The financial burden of a death sentence ultimately falls on taxpayers, who fund the extensive appeals process prosecutors must pursue in capital cases.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A federal appeals court halted Christa Pike’s execution Wednesday, intervening roughly an hour before she was scheduled to be put to death.
Pike, 50, was due to receive a lethal injection in Tennessee for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Yet the expense of seeking Pike’s execution could match or exceed the cost of keeping her imprisoned for life—an outcome that raises broader questions about the price of capital punishment for the state and its taxpayers.
Don Bosch, an attorney and legal expert, has handled seven capital punishment cases during his career.
“It’s more expensive to seek the death penalty as a state because of the necessary layers of appeals,” Bosch said. “Remember, death is the one punishment that you can’t correct after implementation.”
Tennessee provides defendants in capital cases with two court-appointed attorneys, compared with one lawyer in other criminal cases.
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Capital cases also frequently require costly psychological evaluations and medical testimony. “Those things that require psychologists and medical testimony get very expensive for the state, where those often don’t exist in other types of cases,” Bosch said. Some argue that eliminating or reducing appeals would cut expenses, he added, but doing so would increase the risk of wrongful convictions or executions. “It is the punishment that requires perfection.”
Tennessee has not released updated figures comparing the cost of capital punishment with a life sentence since 2004. Research from states across the country, however, consistently shows that death penalty cases can cost taxpayers several times more than life imprisonment.
“The comptroller has actually been asked over the years, and they’ve never provided that,” Bosch said.
With the court proceedings now complete, however, the most expensive phase of Pike’s case has already passed.
“It probably is going to be pretty close, the cost of imposing the death penalty on Pike, in terms of if she were to stay in prison the rest of her life,” Bosch said.
Pike was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 10 a.m. Central Time Wednesday in Nashville. If carried out, it would have made her the first woman executed by Tennessee since 1820.
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