Death Row Econonomics

A view inside the death chamber at the Oregon State Penitentiary in April 2009 during a media tour given by correctional officers. A new study by the Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University released Nov. 15, 2016 shows the trial and incarceration costs connected with the death penalty are significantly higher than similar cases that result in lesser punishments

(Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)

Clarification appended

A new study claims the trial and incarceration costs connected with the death penalty are almost twice as expensive than those for life sentences or other lesser penalties.

Researchers at Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University reviewed hundreds of aggravated murder cases from 1984 to 2013 in Oregon. The charge is the state's only crime eligible for the death penalty.

The 18-month study is being released Wednesday, a month after Gov. Kate Brown announced she would continue a state moratorium on capital punishment. The study, funded by the anti-death penalty Oregon Justice Resource Center, aims to provide a data-driven, objective look at taxpayer costs, said law school professor Aliza Kaplan, one of the authors.

History of the Death Penalty in Oregon

1850: The first execution in the Oregon territory took place.

1864: The death penalty was explicitly legalized.

1914: Voters repealed the death penalty.

1920: Voters reinstate the death penalty.

1964: Voters repealed the death penalty for a second time.

1978: Voters reinstate the death penalty again.

1981: Oregon Supreme Court found the latest version of the death penalty unconstitutional.

1984: Voters approve amendment to state constitution making capital punishment legal.

1996: Douglas Franklin Wright was executed.

1997: Harry Charles Moore was executed.

2011: Gov. John Kitzhaber announces moratorium on executions.

2015: Gov. Kate Brown extend moratorium.

Source: Oregon's Death Penalty: A cost analysis

Despite the moratorium, the death penalty can still be applied to a defendant by a court. A Marion County jury took less than an hour last week to sentence a man to death after a jail stabbing in 2013, according to the Statesman Journal.

Since 1984, Oregon courts have sentenced 63 people to death. The state executed two in the 1990s by lethal injection; four have died from natural causes while on death row; 21 have had their sentences reduced; and one person was released, according to the study. That leaves 35 people currently on death row.

Researchers at the law school gathered county jail costs per inmate during a death penalty trial, public defender cost per case, and costs from the state Department of Corrections to house an inmate after conviction. Researchers also obtained costs from the state Department of Justice to defend appeals and other filings from defendants during higher court proceedings, such as the state Supreme Court.

What's missing: costs from district attorneys and the courts. Their budgets don't fully break down expenditures per case.

The district attorneys, for example, don't account for the hourly cost of attorneys and staff per case but do break down incidental expenditures, such as supplies, expert witnesses and travel. As a result, the study's authors provided some expenditures they received from a handful of counties.

Of 374 aggravated murder trials, 61 death penalty cases cost an average of $2.3 million compared with $1.4 million from 313 cases that resulted in lesser punishments, a $918,896 difference or 1.7 times less, according to the study.

Without prison expenditures, the death penalty cases drop on average to $1.1 million compared to the $315,159 for the lesser sentences, which cost 3.5 times less. The report also looks at a smaller subset of cases from 2000 to 2013.

Average cost to pursue death penalty by decade

1980s: $274, 209

1990s: $1.1 million

2000s: $1.8 million

"The low average in the 1980s may be a result of business as usual (cases were just cheaper then), poor record keeping at that time, or the possibility that it took time to ramp--up after the death penalty came back into use in 1984."

Source: Oregon's Death Penalty: A cost analysis

"Numerous states, as we describe in this report, have gotten rid of the death penalty," said Kaplan, Lewis & Clark law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic who acknowledges she has worked to abolish the death penalty. "There's a handful of states with moratoriums, including ours. So there's a lot of questioning of the death penalty currently around the country: its constitutionality (and) its value."

Public support about the death penalty appears mixed nationwide.

Since 2009, lawmakers have abolished the death penalty in New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and most recently Nebraska, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

However after last week's general election, voters in Nebraska repealed the Legislature's abolition. Voters in California also rejected an effort to repeal the death penalty, and in Oklahoma, the electorate added language in the state's constitution declaring that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual.

In Oregon, defendants accused of aggravated murder get two lawyers plus state-funded investigators charged with learning as much as possible about the defendant and their family and life circumstances for the defense.

"Virtually everyone who is accused of aggravated murders is indigent," said third-year law student Venetia Mayhew, a co-author. "It's an incredibly expensive process, so the state is essentially covering the defense 99 percent of the time, or very much close to that."

The report examines the average number of hearings, filings by public defenders and prosecutors, and the number of rulings made by the judges in response to attorneys.

Kaplan provided a letter written by the Oregon District Attorneys Association in January that claimed district attorney budgets would remain the same with or without the death penalty because the cases themselves would not disappear.

Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis, a death penalty supporter, said he was surprised to learn researchers were able to obtain per-case costs from the state's Office of Public Defense Services, which has claimed in the past that releasing financial figures would hinder the fairness of future cases, he said.

Without seeing the report, Marquis made the correct assumption that the study's authors believe taxpayer money saved by eliminating the death penalty could be shifted to other criminal justice programs and other public systems.

"Do we really want to make decisions on justice issues based on whether we're saving or spending more money?," Marquis asked. "What if we showed it saved money to execute people more quickly? That would be a terrible reason to do it."

State law prohibits the public defense services from releasing information about specific costs in a specific case until conclusion, including many death penalty cases still in litigation through appeal, said Director Nancy Cozine. But a clause in the law allows for the release of costs for specific cases at the conclusion of a trail, she said.

"OPDS regularly releases that information to Oregon courts, researchers, and district attorneys," Cozine said. "In fact, the information requested by Aliza Kaplan was also provided to a retired district attorney."

-- Tony Hernandez

thernandez@oregonian.com

503-294-5928

@tonyhreports

This post was updated to include a comment from the OPDS, information about a recent death penalty conviction, and also a clarification about the district attorney costs.