The costs of capital (punishment)

A few months ago I noted here a new attentiveness to the extraordinary economic costs of administering a system of capital punishment.  Thanks to How Appealing, I see that the Los Angeles Times, in this fascinating article in Sunday’s paper, has calculated that

the California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life and not counting the millions more in court costs needed to prosecute capital cases and hold post-conviction hearings in state and federal courts.

The article then calculates that, with “11 executions spread over 27 years, on a per-execution basis, California and federal taxpayers have paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars for each life taken at state hands.”

The LA Times article includes a lot of other interesting California capital sentencing information, including the notable decline in the number of death sentences imposed: “In 1999, [California] juries imposed 42 death sentences.  In 2004, the number dropped to nine.”  This datum provides yet more evidence, as detailed previously here and here and here, that the death penalty is in decline.