The morality of executing murderers was put aside briefly as the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment tried to focus Tuesday’s hearing on what it costs to implement the death penalty. But the justification for ending the life of a criminal convicted of murder was never far from the discussion, as bishops from the Catholic, Methodist and Episcopal churches later took the stand.
John Roman, a researcher for the Urban Institute, testified his study showed the death sentence in Maryland costs $1.9 million more than trying a murder case without the death sentence — $3 million per case, compared to $1.1 million. From 1978 to 1991, that amounted to $186 million.
Those numbers were vigorously challenged by Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassily and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a commission member.
Cassily said the study was “so far off the mark as to be incomprehensible and useless.”
Both Cassily and Shellenberger said that it was wrong to add up the time of prosecutors, judges, court workers and law enforcement, since they don’t necessarily spend more time on death penalty cases than other matters and would be paid anyway.
“Hours spent on death cases must come from somewhere” and may take away efforts from prosecution of other serious crimes, Roman sad. “All the resources that are being employed could be used for other purposes,” he said.
Cassily and Shellenberger insisted that the extra costs of death penalty cases were really not much more than in other serious crimes. “We’re talking costs in the thousands, not in the millions of dollars,” Cassily said.
Ultimately, “Justice is not a cost-benefit issue. It is doing the right thing regardless of the cost,” he said.
Edwin O’Brien, Baltimore’s Catholic archbishop, said he was a fairly recent convert on the issue, having thought like most Americans that the death penalty served a purpose as a deterrent. But he said he was swayed by the teaching of Pope John Paul II that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.”
The commission has at least two more public hearings next month plus another hearing and public work sessions before it submits its report in December.
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