It costs $250 MILLION to execute someone?

Question

http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=cost

Did you know this? And, is it just me or are lawyers crazily overpaid?

Answer 1

That is a VERY misleading figure. Typical of a site trying to twist facts to fit there agenda hoping people, like yourself, will go "oh my God" without really looking into it. See, they add up the entire cost of the ENTIRE criminal justice system then divide it by the number of inmates on death row. Not exactly scientific. Its like saying we spend billions to catch a shoplifter, simply because the combined cost of all US police depts is billions of dollars.
It is also like saying your hangnail cost 600,000 dollars to fix because a doctor paid 600,000 dollars to go to medical school. No, he sees a lot of patients and his costs are borne by the whole system, not one single person. Get it?
The site is twisting facts to make its case. It points out that it costs, for example, 90,000 to house a single inmate on death row, then adds that figure to the total. That is inaccurate and misleading.
If they said HAVING the death penalty costs X amount, thats OK, but to add up all the costs and allege that that is the price to execute a single person is false. It costs a lot, but far less than 250 million to execute a inmate.
Even at 100,000 a year, a person on death row for 20 years would only cost 2 million. The execution itself is cheap. Trials do not cost 248 million. Sorry.

Don't take everything you read as gospel. look into it and see what their agenda is. That is what educated, intelligent people do.

Answer 2

They have to make sure they are completely guilty before they kill someone. Plus the drugs they use to execute them are pricy.

Answer 3

Technically, it doesn't cost much to execute a person. It's all the incurred expenses from arrest to time of execution that cost the tax payers. I do not know the average cost per execution, but $250 million sounds outrageous. I have read that it cost more to keep a person in prison per year than the annual individual income of the majority of Americans, and this also is outrageous.

Many lawyers are overpaid because they over-bill! Watch out for this, especially, at the larger law firms.

Answer 4

That's government style accounting. They're taking the entire costs to maintain death row for ALL who have received a death sentence, and are applying those costs only to the few who are no longer there, and aren't incurring costs any more.

The problem is, it's the ones who aren't dead yet who continue to wrack up the expenses.

By their accounting method, you could bring those per person costs down drastically by executing inmates at a greatly accelerated pace.

This is what happens when you have journalists trying to do math. It's complete nonsense.

I'm completely anti-death penalty, by the way. This kind of idiocy doesn't help the "cause," at all.

Answer 5

they keep them on death row to long there should me no row just death just do it

Answer 6

lol I think its time we bring back the guillotine

Answer 7

That definitely seems higher than is reasonable! I'm not sure that is a correct #....

BTW - ziggurat4u is right! Another HUGE burden from our friends at the ACLU!

Answer 8

compare that figure to having one in prison for life, death seems like a bargin.

Answer 9

you can thank the liberal ACLU lawyers for this kind of stuff. they latch onto a case, ensuring that it drags on for years at tax payers expense, and then look for the next dude to represent after their client finally loses his appeal for a stay of execution...

Answer 10

It must be a typo. I've heard figures for around 1-4 mil. I'm sure they meant 2.5 mil.