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Thread: United States Capital Punishment Public Opinion Polling

  1. #91
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    March 28, 2014

    Why do minorities oppose death penalty across U.S. but favor it in Texas?

    By Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer

    The Pew Research Center is out with a new poll on the death penalty. It shows support nationally continuing to slide, the same trend that’s been playing out for a few years. You’ll see opposition still strongest among blacks and Hispanics.

    As goes the nation on capital punishment, Texas typically goes the other way. Support in Texas is considerably higher than the nation’s, perhaps by 20 points or so, but it’s hard to get an apples-apples. Texas support may, in fact, have gone up a tick or two in recent years.

    The one thing I struggle to understand is how Texas support remains strong across racial demographics, not to mention party affiliation. The cross tabs in the UT/Texas Tribune poll show support breaking down this way (with supporters and strong supporters of the DP added together):

    Texas whites — 76% support
    Texas blacks — 60% support
    Texas Hispanics — 78% support

    Texas Democrats — 62% support
    Texas Republicans — 85% support

    Shoot, even Texans who self-identified as “extremely liberal” (admittedly a small subset with high margin of error) supported capital punishment to the tune of 56 percent.

    Note that Hispanic support in Texas — at 78 percent — exceeded white support in the UT/TT poll and was 38 points higher than Hispanic support nationally. (Yes, the methodology was different, but the questions were similar.)

    Support among blacks in Texas was 24 points higher than blacks across the U.S.

    This is especially surprising given the high proportion of blacks among wrongfully convicted Texans who have been exonerated through DNA tests and other means. Our own DA here in Dallas County, Craig Watkins, has said Texans are kidding themselves if they think the justice system is colorblind and deals everyone a fair hand. That view contributes to black opposition to the death penalty across the nation, but why not here?

    Also consider that Watkins, the state’s first and only black DA, has sent more people to the death chamber in recent years than any other county DA.

    On Texas’ overall support for the death penalty, observers have theorized that it stems from elected appeals judges and limited clemency powers for the governor. A sense of lingering frontier justice typically enters the conversation.

    Others point to the higher rates of capital punishment across the former Confederate states. That’s a key point. Slavery was a system of dehumanization to pursue economic means, and it made it easier to mete out a more savage brand of punishment to those held in bondage. Slaves were called “stock” and were moved by “drivers.” They were inspected for sale like beasts of burden. Historians have asserted that had an impact on the self-image of black African slaves themselves.

    Could that contribute to higher rates of death-penalty support among Texas blacks today? That would be a stretch and hard to fathom. (I looked around for state polls on the death penalty in Virginia and Georgia and didn’t find anything to compare Texas numbers to.)

    I rather think Texans in all demographic groups more readily accept the theory of retributive justice — the “just desserts” approach, centering on punishment vs. the objectives of deterrence or rehabilitation.Central to that is a sense of proportionality that suggests there is no substitute punishment for the most heinous of crimes.

    Why is that philosophy so strong here?

    Given that Texas has been a career destination for millions of Northerners (including me, from Ohio) and the destination for millions from Mexico and other Catholic countries (one religious group with lower DP support), and given that Texas has become a heavily urbanized state, it’s a puzzle that support for capital punishment in Texas has been so resilient.

    http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallas...in-texas.html/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #92
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    I bet support for the death penalty explodes to 80%+ if you ask someone if it happened to THEIR loved ones! Why should the killer keep eating, breathing, and walking when their loved ones can't anymore?

  3. #93
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
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    I support the death penalty not only as a deterrent but justice. The men and women on death row are there because of their choices to go against what is right because of their own sense of entitlement. My only issue with the death penalty is the length of time it take for the appellate process that delays justice for years on end. These people took only a few minutes to take a life and destroy families with the victim not getting an appeal but probably, if they were lucky, a few minutes to plead for their lives. So, why should DR inmates get years to live and plead for theirs?

  4. #94
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    Americans' Support for Death Penalty Stable

    Story Highlights

    • In U.S., 63% favor the death penalty for convicted murderers
    • Public tilts in favor of death penalty over life imprisonment
    • Support generally consistent over the last seven years



    WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Six in 10 Americans favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, generally consistent with attitudes since 2008. Since 1937, support has been as low as 42% in 1966 and as high as 80% in 1994.




