Death Penalty Facts
Lethal Injection Costs
$1.5 million: What Arizona spent for lethal injection drugs in 2020 and used in 3 executions, all 3 of which it botched.
$200,000: One state’s estimate of the going price for lethal injection drugs for a single execution in 2024.
$20,000 in cash: What Arizona's executioner is paid per execution.
$420,000 in cash: In 2022, what Oklahoma’s executioner stood to make for executions scheduled over the next two years.
$170,000: What Idaho was court-ordered to pay in 2020 for its bad faith noncompliance with the Freedom of Information Act regarding records pertaining to the purchase of lethal injection drugs.
$15,000 in cash: What Idaho officials took on a chartered plane to Washington, where they exchanged money for drugs, allegedly in a nearby Walmart parking lot (presumably the reason Idaho did not want to comply with its FOIA obligations).
$150,000: What Idaho spent on lethal injection drugs for the failed execution of Thomas Creech, who survived his own execution in 2024.
Costs of the Death Penalty Generally
$1-3 million: The average cost of a single capital case based on studies across a number of states.
$121-363 million: The additional cost of imposing the death penalty compared to life without parole in Ohio, according to a 2024 Ohio legislative report—“a stunning amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t achieve its purpose.”
$3-4 million: The average cost of a death penalty case in Arizona.
$4 billion: What California spent on its death penalty from 1976-2011.
$300 million: The average cost per execution of California’s 13 executions from 1976-2011.
$51 million: What Florida spends per year to maintain the death penalty over and above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murders with life in prison without the possibility of parole.
$24 million: The average cost to Florida taxpayers per execution.
$2.3 million: The average cost of a death penalty case in Texas—approximately three times the cost of housing a single prisoner in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.
Other Lethal Injection Facts
- 9-15: the number of syringes it takes to execute a prisoner with the three-drug protocol
- 3-9: the number of syringes it takes to execute a prisoner with the one-drug protocol
- 18: the average number of minutes for a prisoner to die by lethal injection using the 1-drug protocol
- 7-8: the percentage of visibly botched executions by lethal injection
- 3: the percentage of visibly botched executions by other execution methods
- 84: the percentage of autopsies by lethal injection that show prisoners suffered from acute pulmonary edema as they died
- 640: the number of gasps that Joseph Wood made in his nearly 2-hour execution by Arizona in 2022
- Nearly 3 hours: the length of the longest execution in US history, Alabama’s execution of Joe Nathan James by lethal injection in 2022
- Zero: the number of pharmacological studies of lethal injection before it was used to kill prisoners
Other Death Penalty Facts
- 200: the number of exonerations from death row
- 82: the percentage of studies showing that race influenced the likelihood of receiving the death penalty
- Old age: the number one cause of death on death row
- 83%: the drop in death sentences nationwide from 2004 to 2024 (138 new death sentences in 2004, and 26 in 2024)
- 53%: support for the death penalty in 2024
- Last: what a nationwide survey of police chiefs ranked the death penalty as necessary for effective law enforcement
