Accounting for the high costs of a lingering death row in Connecticut

This local article from the Nutmeg State, headlined "Taxpayers' Costs Top $3.5 Million For Death Row Inmates' Lawsuit," details that the statutory repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut has not repelled all the costs of capital litigation.  Here are the pricey basics:

The cost to taxpayers of a long-running racial-bias lawsuit by death-row inmates has topped $3.5 million, with more possible before an expected judge's ruling within a few months — and then a possible appeal by whoever loses.  News coverage of the habeas corpus lawsuit in state Superior Court has centered on the trial late last year of claims by five convicted killers that Connecticut's death penalty is biased racially, ethnically and geographically....

[The] totals [now of] slightly more than $3.5 million .... doesn't include the time devoted to the case by the salaried staff members of [Chief State's Attorney Kevin] Kane's office, who have opposed the inmates' claims of bias in the administration of the death penalty. Kane was asked for an estimate more than a week ago, but said it would be difficult to compile and didn't come up with one by Friday.

The tally also doesn't include possible additional payments to the expert witness for the inmates, Stanford Law School professor John J. Donohue III. Records show that Donohue was paid $100,000 from 2006 to 2008. But he's done a lot of work since then, including testifying at the trial last year, said the lead lawyer for the inmates, David Golub of Stamford.  For all the time Donohue has put in, he might be owed "millions," Golub said, although he didn't know how much of that the state would actually end up paying him.

The inmates pursuing the bias suit want their sentences converted to life imprisonment without parole.  The trial of the case ended in December and Judge Samuel J. Sferrazza is expected to render a decision within several months....

The trial was conducted for more than 10 days from September to December in a makeshift courtroom inside Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, which houses the state's 11 death-row inmates. The 11 men on death row still face execution despite the state legislature's abolition of the death penalty in 2012. The abolition doesn't apply to people already on death row whose crimes predated the legislation....

The inmates' claims grew out of a study of Connecticut death penalty prosecutions first authorized by the state Supreme Court in 1995 after it was presented with information indicating that the administration of the death penalty had been disproportionally applied to black defendants, or to defendants whose victims were white. The Supreme Court directed that the information be analyzed to explain any racial disparities. That led to a study by Donohue of all homicides prosecuted in Connecticut between 1973 and 2006. Donohue concluded, and testified in court, that there has been bias. Michelson, the state's expert, has disputed that.