    Americans' support for the death penalty has varied over time, but apart from a single reading in 1966, the public has consistently favored it. Support ebbed from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, when the application of the death penalty was questioned and ultimately led to the Supreme Court's invalidating state death penalty laws. Subsequent to that, newly written laws passed constitutional muster and states began to use the death penalty again in the late 1970s, with support among Americans increasing to 70% or more in the mid-1980s to the late 1990s.


    The broader trend over the last two decades has been diminished support for the death penalty, including a 60% reading last year, the lowest since 1972.


    Over the last two decades, Democrats' support for the death penalty has dropped significantly, from 75% to 49%. Now, Democrats are divided on whether it should be administered to convicted murderers. Republicans' and independents' support is also lower now -- down nine and 18 percentage points, respectively -- though both groups still solidly favor the death penalty.





    Americans Tilt in Favor of Death Penalty Over Life Imprisonment



    Gallup's long-standing question asks about basic support for the death penalty, but does not explicitly mention an alternative punishment for murderers. Gallup separately asks Americans to choose between the death penalty and "life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole" as the better punishment for murder. Support for the death penalty has been significantly lower using this approach, but Americans still tilt in favor of it by 50% to 45%. These attitudes are similar to recent years, but show reduced support for the death penalty from the 1980s and 1990s.


    Democrats' opinions have also shifted markedly on the death penalty vs. life imprisonment question. Two decades ago, Democrats preferred the death penalty by a wide margin, but they now prefer life imprisonment by nearly the same margin.

    Independents' and Republicans' views have changed less, although both show increases in support for life imprisonment.




    Implications



    The death penalty has always been controversial, and this year, the issue made headlines again amid a botched execution attempt in Oklahoma.


    Americans' support for the death penalty has stabilized at a lower level than was the case prior to 2008, and is well below the highs from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. And in recent years the public has shown only a slight preference for the death penalty over life imprisonment as the better penalty for murder. These trends toward diminished support seem to be reflected in state death penalty laws, as six U.S. states have abolished the death penalty since 2007, and no new states have adopted it.


    Democrats are mostly responsible for this shift in attitudes, and thus it is not surprising that most of the states that have abolished the death penalty in recent years are Democratic leaning. The death penalty is another example of how Democrats' and Republicans' opinions on political matters have become increasingly divergent compared with recent decades, including their views of the job the president is doing and on issues such as global warming and labor unions.


    Survey Methods



    Results for this Gallup poll are based on 1,017 telephone interviews conducted Oct. 12-15, 2014 (for the favor/not in favor question), and 1,252 telephone interviews conducted Sept. 25-30, 2014 (for the death penalty vs. life imprisonment question). Each is based on a random sample of adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.


    For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

    Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/178790/am...ty-stable.aspx
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  5. #95
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
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    I take issue with the use of the word "attempt" which implies that the procedure was a failure. The inmate in fact died, so the word is mis-used. Moreover, support for the death penalty isn't in decline because of shifting morals. On the contrary, American morals are becoming noticeably decadent. It's down because more people believe that it's too expensive and drawn out to continue. There are easy legislative fixes but the issue is too "fringe" to warrant widespread attention.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  6. #96
    Senior Member Member FLMetfan's Avatar
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    I could not agree more. And I am no angel. We just knew when to stop when enough was enough and it was time to grow up.
    "I am the warden! Get your warden off this gurney and shut up! You are not in America. This is the island of Barbados. People will see you doing this." Monty Delk's last words.

  7. #97
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    Kent Scheidegger, CNCP member, Crime & Consequences Blog contributor, and Legal Director at Criminal Justice Legal Foundation is scheduled to debate and argue against the motion to abolish the death penalty. The event will take place on April 15, 2015. You may watch live @ 6:45 p.m. EDT by clicking here

    In the meantime, by following the link below you can cast your vote AGAINST THE MOTION. You may cast one vote a day.

    http://intelligencesquaredus.org/deb...-death-penalty
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  8. #98
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    Congratulations to Kent Scheidegger and Robert Blecker, they won the debate by persuading a higher percentage of the undecided audience to vote against the motion abolish the death penalty.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  9. #99
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    The Death Penalty Becomes Rare

    In 2012, only 59 of the 3,144 counties in America actually sentenced people to be executed.

