North Carolina spent $200 million on death penalty since last execution in 2006

North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006. In 6 of the last 10 years, North Carolina has not sentenced a single defendant to death. Despite the reluctance of jurors to impose death sentences and the hesitation of prosecutors and politicians to conduct executions, the death penalty has been a significant expense for state taxpayers, according to The Charlotte Observer.

According to a study conducted by Duke University researchers, death penalty prosecutions cost the state roughly $11 million per year. This means North Carolina has likely spent about $200 million on death penalty cases since its last execution in 2006. The additional costs of the death penalty begin at the defendant’s initial trial. Supreme Court precedent demands two separate trials for capital defendants. One to determine the defendant’s guilt, much like a traditional trial. The second trial is a resource-intensive presentation of the defendant’s life and the circumstances of the offense. For these sentencing trials, capital defendants are entitled to services from a wide range of mental health experts who extensively research the defendant’s life to find reasons why they may not deserve a death sentence.

After a defendant is sentenced to death, they go through decades of appeals to ensure that they had a fair trial. At each of the nine stages of appeals, the defendant is entitled to an attorney, and courts typically hire additional experts. If any of these appeals are successful, then the defendant will be entitled to a new, two-stage trial. If the defendant is sentenced to death again, they restart the lengthy appellate process from the beginning.

Although increased litigation costs are the largest reasons for the expense of the death penalty, they are not alone. North Carolina currently houses 136 defendants on death row in Raleigh, which costs roughly $85,000 per year to maintain.

Additionally, if North Carolina were to continue executions, the state would have to spend significant time and money to acquire pentobarbital, a drug legally required for executions in North Carolina. Pentobarbital is no longer sold by American pharmaceutical companies for the purposes of execution.

In 2020, Arizona recently spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. In the time since then, the drug has only become rarer and more expensive. Each of these expenses, from two-stage trials, to paying out countless experts, litigating a seemingly endless set of appeals and procuring expensive drugs, could be avoided by instead sentencing all capital defendants in North Carolina to life in prison and eliminating the death penalty.

While some death penalty proponents may argue for cutting corners to save money in our death penalty system, this is not a feasible option. North Carolina is bound by well-established Supreme Court precedent that grants capital defendants many expensive rights and processes. Further, the appeals system and experts involved in the death penalty serve an important purpose. Without these safeguards, it would be significantly more likely for an innocent defendant to be sentenced to death.

North Carolina has no reason to invest so much time and money into killing, when the state could instead work to protect citizens’ lives today. Our state would be a safer, more compassionate place if we reinvest the millions of dollars we spend on our death penalty system each year into victim’s funds, police training and resources, and mental health services.

The time to abolish the death penalty is now.

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