The Death Penalty Information Center has available more extensive reports on a variety of issues, including:
• “Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty” (May 2024)
• “The Death Penalty in 2023: Year-End Report” (December 2023)
• “Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today” (December 2023)
• “Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty” (June 2023)
• “Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty” (October 2022)
• “DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic” (February 2021)
• “Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty” (September 2020)
• “Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States” (November 2018)
• “Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty” (November 2015)
• “The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All” (October 2013)
• “Struck By Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty 35 Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976” (June 2011)
• “Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis” (October 2009)
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Capital trials cost more than non-capital cases because of higher costs for prosecution and defense lawyers; time consuming pre-trial
investigation; lengthy jury selection process for death-qualification; enhanced security requirements; longer trials because of bifurcated
proceedings; solitary confinement incarceration; and necessary appeals to ensure fairness.
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An economic analysis of independent research studies completed in 15 death penalty states from 2001 – 2017 found that the average
difference in case-level costs for seeking the death penalty was just over $700,000. Report of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review
Commission, Table 1 at p.233 (2017).
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Oklahoma capital cases cost, on average, 3.2 times more than non-capital cases. (Study prepared by Peter A. Collins, Matthew J. Hickman,
and Robert C. Boruchowitz, with research support by Alexa D. O’Brien, for the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, 2017.)
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Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty
was not sought. (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).
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A study in California revealed that the cost of the death penalty in the state has been over $4 billion since 1978. Study considered pre-trial
and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals, and costs of
incarceration on death row. (Alarcon & Mitchell, 2011).
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A report by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in 2010 found that seeking a federal death sentence costs 8 times more than seeking
a life sentence. Jon B. Gould and Lisa Greenman, Update on the Cost and Quality of Defense Representation in Federal Death Penalty Cases
(2010) at https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/fdpc2010.pdf