Just two percent of counties in the United States are responsible for more than half of the country’s executions since 1976, according to a new report from the Death Penalty Information Center.
The report, released last week, found that not only are just 62 U.S. counties behind the majority of the death row population and death sentences, but 85 percent of the remaining 3,081 counties in the U.S. have not had a single case resulting in an execution in over 45 years.
“In large swaths, there are no executions. The U.S. is in one sense a death penalty country, but in another sense, a very hesitant, pick-and-choose kind of death penalty country. It’s not used in the majority of our jurisdictions,” said Richard Dieter, the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director and author of the report.
The total cost of one death sentence is estimated at $3 million, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization that promotes discussion on capital punishment.
Since the Supreme Court reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, there have been 8,300 death sentences, at a total cost of $25 billion — which have primarily fallen on taxpayers outside of the counties where the executions have taken place.
“The whole state has to pay for the executions, and they may not endorse that and they may not realize that,” Dieter said.
Making matters worse, in counties that use the death penalty heavily, the legal system is fraught with flaws, the report said.
Philadelphia County, for example — responsible for nearly half of Pennsylvania’s inmates — pays court-appointed lawyers the lowest fees in the state and frequently has death sentences reversed because of inadequate defense representation.
Philadelphia County has the third largest number of people on death row in the country.
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