Is the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment?

IT COSTS WAY MORE TO EXECUTE A PERSON THAN TO KEEP THEM IN PRISON FOR LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE.

The death penalty is one of America’s most complex and controversial judicial issues and will likely remain so for a long time. The ethical contradiction is that it is fine to kill someone even though it was wrong of them to kill, or the fact that virtually every other developed country prohibits capital punishment.
The question remains legally whether death is cruel and unusual, but when looking at the economics, the answer is very clear.
IT COSTS WAY MORE TO EXECUTE A PERSON THAN KEEP THEM IN PRISON FOR LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE.

• Studies vary in their specific costs
• It is difficult to assign an exact dollar amount to a process as complex as the death penalty
• It is not as difficult to assign a dollar amount to life in prison with an average lifespan.

The average time between sentencing and execution is 15.5 years.

According to the most recent DOJ report, the average time between sentencing and execution is 15.5 years. This is more than 5 years longer than the average time between conviction and execution in 1996, the year the Effective Death Penalty and Antiterrorism Act was signed into law. The EDPA was intended to streamline the federal appeals process in capital cases.

Despite all of the costs and risks of failure associated with each method of execution, it would still seem as though the death penalty is less expensive than other long-term forms of punishment like life in prison. Surprisingly, this is not true at all; 

• It has been proven many times that the death penalty is substantially more expensive than judicial systems that do not use it.
• You might be asking, Why?

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia

That the statutes for imposing the death penalty were too arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual; the way the states of Georgia and Texas applied the death penalty was so arbitrary that it violated the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S. Constitution. But the Supreme Court left it open that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment. SO, it hasn’t been confirmed that it is Cruel and unusual punishment.

In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court reversed itself

This decision effectively suspended the death penalty in the 40 states that still allowed it, but this wouldn’t last long. In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court reversed itself, holding that the death penalty was constitutional and allowing new death penalty statutes in several states.

How can Life in prison be cheaper than the Death Penalty if it runs so counterintuitively to common sense?

It may seem simple to point to the cost of the actual execution, which can involve setting up the correct facilities, training employees to carry out the execution, and obtaining the necessary supplies. However, this is not the main culprit, as the marginal cost of carrying out an execution is quite low if a state is already fully equipped to carry one out. The overwhelming factor behind the higher cost of the death penalty is the associated legal costs. At virtually every stage of the judicial process, a capital punishment case involves greater legal expenses than a case without capital punishment (Miron 2023). Nearly all defendants facing the death penalty are indigent, meaning they are unable to afford an attorney.

The death penalty traditionally has been an issue left to the discretion of each state

Throughout the history of the United States, the death penalty traditionally has been an issue left to the discretion of each state. Some states moved against the death penalty early on; Wisconsin became the first state to fully abolish capital punishment for all crimes when it became a state in 1848, and other states soon followed suit.

The 6th Amendment requires the state to pay for an attorney (or multiple attorneys in most cases) for those who cannot afford one, which increases the cost to the government.

The 8th Amendment in the Bill of Rights prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

•  Legal debates surrounding capital punishment typically concern whether it violates the 8th Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

• And while legal and moral debates about the death penalty are plentiful, the many economic consequences of capital punishment often go unnoticed.

Each state has control over the logistical details of executions and, most importantly, the method of execution.

Each method varies widely in cost and perceived morality, but every method comes with issues that can result in the prisoner not being executed or a botched execution.

Years back, carrying out the death penalty was cheap

In the 18^th century, it was very inexpensive, only requiring rope and a platform, but it had many complications. Death was supposed to be instantaneous. However, even the slightest issues with the length of the rope or the height of the platform could result in a slow, excruciatingly painful death. The last hanging occurred in Delaware in 1996.

Execution by firing squad has seen sporadic use in U.S. history and is still legal in four states if lethal injection cannot be carried out. While relatively inexpensive, even a slight miss by one of the shooters can cause the prisoner to painfully bleed to death.

The electric chair was first built in the late 1800s and replaced hanging as the primary method of execution across the country by the early 1900s. It is still retained as an execution method in some states but is no longer the only method. While designed to be more humane, the electric chair still has a well-documented track record of failure when its jolts of electricity fail to kill a prisoner.

The gas chamber was introduced in 1924; pellets are dropped, triggering a chemical reaction that releases cyanide gas, cutting off oxygen to the prisoner’s brain. It was last used in 1999.

