Depending on the status of your crime, your sentence will be determined by the jury and the judge. When a person is sentenced to capital punishment, this does not change its effect overnight. The process takes about 10-15 years before you are actually executed; so inmates spend up to 10 or 20 years in prison before the day of actual execution. Executing someone costs a huge amount of money which is now considered a waste of taxpayers' money. In California alone, between 1980 and 2012, 4 billion dollars were spent. Every year for each case this figure increases by 134 million dollars (Daily Beast [DB],