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The Cost of Closure: How much did Texas spend to fail to execute John Paul Penry?

By Gritsforbreakfast

Doug Berman over at Sentencing Law & Policy has been wondering about the cost of the death penalty in Texas, estimating (perhaps inflatedly) that the John Paul Penry case - where the defendant received life without parole after nearly 30 years of litigating his case in the appellate courts, including three trials and two trips to the US Supreme Court - cost Texas $1 billion when it was all said and done. The professor wonders:how many underfunded local police forces or local schools or crime victim funds or roads construction crews could have been more productive than was the criminal justice system with this billion dollars wasted by Texas prosecutors trying to have the state kill Johnny Paul Penry for his admitted crime[?] The particular irony in the Penry case is that prosecutors' pursuit of the death penalty lead to accomplishments, but mostly by those favoring death penalty abolition...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).