Whenever an Anti-Death Penalty
campaigner claim that capital punishment is more expensive than LWOP, please
keep in mind, they are the reason why the death penalty system is expensive.
Peterson says death penalty cost
analysis contains ‘serious inaccuracies’
LINCOLN — Attorney General Doug
Peterson launched a new attack Wednesday against a recent economic analysis
that pegged the annual cost of Nebraska’s death penalty at $14.6 million.
At a press conference in a satellite
office in downtown Lincoln, Peterson contended that the report by Creighton
University economist Ernie Goss contains “serious inaccuracies.” Peterson was
joined by top prosecutors and appellate lawyers in his office, along with
Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly.
“We simply can’t sit down
and watch this number be used over and over as being a cost figure when we know
it does not accurately reflect what goes on in Nebraska,” Peterson said.
Goss on Wednesday again defended his
study.
“I continue to stand by my analysis
that Nebraska’s death penalty costs an average of $14.6 million annually above
the costs of life without parole,” he said in an email.
The pro-death penalty attorney general
has repeatedly assailed the $16,000 study that Goss did on commission for Retain
a Just Nebraska, an organization working to preserve the Legislature’s 2015
repeal of capital punishment. Voters will decide a referendum Nov. 8 that would
undo the repeal and reinstate the death penalty.
Peterson said one flaw of the Goss
analysis stems from its reliance on studies conducted in other states that show
death penalty cases generate higher defense costs, take more court time to
resolve and generate more appeals than cases that result in life in prison.
Nebraska’s costs are significantly lower,
Peterson argued, because the state sets a high bar for death penalty
prosecutions and ultimately sends a relatively small number of killers to death
row.
It took an average of 14 days to seat
a jury, conduct a trial and pronounce a sentence in a death penalty case in
Nebraska, based on the attorney general’s analysis of the 10 men on the state’s
death row. But based upon assumptions in the Goss report, which were derived
from other state studies, the average death penalty case would take 89 days, Peterson
said.
The attorney general also said Goss
assumed that it costs Nebraska more to house death row inmates, as it does in
other death penalty states. But the Nebraska Department of Correctional
Services has said the cost of housing the condemned inmates is about $37,000,
no different than other inmates at the Tecumseh State Prison where death row is
housed.
“Nebraska voters deserve accurate
information,” Peterson said Wednesday.
The attorney general said he could not
estimate the cost of the death penalty in Nebraska, but he argued that the
separate trial held for aggravating circumstances would be the only element
that costs more than a life-in-prison case.
While Gov. Pete Ricketts and others
also have questioned the accuracy of Goss’ $14.6 million estimate, another
Nebraska economist who reviewed the report at The World-Herald’s request said
Goss used accepted methodology and produced evidence that the death penalty
costs more.
Goss has said while he reviewed 19
death penalty cost studies from other states, his $14.6 million estimate
resulted from an economic equation that factored justice cost data reported by
Nebraska counties to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The analysis produced a margin of
error of half a percent, Goss said.
During a death penalty debate held
Wednesday by the Lincoln Independent Business Association, a question about the
Goss analysis was posed to death penalty opponent State Sen. Colby Coash of
Lincoln and attorney Bob Evnen, co-founder of Nebraskans for the Death Penalty.
Coash said even if the death penalty
costs less than Goss estimated, taxpayers aren’t getting what they’re paying
for given that the state last conducted an execution in 1997. Evnen said the
death penalty should cost more to protect the due process rights of the defendants.
“This is not about saving money, it’s
about a just punishment,” Evnen said.
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