Cost
Capital Punishment is a far more expensive system than the alternatives sentences of life or life without parole.
Fifty years of experience has taught us that no matter how hard the government tries to get the death penalty system right, it fails at every turn, from convicting innocent people to botching execution procedures, all while spending millions of taxpayer dollars.
In a 2004 Tennessee Comptroller’s Report, the Office of Research concluded that utilizing the death penalty costs taxpayers more than relying on the alternative sentences. Capital trials alone cost an average of 48% more than non-capital trials.
Comprehensive cost studies, such as those done in Maryland and North Carolina, show the death penalty costs $2 million more over the course of a case than the alternative sentences.
Taxpayer dollars would be better spent on solving cold cases rather than pursuing the death penalty for those already incarcerated. From 2017-2020, the Memphis Police Department had a clearance rate of 32%; Nashville, 43%; Knoxville, 37%; and Chattanooga, 39%. (https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/01/12/as-murders-spiked-police-solved-about-half-in-2020)
This reality leaves surviving families of murder victims fearful and without legal finality.
Tennessee needs real solutions that invest more resources in victim support services and evidence-base violence prevention. In 2025, with victim services in Tennessee facing collapse because of federal funding cuts, Tennessee finally included money in the state budget for these critical services for the first time. Though it is not enough. Victim service providers asked for dedicated annual funding of $25 million. They got $10 million dollars for two years.
If Tennesseans truly want to embrace a culture of life and to find effective responses to crime, our state should invest in trauma informed solutions that focus on accountability, mental health, and early intervention to prevent crime. We should solve more violent crime and get victims of violence the resources that they need to begin to heal so that their healing isn’t reliant on what happens to the people who’ve caused them harm as opposed to spending millions of dollars to execute individuals who have been incarcerated for decades.
According to a New Jersey study conducted by New Jersey Policy Perspectives, between 1983 and 2005, N.J. taxpayers paid $253 million more for their death penalty system than they would have for a system that relies on alternative sentencing. New Jersey no longer has the death penalty.
The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing a person to life or life without parole. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke university, 1993).
In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration. (Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).
Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost for alternatives. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 2000).
In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence cost approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued from 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute 2008). Maryland no longer has the death penalty.
The greatest costs of the death penalty are incurred prior to and at trial, not in post-conviction proceedings.
- Under a death penalty system, trials have two separate phases (conviction and sentencing). Special motions and extra jury selection questioning typically precede these trials.
- More investigative costs are generally incurred in capital cases, particularly by the prosecution.
- When death penalty trials result in a verdict less than death or are reversed, the taxpayer incurs all the extra costs of capital pretrial and trial proceeding and must then also pay either for the cost of incarcerating the prisoner for life or the costs of a retrial (which often leads to a life sentence).