Let’s be honest about death penalty in Idaho: Revenge killing despite the cost | Opinion

The reasons justifying the death penalty continue to get thin.

The argument that it’s cheaper to execute someone than it is to house them in prison for the rest of their life doesn’t hold water.

As Idaho Statesman reporter Kevin Fixler wrote Sunday in an in-depth story, the costs to have someone on death row exceed the costs to house someone for life in prison.

He cited two studies from Washington state and Oregon, each showing that pursuit of a death sentence on average cost taxpayers upward of $1 million more than when prosecutors sought life imprisonment in aggravated first-degree murder cases.

And yet, misinformation about cost savings continues to be cited in Idaho to justify the practice.

“We also need to consider the costs involved,” Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg, told a Senate committee debating a bill to require death by a firing squad if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. “You can get your calculator out, do the math, times that many years by the days and by (the daily rate). It adds up to an awful lot of money.”

A death penalty expert told Fixler widely held beliefs that lifetime imprisonment is costlier than death sentences has been proved wrong time and again.

“It’s public misinformation,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor. “I don’t know how anybody could possibly argue with these statistics or even question them at all. It’s across the board, across the country, different states, but across different times, too, given the length-of-time cost studies conducted.”

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador suggested the solution to the high cost of the death penalty might be to cut down on the legal avenues available to someone on death row, in spite of the clear evidence that those legal avenues have at times exonerated those wrongly convicted and sentenced to death.

“Any fiscal discussion should ask why capital litigation costs what it does. Part of the reason, of course, is that the death row inmates will routinely engage in abusive litigation, dragging out the process over decades,” Labrador said.

We could save some money, even if it means a couple of innocent people might get executed and we trample on people’s constitutional rights.

Bringing back the firing squad, in particular, which passed and became law in Idaho on Saturday, highlights the barbarity of the death penalty.

And it adds to the costs, as the state estimated it will spend $750,000 to build a special firing squad facility that might never get used, bringing into question whether it’s worth the added expense.

Ricks continued to show a propensity to mislead during committee testimony for the firing squad bill that the mandatory area for observers to witness an execution made up “a lot of the cost.”

“If that was not there, it’d be much, probably less expensive to tool up to do some of that,” Ricks said.

Actually, more like $4,418, which was the cost associated with “facility and ground improvements for the demonstrator and media areas” in a prior remodel of the maximum security prison’s same cell block for lethal injection executions.

Further, Gov. Brad Little said he doesn’t expect the state to ever use the firing squad facility.

Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, who brought the firing squad legislation, said “it is interesting how political liberals are suddenly fiscal conservatives on death penalty expenses.”

It is equally interesting when political conservatives become tax-and-spend politicians when it comes to the blood-thirsty drive to execute someone, whatever the cost.

Another misinformed argument defending the death penalty is deterrence, which Labrador cited. “Capital punishment brings closure to victims of crimes and serves a deterrent effect,” Labrador said.

Multiple studies have shown no deterrent effect of the death penalty, regardless of the method of execution.

Labrador’s suggestion that the death penalty brings “closure” for the families also is debatable.

Does a guilty verdict and life sentence without the possibility of parole not provide “closure” for families? Or does an execution really just fulfill a sense of vengeance for victims’ families?

At least Skaug is being honest when he calls it what it is: retribution.

“The victims and their surviving families deserve to see the retribution that Idaho has deemed appropriate,” Skaug told the Statesman by email.

A valid argument can be made that the death penalty is simply immoral, particularly if you count yourself among those who claim to be “pro-life.”

If you take away the arguments about cost, deterrence and closure, what’s left other than a call for vengeance?

Idaho can and should have a debate about the death penalty.

But let’s at least have an honest, informed debate.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community member Mary Rohlfing.