California Taxpayers Pay $308 Million for Each Inmate They Put to Death, What a Great Expenditure of Limited Resources

That's right folks, the LA Times reports that California ponies up nearly $308 million dollars for each inmate on death row that they get to kill.  Isn't that utterly brilliant? 

Here's an excerpt from the article by LA Times reporter Carol J. Williams (with credit to HuffPost for the tip:)

Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.

The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.

The study's authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin's death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.

In their research for "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," Alarcon and Mitchell obtained California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records that were unavailable to others who have sought to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of capital punishment.

Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners.

The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.

Alarcon, who prosecuted capital cases as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the 1950s and served as clemency secretary to Gov. Pat Brown, said in an interview that he believes the majority of California voters will want to retain some option for punishing the worst criminals with death. He isn't opposed to capital punishment, while Mitchell, his longtime law clerk, said she favors abolition. Both said they approached the analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row.

Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state's lethal injection procedures.

The long wait for execution "reflects a wholesale failure to fund the efficient, effective capital punishment system that California voters were told they were choosing" in the battery of voter initiatives over the last three decades that have expanded the penalty to 39 special circumstances in murder, the report says.

Unless profound reforms are made by lawmakers who have failed to adopt previous recommendations for rescuing the system, Alarcon and Mitchell say, capital punishment will continue to exist mostly in theory while exacting an untenable cost.
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The Bad Lawyer blawg has long ridiculed the capital punishment follies. Florida is currently conducting an expensive tax-payer funded media circus in an effort to put a young, lunatic woman to death while many other parental killers are sitting in Florida prisons doing life or a lot less.  In Cleveland families of the victims of serial killer Anthony Sowell have begged a prosecutor and judge to accept a guilty plea with the death penalty off the table to spare them the horror of living through a trial.  The official response, nope.

Our law enforcement and punishment priorities in this violent, crazy place are completely irrational.

Thous Shall Not Steal from the Taxpayer: Kentucky Taxpayers Pony-Up the Big Bucks for Biblical Principles

Michael Stevens who publishes the invaluable clearinghouse-blawg Kentucky Law Review reports that Kentucky taxpayers are increasingly finding themselves on the hook for the ACLU's attorney fees.  This is because local politicos are addicted to pandering over the Ten Commandments, thereby losing Separation of Church and State lawsuits brought by the ACLU.  This is from Michael's post, check the quote:

"Several Kentucky counties have continued to litigate their right to post the Ten Commandments on the walls of government buildings. They continue to lose in the courts, and now the bills for courts costs and attorney fees being awarded to the ACLU are coming home to roost.

[In mid-May] U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman awarded an additional $23,366 in attorney fees and costs to the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky for its work in challenging the displays, which were ruled unconstitutional.

Pulaski and McCreary counties now owe the ACLU a total of $456,881, nearly all of it for attorney fees. That figure doesn’t include mounting interest.  It’s not clear how the two counties would pay the bill[.]
The judgment is not covered under McCreary County’s insurance policy, and the relatively poor county — hard-pressed to provide services as it is — has nothing extra in the budget this fiscal year or next to pay the bill[.]

[County official] Maxey said 'We don’t have no $250,000 that we want to pay them with,”'referring to the ACLU.

The counties owe the ACLU the money because the civil-rights organization won the court case challenging the counties’ decision to post copies of the Ten Commandments."
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Here, you have poor counties spending the taxpayers' dime to defend consitutionally indefensible lawsuits necessitated by pandering politicians.  Good work.

Clermont County Prosecutor's Defamation Defense Costing Ohio Taxpayers Some Big Bucks

Clermont County's (Ohio) longtime prosecutor's defamation lawsuit defense is costing the taxpayers substantial dollars.  The following is an excerpt from Barrett Brunsman's report for the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"Taxpayers might have to cover at least $100,000 in legal fees in a defamation lawsuit filed by Clermont County Commissioner Archie Wilson against Prosecutor Don White.  'The county's money would be better spent on other things,' White said.  The prosecutor expects the county's insurance company to pay for his defense, but a $100,000 deductible would be the responsibility of taxpayers, White said.

Assistant prosecutors usually defend the county against lawsuits, but that would be [in]appropriate in this case[.]  An outside lawyer would be needed because some of the prosecutors who work for White could be called as witnesses [ . . .]

The suit seeks more than $25,000 in compensatory damages [ed. Ohio, like many states avoids outlandish demands for millions of dollars by capping the amount asked for in lawsuits at "in excess of $25,000] and unspecified punitive damages [. . . ] to be determined by a jury trial.The suit suggested that [the plaintiff, Mr. Wilson]  was defamed when the prosecutor circulated the affidavits of people who claimed to have witnessed Wilson make defamatory comments at an Aug. 2 meeting of the Union Township Republican Party.  White said he investigated after hearing that Wilson allegedly said the prosecutor was corrupt. 'He accused me of committing a crime - covering up a murder,' White said. 'It's not true.'

White looked into claims that Wilson allegedly said 2-year-old Cecilia Slaby had been murdered by her parents to cover up sexual abuse by her father. Union Township police determined the child died in 2007 after accidentally being left in a hot car by her mother.

The prosecutor said he was told by witnesses that Wilson suggested the parents weren't charged because White is a friend of R. Scott Croswell III, a lawyer who represented the girl's mother during a police investigation. Croswell was Wilson's opponent in the November election.


The suit against White also suggested the prosecutor engineered a Hamilton County defamation suit filed against Wilson by the parents of Cecilia, Symmes Township resident Gary Slaby and his wife, Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby.  The prosecutor called the suit field against him by Wilson frivolous and said he expects it to be dismissed."
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According to Prosecutor White's website, prior to becoming the Clermont County Prosecutor he was a loader for United Parcel Service.   It never ceases to amaze me how these sorts of disputes blow up and it's the taxpayers who pay and pay. 

Painting the Courthouse Potty, That'll Be $14K

The Courthouse News Service reports that California legislators are losing their minds over the high cost of courthouse administration, and nothing raises the ire of budget busters like excessive amounts of money spent on toilets:  Here's the account:

"Unusually high payments to contractors for courthouse upkeep and repairs caught the attention of legislators looking into spending by the California judiciary's administrative arm, including $14,000 to paint a single restroom, $2,600 to replace five smoke detectors and $149 for one worker to escort another through a courthouse.   The expenditures were among many listed on a 98-page report from the Administrative Office of the Courts. The leaders of that agency were grilled last week by legislators on the Assembly Committee on Accountability.

'We've got some significant budget issues in our state,' said Vice-Chair Audra Strickland (R) - Riverside. 'Is it possible we could show better oversight?'

AOC Director William Vickrey argued that inadequate billing codes most likely led to the AOC being over-billed for the most basic of services. Last year, the AOC spent $104 million on routine courthouse operations and maintenance."
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You think? 

California's budget crisis is so severe that the courts are barely able to function for the purposes set out in the California constitution.  Painting contracts that cost $14,000 are the sort of anecdotal evidence of budgetary dysfunction that will prompt changes.  Remember, the Pentagon's $600 toilet seat outrage, how about Dennis Kozlowski's $6,000 shower curtain?  Excessive amounts of money (especially tax dollars) spent on toilets usually generate healthy outrage. 

Over the years I would enter the OurState office building to attend workers' compensation hearing where I observed and where I was constantly astounded by the installation of new carpeting even in areas freshly carpeted within the same calendar year.  I'm sure there was nothing untoward or excessive in this constant re-carpeting of the people's palace of industrial justice.  No corruption, here.