    National support for the death penalty is still in decline. A new Pew poll released last week found that 56 percent of Americans now support the death penalty, a decline of over 20 percent from its peak in 1996. Opposition to it rose to 38 percent. These numbers might still seem good for capital-punishment proponents, even considering the overall trend of decline, but they mask a deeper shift.

    On paper, thirty-two states and the federal government currently allow capital punishment. But in practice, the death penalty has been largely abandoned throughout most of the United States. Juries now sentence fewer defendants to death than at any time since the Supreme Court lifted its de facto moratorium in 1976.



    Executions have also declined over the same time period, but for different reasons. A major factor is the recent shortage of lethal injection drugs across the country. Many states have also imposed moratoriums until the Supreme Court decides Glossip v. Gross, which could force changes in execution methods nationwide. Neither this nor the lengthy post-conviction appeals process would affect the rate of new death sentences.

    Of course, death sentences and executions alike are statistically concentrated in a few states. This includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia in the South, plus Ohio and Missouri in the Midwest and California and Arizona in the West. Even in these states that wield death sentences most frequently, numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show a precipitous decline. Texas juries, for example, sentenced 48 people to death in 1999. In 2009, they only sentenced eight.



    Not only are death sentences declining overall and within the most execution-oriented states, the remaining sentences are largely concentrated in a few county-level enclaves. A 2012 study by DePaul University law professor Robert J. Smith examined death sentence and execution statistics in major death-penalty states, including Texas, Florida, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Arizona, and others. By looking at cases over a five-year period from 2004 to 2009 on a county-by-county level, Smith found significant geographic disparities in the death penalty’s application.

    Los Angeles County is only twice the size of [Illinois’s] Cook County, but Los Angeles County sentenced nearly five times as many people to death from 2004 to 2009. [Texas’s] Harris County has roughly one million fewer people than Cook County, but Harris County sentenced almost three times as many people to death. [Arizona’s] Maricopa County is roughly the same size as Harris County, but Maricopa County sentenced thirty-eight people to death while Harris County rendered twenty-one death sentences. [Florida’s] Miami-Dade County, which has a population of approximately 2.5 million, only sentenced four people to death, whereas Oklahoma County, which has a population of approximately 750,000, sentenced eighteen people to death.

    The effect is even more dramatic in the aggregate. Of the 3,144 counties or their equivalents in the United States, just 29 counties averaged more than one death sentence a year. “That 1 percent of counties accounts for roughly 44 percent of all death sentences” since 1976, Smith observed. A 2013 report by the Death Penalty Information Center found that 59 counties—fewer than 2 percent of the total—handed down all U.S. death sentences in 2012.




    As the map shows, only a handful of counties handed down more than five death sentences between 2004 and 2009.



    Even fewer counties handed out more than 10 death sentences over the same six-year period.


    Part of this can be explained by population density: A rural Texas county with 5,000 people won’t have the same number of murders as an urban county with millions of inhabitants. But even among large cities within the same state, major disparities exist. Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, is responsible for more executions since 1976 than any state besides Texas. “Houston had 8 percent more murders than Dallas, but 324 percent more death row inmates; 15 percent more murders than San Antonio, but 430 percent more death row inmates,” the DPIC report found.

    Why do these vast geographic disparities in capital cases occur, both between the states and within them? Those who bring the charges are one factor. The death penalty may be enacted by state legislatures, but county prosecutors impose it. Prosecutorial discretion is an unseen but elementary force that guides the criminal-justice system. Nowhere is that force’s impact better quantified than capital punishment. Longtime former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau refused to pursue the death penalty in his jurisdiction after New York revived it in 1995, even for the killing of police officers. His counterpart in Philadelphia, Lynne Abraham, sought the death penalty in nearly every homicide case she prosecuted during the capital-punishment renaissance of the 1990s. In some Louisiana jurisdictions, Washington Post reporter Radley Balko described “a toxic culture of death and invincibility”:

    [Exonerated death-row inmate John] Thompson was up against a prosecutorial climate that critics had long claimed valued convictions over all else, one that saw a death sentence as the profession’s brass ring. The New York Times reported in 2003 that prosecutors in Louisiana often threw parties after winning death sentences. They gave one another informal awards for murder convictions, including plaques with hypodermic needles bearing the names of the convicted. In Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans, some wore neckties decorated with images of nooses or the Grim Reaper.

