cost to sentence someone to death vs life
Conclusions. This study concludes that the enhanced cost of trying a death penalty case is at least $1.25 million more than trying a comparable murder case resulting in a sentence of life in prison without parole.he cost of the present system with reforms recommended by the Commission to ensure a fair process would be $232.7 million per year. The cost of a system in which the number of death-eligible crimes was significantly narrowed would be $130 million per year.
A 2012 study showed that death penalty has cost California more than $4 billion since 1978, and suggested that commuting all the state's death sentences to life imprisonment would immediately result in $170 million in savings per year.