• By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Mar 8, 2009 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The national economic crisis is forcing some states to consider abolishing the death penalty.

Louisiana is unlikely to formally put an end to capital punishment, state officials say. But some prosecutors around the state are limiting the number of executions they pursue because of the price tag and the length of appeals.

"They're cutting way back," said state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, a former district attorney. "They're taking only the most heinous."

A capital punishment case can cost millions of dollars between indictment and execution - an expense that lawmakers in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire and New Mexico are contemplating whether they can afford.

In Maryland, where $500 million in mid-year budget cuts have been made, the governor has pushed to abolish the death penalty, arguing the financial cost is too great.

In 2007, New Jersey abolished the death penalty, partly because of cost concerns. A state commission concluded it cost an additional $32,481 a year to house an inmate on Death Row rather than in the general prison population.

Capital punishment cases can stretch out for years, ringing up a hefty tab for legal expenses that usually is borne by taxpayers because few of the defendants can pay their own bills.

State officials in Louisiana — which has the highest incarceration rate among states — seem reluctant to eliminate executions.
Gov. Bobby Jindal said he opposes abolishing the death penalty. Jindal said a price tag cannot be placed on justice. Executions, he said, create safer communities by acting as a deterrent to crime.

Legislative leaders say the state is unlikely to end executions as part of cost-saving measures during a time of slumping tax collections and oil prices.

“My guess is that decision would not be based on economic considerations, given what I feel to be the sentiment of the Legislature,” said Senate President Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan. “It would be a pro- or anti-death penalty vote.”

House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, said the general feeling in the state is that there are cases deserving of the death penalty. He said the deterrent value is worth the cost, however high.

State Rep. Walker Hines, D-New Orleans, introduced legislation last year to abolish the death penalty.

“I’d much rather send a violent criminal to life in prison without parole at Angola working hard labor on the farm, thus generating revenue for the state, than I would execute them, sometimes decades later,” he said.

But the bill stalled in committee. The joke, Hines said, was that the issue has been studied to death.

Last execution seven years ago

Louisiana’s last execution was in May 2002, when Leslie Dale Martin died by lethal injection for raping and killing a 19-year-old college student.

A few of the state’s Death Row inmates seem destined to die of natural causes rather than from a chemical cocktail.

Courts have held that the state cannot force mentally ill inmates such as Michael Owen Perry to take the psychiatric drugs needed to make them lucid enough to execute. Perry, who is schizophrenic, killed five members of his family, including a toddler nephew.

Other inmates will wait years for their trips to the death house.

Former New Orleans police officer Antoinette Frank was supposed to die in December for killing her police partner and two restaurant workers in 1995. The death warrant was withdrawn after her attorney argued Frank has not exhausted her appeals.
Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said the pace of executions has slowed across the nation in the past decade.

The process stalled in 2007 as the U.S. Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of death by lethal injection. However, experts note that executions did not kick into overdrive after injections were ruled legal.

Ciolino thinks judges are more likely to grant stays of execution because of high-profile exonerations, many of which have followed DNA tests that show the person convicted of the crime didn’t do it.

The Death Penalty Information Center — a nonprofit group with many board members who are defense attorneys — notes that only nine states held executions last year even though nearly 40 had inmates on Death Row.

At the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, 769 offenders are serving life sentences for first-degree murder. Eighty-one men and two women are on Death Row. The women are held in St. Gabriel.

At Angola, some inmates have been on Death Row since Jindal, now 37, was a freshman in high school.

Costs here not calculated

The Death Penalty Information Center estimated that in 2007, “the average time between sentencing and execution grew to 12.7 years.” The average wait was seven years in 1990.

The delays add to the cost of housing inmates on Death Row, which requires heightened security.

Defending people facing the death penalty also typically costs more because it requires expert witnesses and multiple attorneys.

The threat of execution often means delving into a defendant’s upbringing, education, mental stability and intelligence. At least two defense attorneys are required in capital cases, and often a different set of lawyers handles the appeals.

In the murder case against accused  serial killer Derrick Todd Lee, his public defender sought $800,000 from the state to hire DNA experts, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, court records show. The Lee case strained the resources of the East Baton Rouge Parish public defender’s office, which is funded partly with the proceeds from speeding tickets.

In Maryland, some experts say the state spends about $37 million to execute an inmate.

But the numbers are hard to nail down in Louisiana.

The Department of Public Safety and Corrections reports spending $68.42 a day to house an inmate at Angola.

That figure, however, does not distinguish between the costs of housing Death Row inmates in one-person cells and general-population inmates in dormitory-style barracks.

Department spokeswoman Pam LaBorde said her agency takes the prison’s total budget, divides it by the average number of inmates, then divides again by the number of days in a year.

Likewise, the cost of the death-penalty appeals process to the state of Louisiana is unclear.

Death Row inmates generally have an automatic appeal in which the court record is reviewed, plus another state appeal. They also can seek review in the federal court system.

Jean Faria, who heads the taxpayer-funded State Public Defender Board in Louisiana, said she is working on calculating a per-case cost for death-penalty defense.

“We are very determined to get to that number,” she said.

About $9 million of Faria’s $28 million budget is spent on capital punishment cases. Her office handles appeals and also steps in when a parish public defender is unable to represent someone.

Federal and local officials also bear costs, she said.

Linda Watson, assistant district attorney for the parishes of Tensas, Madison and East Carroll, said the cost of prosecuting a capital punishment case is staggering, especially for an impoverished region.

Parishes often have to pay for legal defense costs and for housing jurors during trials.

She said her office usually pursues the lesser punishment of life in prison.

“It would break our Police Jury,” Watson said. “The cost of a death penalty case is unbelievable.”

Scott Perrilloux, district attorney for Livingston, St. Helena and Tangipahoa parishes, said it is frustrating to pursue death penalty cases when few people get executed.

Two inmates prosecuted by the office that Perrilloux now heads have been on Death Row more than 20 years.

“The stakes are higher and the expenses are higher. But we’ve just become very selective in indicting out first-degree murder cases,” he said.

He said his greatest concern is not the cost but the struggle to get to the finish line and see someone put to death. A death penalty case file, he said, never seems to close.

Fewer capital cases

The pace of death penalty cases in Louisiana is slowing.

Fewer people have been sentenced so far this decade than in the 1990s — a trend that tracks the national numbers.

Caldwell said district attorneys are trying to cut costs by limiting the number of death penalty cases they try.

A capital case, he said, amounts to “playing on a $100-a-roll table instead of a nickel or dime table.”

Before becoming attorney general last year, Caldwell was district attorney for Tensas, Madison and East Carroll parishes — one of the poorest areas in the state.

He said he used the death penalty as a bargaining tool to convince accused murderers to plead to life in prison.

Caldwell said he could try a second-degree murder case for $15,000 to $20,000, compared to at least $250,000 to put a death-penalty defendant on trial. The difference includes having to pay for expert witnesses and investigators, he said.

“It wasn’t just because of the cost, but the cost is horrible, and we really couldn’t afford one,” Caldwell said.

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