NEW YORK - More than at any time over the past 30 years, the future of capital punishment is in limbo.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next term in a momentous lethal injection case. While it’s widely expected that executions will resume in some form following that case, the moment gives Americans a chance to contemplate what would change if they stopped for good.

Start with some modest consequences.

Florida citizens would no longer have the chance to earn $150 by serving as executioner. Texas, by far the death-penalty leader, would save the $86.06 cost of drugs used in each lethal injection.

And Arizona’s Corrections Department would have no further updates on its special Web site that features photographs, profiles and last-meal requests of its executed inmates. (The most recent menu: Robert Comer’s order of fried okra, buns and banana bread before his death in May).

There would be weightier consequences as well.

n States with many death-penalty cases would save millions of dollars now spent on legal costs in long-running appeals. Additional savings would result in some states which now spend far more per inmate for Death Row facilities than other maximum-security inmates.

n Abroad, notably in Europe and Canada, America’s image would improve in countries that abolished capital punishment decades ago and now wonder why America remains one of only a handful of prosperous democracies that continue with executions.

n Among the American public, reaction would be deeply divided. Death penalty supporters would decry the loss of what they consider a valuable crime deterrent as well as the ultimate form of justice for victims and their families. Foes of execution would welcome the end of what they have deemed a barbaric national tradition.

“Texas would be a better place,” said David Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “I know people who’ve traveled abroad, and when they say where they’re from, the response is, ‘Oh, that’s the state that executes all those people.”’

By contrast, Rusty Hubbarth, vice president of the pro-death penalty Texas group Justice for All, sees the consequences of abolition as all bad. His prediction: “More murders.”

Texas was the venue for the nation’s most recent execution. Murderer Michael Richard died by lethal injection there on Sept. 25. Since then, executions in Texas and other states have been put on hold pending a Supreme Court decision — expected no sooner than June — on whether the standard lethal injection procedure can cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Advocates on both sides of the debate said it’s likely the high court will offer some pathway for states to resume executions. But the lull coincides with other developments reflecting an unprecedented level of doubt about capital punishment.

Even before the Supreme Court intervention, several states had suspended executions and the American Bar Association urged a nationwide freeze. New Jersey’s Legislature is voting this week on whether to abolish capital punishment; by doing so it would join 12 other states with no death penalty law.

This isn’t the first hiatus for executions. The Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972, but four years later cleared the way for executions to resume.

There have been 1,099 executions nationwide since then, with a peak of 98 in 1999. The numbers have ebbed in recent years — there have been 42 this year — while more than 3,300 inmates populate Death Row units across the country.

For  Americans, the impact would be varied — and argued over.

Economics:

The biggest savings, by far, would come from reduced legal costs. Because of drawn-out appeals, a typical death penalty case can cost from $1 million to $3 million, well above the typical cost of a lengthy life imprisonment. On average, it costs roughly $25,000 to house an inmate for a year, though maximum-security confinement can be more expensive.

A Duke University study concluded that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment.

Death penalty opponents said the savings nationwide could shift to programs that would curb violent crime — more police on streets, more drug rehabilitation and mental health services to address problems that affect many criminals.

Emotion:

One of the most bitterly disputed aspects of the death penalty is whether it deters violent crime.

Opponents insist it does not, noting that most states without the death penalty — as well as many U.S. allies abroad — have lower crime rates than the states which conduct the most executions. Opponents also cite the recent exonerations of scores of Death Row inmates, based on DNA tests, and say abolition is the only sure way to avoid executing innocent people.

Skeptics of capital punishment note that death sentences are issued in less than 1 percent of all homicides.

Image:

Abolition of the death penalty would improve America’s image in the majority of nations that already have forsaken it. In some cases, countries without capital punishment have balked at extraditing people who might face execution.

The Council of Europe’s secretary general, Terry Davis, has taken note of the Supreme Court’s decision to review lethal injection and expressed hope that the procedure would be banned.

“It should help the United States of America to catch up with the majority of civilized and democratic countries in the world,” he said.