taco Bell restaurant in Clarksville in 1994 -- the state paid about $300,000 for defense attorneys and for investigators and expert witnesses to help them. Mathews' trial in 1996 resulted in a conviction, but the jury chose to sentence Mathews, a former Fort Campbell soldier, to four life prison terms rather than to death.