Today, carrying out the death penalty is very inexpensive,

Lethal injection is used more so today; it was first used in 1982 and has become the primary method of execution for all states that still permit the death penalty. A combination of three drugs is used to paralyze the prisoner’s muscles and stop their heart while strapped to a gurney.

The Newest technique

Execution by nitrogen gas was introduced in Oklahoma in 2015, first used in an execution in Alabama in 2024, and may become more widely used in the future.

Many death sentences are commuted to life in prison or overturned on appeal

Of the 8,466 death sentences handed down from 1973 to 2013,

3619 were removed from death row after being commuted or overturned (Baumgartner and Dietrich 2015).

Despite those results no longer being the death penalty, the costs were still incurred.

Lethal injection is used more so today; it was first used in 1982 and has become the primary method of execution for all states that still permit the death penalty. A combination of three drugs is used to paralyze the prisoner’s muscles and stop their heart while strapped to a gurney.

The Newest technique

Execution by nitrogen gas was introduced in Oklahoma in 2015, first used in an execution in Alabama in 2024, and may become more widely used in the future.

• First, they can divest money from other expenditures. However, this forces the government to cut funding from critical areas such as education, public safety, or anything else funded by the state.

• Second, is to raise taxes and pass the death penalty’s financial burden onto the taxpayers.

Raising taxes solely to compensate for increased spending because of the death penalty reduces private spending in the economy and can hurt consumer sentiment. 

Prison is necessary in society, yet inherently inefficient

Governments are forced to allocate resources to constructing, operating, and maintaining prisons when these resources could have been spent elsewhere. The high marginal costs of the prison system include both the direct costs of housing prisoners and the drop in productivity in individuals while incarcerated.

The main proposed benefit of the death penalty is that it will deter future crimes.

However, there is no strong evidence to suggest that prison works to prevent future crime (Nagin 2013). A more effective deterrent would be an increased sense of certainty that one would be caught if one did commit a crime. While punishing crime is necessary to preserve order in society, prison effectively removes millions from the labor force and removes the output they could have generated.

• Supporters of the death penalty argue that it is an economically beneficial system, as the marginal benefits outweigh the marginal costs.
• The only crimes currently capable of warranting the death penalty are murder and crimes against the state
• No one is currently on death row for crimes against the state
• The only possible crime the death penalty could deter is murder
• There is no statistical evidence to suggest that the death penalty has any effect on deterring murder

Following the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, the national murder rate did not decrease 

As of April 15, 2016, South Dakota currently has three prisoners awaiting execution.

California, in contrast, has the nation’s largest number of prisoners awaiting execution and incarcerates those 748 prisoners separately from other state prison inmates.

California spent an average of $85,000 each year to incarcerate a condemned prisoner. The study concluded it cost the state an average of $45,000 each year to incarcerate a prisoner serving a life sentence without parole, according to a 2012 study 

A study published by Seattle University in 2015: “Combining all cost categories:

The average total costs to the justice system related to the pursuit of the death penalty are about 1.4 to 1.5 times more expensive than cases in which the death penalty could have been sought but wasn’t

A preliminary study by South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, examining first-degree murder cases since 1985 that have resulted in a death sentence or life in prison:

Found that, on average, legal costs in death penalty cases exceeded those in the other cases by $ 353,105, and these numbers were not refuted.  

The average savings per prisoner is $159,523.  

But it is not possible to state definitively that the death penalty is always more expensive than life in prison in the United States

For clarity, we have not included states without the death penalty. [34] [35] [36] [37] [108] [126]

The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty laws on June 29, 1972, with the Furman v. Georgia ruling. The federal government and each state had to amend all death penalty laws to comply with the ruling, which is why no state has a legal death penalty older than 1973.

*The federal death penalty has been carried out only 16 times since its reinstatement after Furman v. Georgia in 1988: twice in 2001, once in 2003, ten times in 2020, and three times in 2021. Several moratoriums have been put in place by presidents in the interims.

**New York’s death penalty statute was ruled unconstitutional in 2004 and 2007. Some sources list 2004 as the year of abolishment, while others list 2007.

Death Row Inmates

In 1953 there were 131 inmates on death row, and 62 (47.3 percent) of them were executed. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Prisons and 28 states held 2,469 prisoners under sentence of death and executed 17 (0.7 percent) of them. Below find out more about death row inmates, including the number of them, the average time spent on death row before execution, the year each inmate was sentenced to death, demographic information, criminal histories, and removals from death row for reasons other than execution.

States without the death penalty from 1976–2020, and thus with no death row inmates, are not included in the tables below. However, states that abolished the death penalty within that time frame are included.