On Wednesday, jurors wrapped up their first day of deliberations on a sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber. Experts said this trial has already cost taxpayers millions, and as for the cost of death row verses life in prison, we did the math, pored through research and spoke with two highly respected local legal minds and found an answer that might surprise you.
If jurors decide on life in prison for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as we've reported, he'll likely end up at the federal Supermax in Florence, Colorado.
So how much will it cost taxpayers?
According to CNN, the Supermax costs approximately $32,000 a year, per prisoner. Tsarnaev is only 21 years old. Assuming he lives to be at least 78, the current average life expectancy, that's 57 years in prison. So it comes to $1.824 million to incarcerate Tsarnaev for life and that doesn't even account for inflation.
Still, reports we sifted through and experts we spoke with point to that actually being far less than the cost of Tsarnaev sitting on death row.
Criminal defense dttorney Peter Elikann said one reason death row costs more is "because today there are many more constitutional safeguards built into the appeals process."
And, he said, that can go on for decades.
And Criminal defense attorney J.W. Carney agrees. He defended Whitey Bulger and told FOX25 that it cost the federal government several millions to carry out that trial, which was not a capital punishment case.
"In federal court, a lawyer who is handling a death penalty appeal gets paid 50 percent more than someone who is pursuing an appeal in a life without parole type of case," Carney said.
He went on to say, "Lawyers understand if they lose an appeal where life imprisonment is the end the client will still be living, but if you lose a death penalty case, your client is killed."
Carney also says incarceration is much more expensive for someone who is awaiting the death penalty, than someone serving a life sentence. He pointed to research that found it's as much as $100,000 more per year.
In Supermax, where Tsarnaev might wind up, he'll be in isolation 23 hours a day, and will require less supervision because he won't be able to mingle with other inmates.
However, on death row, prisoners are afforded more rights and have more freedoms and that costs more money.
