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by, rdwriter…(10/09/2025)

The effectiveness in sentencing convicted felons to death with lethal injection in the United States, while chiefly considering its victimization, House Representatives, including State Governors, are wondering, the death penalty can be a taunting dilemma for an inmate nesting on condemn row decades awaiting appeals. Of understanding how a court certiorari for a death penalty case is received by the Supreme Court, only about two percent make it to the bench, perhaps annually (A writ of certiorari is the formal request that a party must file for the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case decided by a lower court). This is not a high margin of pleas considering hundreds of death row inmates in State and Federal institutions and the hundreds of thousands of dollars paying a landmark of attorneys that quarrel over death row cases. One organization, well known as the ‘Innocence Project t’ was founded in1992, and a force to apply DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly convicted people and those condemned to death serving prison terms. The Innocence Project began as a legal clinic within a law school, becoming an independent nonprofit organization in 2004 (Google Search,2025). 

As of December 2024, approximately 2,100 individuals are reported to have served on state death rows, with 3 people remaining on federal condemn row during President Biden’s office. President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 death row inmates to life in prison; it is unreported whether those lifers received a condition of release thereafter and parole to follow.  In other words, estimates of about 2,103 inmates are serving on state and federal condemned rows, while the remaining majority are serving state sentences.  The cost of appeals for above 2,103 inmates, thus not accounting for the update of condemned to die thereafter, will add enormously, contrary to what it would cost to house, feed, and provide medical attention for a young adult serving on death row for forty years or more per se, to the side of older inmates awaiting execution.

One argument for the death penalty is that the usual alternative—life in prison without possibility of parole—imposes a financial burden on taxpayers (about $60,000-$70,000 per death row inmate per year, according to another statistic.

Yet capital punishment is costly too:

Although appeals do consume relatively more resources, capital trials also consume more resources than similar trials with a maximum sentence of life in prison. One early study found the additional trial costs exceeded those of appeals by a factor of four (Cook et al. 1993). Estimates of the marginal capital trial cost vary, but Collins et al. (2015) offer a middling figure of just under $1,500,000 (cf. Roman et al. 2009). The reasons for the increase are several. Attorneys spend more time preparing cases, and many states require the appointment of two defense attorneys to any defendant who cannot afford private counsel. In search for “death qualified” jurors, i.e., individuals who neither universally oppose nor support the death penalty are other factors. Capital cases also produce more hearings and court filings. Expert witnesses are unavoidable. Mitigation evidence argues for leniency in punishment, which can require a significant travel budget. For these reasons and more, capital trials are uniquely expensive.

One general assessment concludes that:

In the 32 U.S. states where the death penalty is legal, including within the federal government, the death penalty has become more expensive than life imprisonment with or without parole. This higher cost is generated from more expensive living environments, a greater all-embracing legal process, and increasing resistance to the death penalty from chemical manufacturers overseas. These costs become higher, pending the outcome of various lawsuits against various states for their “botched” executions. Each death penalty inmate is approximately $1.12 million (2015 USD) more than a general population inmate (Miron, J. 7/ 20/2023. appeared on SubStack .The Financial Implications of the Death Penalty. Published by The Cato Institute).

Of a quick Google search, the average cost to house a federal inmate is roughly $44,090 (2023). State inmates’ annual salaries vary significantly and roughly between $23,0000 to over $300.000 annually, depending of the State. considerations such as security levels, staffing, and the specific state’s budget influence these costs.

Contrary to housing and condemning a row of inmates, while comparing to State and Federal long-term incarceration, there are multiple and dividing factors to consider such as age, nutrition, hygiene, clothing, health / medical, and type of security level. Although housing a death row inmate is significantly higher, between $60.000 to $90,000 annually, a report from California’s average of $149,00l per year (Google Search). A Condemn Row Inmate’s annual housing cost, perhaps, does not include state and federal appeals.