The statement that "putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life" is incomplete. The complete statement is "under our current legal regime, including costs of various appeals, putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life."
Since the costs of appeals dwarfs all other relevant costs, it's just as true to say "under the current legal regime, appeals for death row inmate cost much more than appeals for life sentence inmates." That's a very different statement, and not necessarily something we want to fix.
If we did want to fix it, we could either spend less money on appeals for death row inmates (make it much harder to get off of death row/get exonerated), or spend more money for appeals for life sentence inmates.
Indeed, it might just be that we aren't doing everything we should to find wrongfully convicted inmates who weren't given the death penalty.
But that's certainly not the message people seem to be trying to make with the statement. The message I've always heard was "it would cost less to put him in jail for life." Or "it would cost less to get rid of the death penalty altogether." The first message has less impact when you realize that the costs involved are nearly all about legal appeals, not about running a prison, feeding the prisoners, etc. The second message is provably false: in a regime without the death penalty, the resources currently used to get people off death row would be used to get people out of life sentences.
Since the costs of appeals dwarfs all other relevant costs, it's just as true to say "under the current legal regime, appeals for death row inmate cost much more than appeals for life sentence inmates." That's a very different statement, and not necessarily something we want to fix.
If we did want to fix it, we could either spend less money on appeals for death row inmates (make it much harder to get off of death row/get exonerated), or spend more money for appeals for life sentence inmates.
Indeed, it might just be that we aren't doing everything we should to find wrongfully convicted inmates who weren't given the death penalty.
But that's certainly not the message people seem to be trying to make with the statement. The message I've always heard was "it would cost less to put him in jail for life." Or "it would cost less to get rid of the death penalty altogether." The first message has less impact when you realize that the costs involved are nearly all about legal appeals, not about running a prison, feeding the prisoners, etc. The second message is provably false: in a regime without the death penalty, the resources currently used to get people off death row would be used to get people out of life sentences.