Kansas will consider abolishing the death penalty next year as death sentences are declining across the United States.
Fewer people were sentenced to death this year than any other year since 1976, according to a report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released yesterday found.
“It is doubtful in today’s economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions,” argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) and the report’s author.
