The recent repeal of the death penalty adds momentum to the fight to abolish it in other states like California:
California spends an additional $184 million per year total on its more than 700 death row prisoners than if they had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to a comprehensive 2011 study by Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
An Urban Institute study in 2008 found that a single death sentence in Maryland costs almost $2 million more per case than a comparable non-death-penalty case.
"It's not just the cost in a vacuum," said Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA, a national grass-roots organization that opposes the death penalty. "It's not to say that if it was a good economic time, we'd be supporting it. But people are weighing the cost … and realizing that the death penalty is a very ineffective way to keep the public safe, especially for the money."
From the
Los Angeles Times
