Your tax dollars at work?: cost accounting for Aurora theater shooter James Holmes' failed capital trial

As a matter of abstract philosophy, I have struggled for decades concerning my opinion on capital punishment.  But as a matter of modern public policy, I have generally concluded that the death penalty is not a great use of limited resources for most states.  This new Denver Post article, headlined "Aurora theater shooting trial cost taxpayers at least $3 million: Final cost of James Holmes' trial in the Aurora theater shooting likely won't ever be known," reinforces my perspectives in this regard. Here are the details:

Jailing, evaluating and prosecuting the man who committed the Aurora movie theater shooting cost taxpayers at least $3 million, but the final expense of one of the mostly closely watched court cases in Colorado history may never be known. The $3 million tab was compiled by The Denver Post following multiple open-records requests over the past year. It covers the amount spent from 2012 through 2015 specifically on preparing for and seeing through the trial of James Holmes.

Nearly $1.6 million of the cost was covered by federal grants. When including the salaries of judges, prosecutors, sheriff's deputies and other government employees who spent most or all of their time on the case — but who would have been paid regardless — the total cost rises to more than $7 million.

And there's still a big chunk of expense missing from that amount. The state's taxpayer-funded public defenders — who represented Holmes — are not required to disclose what they spend on a case. Doing so, they say, would violate ethics rules and subject poor defendants to lower standards of attorney-client confidentiality. Generally, the office of the state public defender reports having spent nearly $2 million on death-penalty and potential death-penalty cases since July 2002, not including staff salaries.

The theater shooting trial was one of the longest in state history. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, and Holmes, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, underwent two psychiatric evaluations by state-appointed experts — at a cost of more than $600,000 to the state Department of Human Services. Holmes ultimately was found guilty of murdering 12 people and trying to murder 70 more in the July 2012 attack on the Century Aurora 16 movie theater; he was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August.

While the case prompted public debates about the cost of the death penalty and mental health evaluations, the biggest expense that has been reported was for providing victims' assistance services. The Arapahoe County district attorney's office spent nearly $1.2 million on salaries for victims' advocates, travel expenses for victims to attend the trial and other costs. All of those costs were covered by a federal grant.

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, whose office published its close-to-final cost figures last week, said the costs were about in line with what he expected. In addition to the federal grant, the state government appropriated about $500,000 to cover trial-related costs for the district attorney's office. He said more than half of what his office spent on the case was spent before the trial even began one year ago this month, and he rejected the criticism that seeking the death penalty ballooned the trial's price tag. Instead, Brauchler said the case was expensive because of the number of victims involved.

The county DA here make a reasonable point that the nature of the crime may be the reason for the considerable expense as much as the nature of the punishment sought. Nevertheless, I believe this case could and would have cost taxpayers a whole lot less if prosecutors had accepted the defense's early offer to plead guilty in exchange for an LWOP sentence. (That LWOP sentences was ultimately achieved in the end after a lengthy and costly capital trial.) Moreover, the costs here include the opportunity costs of having so many Colorado state justice officials (police, prosecutors, judges) working on this case so intensely when there surely were many other Colorado crime and criminals that might have otherwise gotten their attention.

Of course, and I think not to be overlooked in any accounting of general capital costs/benefits, Holmes' defense team likely was only willing to offer to plead guilty and take LWOP because Colorado has capital punishment on its books. Consequently, it would be unfair to suggest abolition of the death penalty will always produce massive savings in major murder cases. But, as regular readers should know, this kind of accounting leads me to suggest, yet again, that states ought to have ways to "delegate" major murders to the feds for more efficient and effective capital prosecutions.

A few (of many) older related posts (with lots of comments):

• Largest mass shooting in US history surely to become a capital case
• Offense/offender distinctions in first-cut punishment reactions to Batman mass murder
• "For James Holmes, Death Penalty is Far from a Certainty"
• You be the prosecutor: will you accept Aurora theater shooter's plea offer and drop pursuit of the death penalty?
• Should we be concerned about the economic or human costs of Colorado's efforts to get Aurora killer James Holmes on death row?