This study was conducted in 2012. Many murders occur in the South. Consistent with previous years, the 2014 FBI Uniform Crime Report showed that the South had the highest homicide rate. The South accounts for over 80% of executions. The Northeast accounts for less than 1% of all executions, has the lowest murder rate. According to a survey of former and current presidents of the country's major academic criminological societies, 88 percent of these experts rejected the idea that the death penalty serves as a deterrent against murder. 34 states plus the US government use lethal injection as their primary method. Some states that use lethal injection have other methods available as backups. Although New Mexico and Connecticut abolished the death penalty, their laws were not retroactive, leaving prisoners on death row and their lethal injection protocols intact. Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought. In Maryland, the average death penalty case that results in a death sentence costs about $3 million. The final costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases prosecuted from 1978 to 1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have