According to a news article available here, several states are considering eliminating the death penalty as a way to save money. The issue has sparked some interest in the blogosphere, including here and here. In light of the ever-increasing budget shortfall in North Carolina, which will apparently exceed two billion dollars and require cuts of 9% or more to state agencies, is the issue likely to arise here? Two things make me think not. First, the states that are considering eliminating the death penalty are mostly states that don't have a significant number of people on death row. States like California, Texas, and Florida aren't considering eliminating the death penalty, which makes me suspect that North Carolina, which currently has the nation's seventh-largest death row, won't consider it either. Second, I doubt that the financial savings are substantial enough to lure the General Assembly into the political minefield of the death penalty. The Los Angeles Times, in an editorial here, claims that California could save about $60 million per year by eliminating the death penalty. California's death row is more than three times as large as North Carolina's, suggesting much lesser potential savings here -- and the editorial's calculations don't appear to include the potential increase in costs that would result from an increase in first-degree murder trials if the death penalty were eliminated as an incentive to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. (The study cited by the editorial does try to account for those costs, and it [...]
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