...experts... say New Yorkers spend more money trying to execute a man than they would by simply sending him to prison for life -- where the state spends an average of $34,000 a year to house an inmate.

Roughly $12 million a year is given to the Capital Defender Office, a state agency created under the 1995 death penalty statute to ensure criminals facing possible execution receive a qualified lawyer. Paying lawyers $125 an hour to defend first-degree murder cases, the Capital Defender Office is viewed as a national model for poor people's defense in capital cases.

The state also gives about $3 million a year to county district attorneys to defray the costs of capital prosecutions that can overwhelm smaller offices, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

And then there are the unparalleled court costs. Trial courts treat capital cases with great care from the first start. Routine hearings can take weeks. Selecting a jury can take months and an appeals process nearly 10 years. All in a court that costs on average $2,982 per day to operate, state officials say.

In addition, the state built a new $1.3 million death row at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora and spends more than $200,000 a year to guard the unit, which can house 12 inmates.

Spending money to err on the side of caution, however, is better than hearing unsettling stories like those from Texas or Illinois, where defense lawyers have fallen asleep during trial or where shoddy investigations have cast doubt about the guilt of death row inmates, said Kevin Doyle, who heads the Capital Defender Office. "You can have capital justice on the cheap. But that means you may be executing innocent people, it means you may have a discriminatory or arbitrary system, and you'll have less respect for the law," Doyle said.