Economic Strain

The costs of capital punishment are not calculated just based on an individual's execution, rather on the total cost of their trial, numerous appeals, cost of care while on death row, upkeep of the means of execution, and finally the actual execution. This means that states who have inmates sitting on death row for extended periods of time, even in a year without an execution, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. While there's no real way to calculate the annual cost the nation incurs for it's death row inmates, several individual states have conducted their own studies with staggering results*. Especially in this uncertain economy, American citizens cannot afford to support this practice that diverts hundred of thousands, if not millions of dollars away from budgets that would positively affect society, such as education or public transportation.