When you factor in the costs of a capital punishment trial, including appeals, the costs of maintaining death rows, and the costs of actual executions, it’s considerably more expensive to murder a prisoner than to incarcerate them for life without parole. Reports from the state of North Carolina (2011), the Kansas Judicial Council (2014), the Nevada Supreme Court (2015), the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (2021), and Florida’s 2010 Commission on Capital Cases have all confirmed the higher fiscal impacts associated with the death penalty compared to life imprisonment.
