Death Penalty Has No Jolt for the Economy

It's a film noir cliche that in prison, "life is cheap." It is also a lot less expensive than the alternative.

Millions of dollars are spent by states each year on the death penalty.

According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, California spends more than $137 million a year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life, despite not having had an execution in nearly four years. Florida is spending approximately $51 million per year on the death penalty, some $24 million per execution since resuming them in 1979. A study in Maryland found that the 25-year bill for just five executions totaled $186 million. The center claims that "in some states $30 million per execution is a very conservative estimate."

With that much money on the table, one might think that executions could be a profitable side business for a variety of businesses. Increasingly, that isn't the case, and much of the reason why can be blamed on the European Union.

"On the international level, abolition of the death penalty is a requirement for admission to the European Union," explains Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "Hence, not having the death penalty is the economic incentive for countries like Poland, Turkey, and Russia that are seeking admission."

The pushback against the death penalty abroad is a contributing factor for companies abandoning the business of providing the cocktail of chemicals used for lethal injections.

"What we've seen in the past year is that companies that could make money off the death penalty selling these drugs that are used for lethal injection have actually been turning away from taking that opportunity, stopping the production of thiopental sodium that was the main drug used," says Sara J. Totonchi, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty (it recently worked! with Ge orgia inmate Troy Davis until his controversial, massively protested execution last month). "It was actually the pressure from the international community. They want to continue to have their businesses flourish in countries outside of the United States."

"The bottom line is that a number of companies who thought this was a good business to get into, and that there was an opportunity to contract with state departments of correction on a drug that would extinguish human life, have decided that what they could gain is not worth what they could potentially lose," she adds.

The two leading providers of lethal injection chemicals -- Hospira in Illinois and Lundbeck of Denmark -- pulled out of the marketplace earlier this year (the latter company also claimed that its drug Nembutal was being misused by state correctional departments).

The void hasn't been easy to fill, as companies decide against the bad PR and overseas backlash they might face.

"One of the things we discovered was that after Hospira stopped making thiopental sodium and there was a nationwide shortage here in the U.S., states had to look all over the world to try to find this drug in order to carry out executions," Totonchi says. "Ultimately, we uncovered that the Georgia Department of Corrections was actually purchasing the drug from a little fly-by-night pharmacy that was located in the back of a driving school in London. The outrage from the British community was palpable. They couldn't believe that this company would do such a thing. There is now also an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice because there was no federal import license to bring that drug in."

An injunction filed by the center in January -- an unsuccessful effort to stop the execution of Georgia inmate Emanuel Hammond -- also pointed out that the labels on the boxes bear the name Link Pharmaceuticals. Link was bought by another company in 2006, and its name should not appear on drugs sold in 2010. "The mislabeling on the boxes calls into question whether the drugs bought by DOC are real and/or expired," the injunction said. Additional legal complaints are pending as investigations continue.