JACKSON, Ga. — Virgil Delano Presnell Jr., was set to become the first person executed by Georgia in 2022 and the seventh nationwide until a judge temporarily halted the execution Monday night.
The Georgia man is convicted for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of an 8-year-old girl and the kidnapping and rape of a 10-year-old girl.
Presnell's execution was originally scheduled for Tuesday, May 17 at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
The 68-year-old death sentence was overturned 30 years ago in 1992 but was later reinstated in March 1999. Presnell has spent 46 years on death row.
11Alive spoke to Attorney and Legal Editor for Interrogating Justice, Peter Tomasek to learn more about the cost of a death row prisoner in the U.S.
What is the cost of a death row prisoner?
"The most expensive type of prisoner to have is a death row prisoner," said Tomasek.
According to Interrogating Justice, the average federal prisoner costs about $37,500 per year compared to a death row prisoner, which would cost about $60,000 to $70,000 per year.
Independent nonprofit national research and policy organization, the Vera Institute shows Georgia's average annual cost per inmate in state prison as $19,977 in 2015.
Why do inmates tend to stay on death row for so long?
"The simple answer is that it's just the appeals process," said Tomasek.
The Death Penalty Information Center lists "that prisoners on death row in the U.S. typically spend more than a decade awaiting execution or court rulings overturning their death sentences."
According to the nonprofit, "more than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U.S. have been on death row for more than 18 years."
"With a lot of these death penalty cases, you're also usually looking for newly discovered evidence. So each time you maybe find something new, you can restart that process again. And so just going through that appeals process, it takes time," said Tomasek.
How much do taxpayers pay out of their pockets that go to prisons in Georgia?
"It would be hard for me to say exactly... how much each taxpayer would pay because it's going to depend on how much you make and who pays what with tax rates, that sort of thing," said Tomasek.