New report from Ohioans to Stop Executions on Ohio’s death penalty

The organization Ohioans to Stop Executions this morning released this new report about capital punishment in Ohio titled “The Human Cost of the Death Penalty.”  Here is how the report’s executive summary starts:

In dollars and cents, the death penalty is the most expensive and inefficient part of the criminal legal system. But what are the other costs to the death penalty system that cannot be measured on a financial report or within a county budget? What are the costs in human capital? What is the moral cost to society maintaining a system that routinely convicts innocent people and harms victims’ families, leaving everyone involved dissatisfied?

The death penalty system’s excess is so far beyond what is reasonable that we now measure costs not in hundreds of millions of dollars, but in billions of dollars. The math is simple, and the fact that death penalty costs have surpassed one billion dollars should trouble us all. It is well-established that each death penalty case costs at least $3,000,000. Ohio has issued 342 death sentences under the current law, running the total costs to $1.026 billion dollars (that’s $86 per Ohioan). According to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s most recent Capital Crimes Report, “It’s a stunning amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t achieve its purpose.”

What does the death penalty mean for victims’ families? It means decades of uncertainty. It means being hauled back into court year in and year out as the case runs the necessary gauntlet of appeals that safeguard the validity of a conviction. For victims’ families, the death penalty means reliving the worst day over and over with no end in sight. For families left in the wake of violence where a death sentence is the outcome, closure is a myth, and more trauma is the reality. Ohio’s capital punishment system makes promises of justice that it does not keep.