Today's Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports, "Lawmakers urged to debate steep costs of death penalty." It's written by Niki Kelly and Rebecca S. Green.
Attorney General Greg Zoeller used a legal summit to kick-start a statewide discussion of the financial burdens associated with the death penalty in Indiana.
He told 75 lawyers and law students at a University of Notre Dame event Monday that state lawmakers and policymakers should take a hard look at the costs and fiscal burden of capital punishment cases in Indiana.
But he did not call for a repeal of or moratorium on the death penalty. He also had no specific proposals.
Zoeller said the costs for a lengthy capital murder case can be exorbitant for a county government, including the costs of death penalty-qualified defense lawyers, expert witnesses, courthouse security and lodging for sequestered jurors.
And the costs to taxpayers continue to accumulate during the appeals process that can take 10 years or longer to play out. It cost more than $500,000 in defense costs alone to try a recent death penalty case in Warrick County, Zoeller spokesman Bryan Corbin said.
And at a time of shrinking revenue and when the judicial branch has little flexibility to cut budgets, Zoeller said legislators and policymakers should look carefully at cost structures driving the expense of death penalty cases at the trial and appellate levels.
“It is time that we in the criminal justice system have a candid conversation about the economic impact of capital punishment in Indiana,” he said. “I don’t claim to know the answers, but as the state government’s lawyer sworn to uphold the laws of Indiana, I hope we can trigger a frank discussion of these questions. We serve the crime victims and our constituents – the taxpayers – best if we confront a problem directly and objectively.”
Larry Landis, executive director of the Indiana Public Defenders Council, is quoted in this excerpt:
Indiana has the option of life without parole, putting defendants behind bars for the rest of their lives.
Asking for life without parole as a sentencing option gives prosecutors the opportunity to protect the public from predators and minimize the costs associated with death penalty appeals.
Even if prosecutors file a death penalty case only to withdraw it during plea negotiations, it already costs the counties money, Landis said.
“The meter is running the whole time, and you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get what you could have gotten with life without parole,” he said. “What we should be focused on, rather than it costs a lot of money, is that it’s an expenditure that is created when a prosecutor makes a choice to file a death penalty request. The best way to avoid the cost is don’t make that request.
“If you want to avoid the expense of a death penalty case, don’t file it. File it as a life-without-parole case, you get the same result, without all of the expense,” Landis said.
Earlier coverage of the Indiana Criminal Justice Summit is at the link; related posts, in the cost index.
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