Dead Man Appealing

I got out of work late yesterday and ended up listening to a bit of Fresh Air from NPR. While Terry Gross is an amazing interviewer, I generally find her program frustrating because I'm rarely so interested in the person she's interviewing that I want to hear a half hour or more of it.

Last night was no exception. But they guy she was interviewing got me to thinking about just how much this person costs the government.
As is often the case, I'd like to state: I'm not saying right or wrong here. I'm not trying to argue a point one way or the other. I'm just amazed as to how much one particular individual can run up the costs for state and federal governments.

His name is David Dow and he has devoted his life to appealing the sentence in cases where the defendant has been sentenced to death. He does not seek to exonerate wrongly convicted people, in fact, most of his clients readily admit that they are murderers and rapists. He simply seeks to avoid their execution in exchange for life in prison.

Here is a simple list of some ways this fellow costs you and I some dollars:
1.) The minute the death sentence is handed down, this guy goes through the appeals process. Delaying tactics are his friend and he will exhaust every legal option he has. Forms upon forms and likely a lot of face time with government employees.
2.) When he loses his initial appeal, he goes to the federal court of appeals and does the same thing.
3.) When he loses his federal appeal, he petitions the Supreme Court to hear his case. Luckily, the SC generally doesn't bother with this guy, but someone has to take the time to look his case over to make sure they aren't just blanket rejecting silly cases.
4.) There are other appellate courts and forms to fill out and process, these are just the big 3.
5.) When he wins a case, we suddenly have to pay to house and feed another inmate for many many years in an already overwhelmed prison system at about $100 grand a year (statistics vary).

In summary of why this man spends so much time and money clogging up our court system to save murderers from the same fate no one could save their victims from: "The person that we're executing is simply not the same person who committed the crime that landed that person on death row..."

THIS is whyipaytaxes.