    One of Thompson’s prosecutors, Orleans Parrish Assistant District Attorney James Williams, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007, “There was no thrill for me unless there was a chance for the death penalty.”

    But even the most passionate district attorneys must bow to budgets. Capital cases are expensive and time-consuming. They require years of appeals, countless hours of testimony from experts and witnesses, and thousands of man-hours for both prosecutors and public defenders. These costs add up fast. Before Maryland abolished capital punishment in 2013, death-penalty prosecutions cost nearly three times as much as those seeking life sentences. A 2011 study found that California spent nearly $184 million a year on its vast capital-punishment system, but only executed 13 inmates since 1977. For smaller, rural counties with threadbare tax coffers, the increasing cost of the process often deters prosecutors from pursuing death sentences.

    Americans may still be divided as to whether the death penalty is cruel, but there is no question that it is now unusual. Nominally, thirty-two states allow capital punishment. In reality, only a small fraction of counties are responsible for keeping the death penalty alive.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...nusual/390867/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #100
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    Most Americans Continue to Say Death Penalty Morally OK

    As the death penalty continues to lose support in state houses across America, with Nebraska banning the practice last week, 60% of Americans say the death penalty is morally acceptable. While this measure has remained relatively stable over time, the current 60% is on the lower end of acceptance of the death penalty nationwide since Gallup began measuring it in 2001.




    Use of the death penalty has been waning for several years. The 35 inmates receiving the ultimate penalty last year in the U.S. was the lowest in 20 years, and the 72 new death sentences delivered in 2014 were the fewest in modern history. Despite these changes, a majority of Americans continue to say they favor the death penalty as punishment for murder, and in the May Gallup Values and Beliefs poll, a clear majority of Americans still say it is morally acceptable to impose the death penalty. Americans' views on the morality of the practice have generally held steady even in light of botched executions, lengthy appeals cases, seven states banning the procedure since 2007 and many states imposing "open-ended moratoriums" on the practice.

    When Gallup began asking this question in 2001, 63% said it was morally acceptable, while 27% said it was morally wrong. These percentages recorded in 2001 are not that different from today, though a third of Americans now say the death penalty is morally wrong. The biggest wave of support for its acceptability came in 2006, at 71%, while the low mark was in 2012, at 58%.

    Midwest Drops Most in Acceptability of Death Penalty

    The Nebraska legislature, officially nonpartisan but dominated by Republicans, voted in April to ban the death penalty. Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode Ricketts' veto in May. Illinois, another Midwestern state, also banned the death penalty in 2011. And in 2015, the Midwest experienced the sharpest drop among U.S. regions, falling from 69% to 60%.


    The South has the highest percentage of Americans who believe the death penalty is morally acceptable of any U.S. region, at 63%.




    The East has the lowest percentage of those who believe the death penalty is morally acceptable, at 53%, though this is still a majority. Maryland banned the practice in 2013, and New York and New Jersey both ended the death penalty in 2007, leaving only a handful of Eastern states in which capital punishment is still legal.

    Republicans Still More Accepting of Death Penalty Than Democrats

    Since 2001, the number of Republicans saying the death penalty is morally acceptable has always outweighed Democrats. This year, there is a fairly significant partisan divide on this topic -- 33 percentage points -- as 76% of Republicans express moral acceptance of this practice, while 43% of Democrats say the same.




    Bottom Line


    The death penalty has been a topic of considerable public debate for some time. During an era when overall public support for the death penalty was lower than it is today, the practice was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, but reinstated in 1976. Since then, though many inmates have been executed, it can sometimes take decades for condemned inmates to be put to death. In the last 50 years, advancements in the collection and analysis of DNA have helped to exonerate many prisoners. The American public has also witnessed botched executions, with the procedure sometimes taking two hours or more to reach the end result.

    A recent cover story in Time magazine argues that the death penalty will someday be a thing of the past as a result of the cost of death row incarceration and appeals, Supreme Court challenges and a crime rate that continues to drop. Faced with these expectations and the complicated factors involved in the actual application of the death penalty, Americans still have not materially altered their opinion of whether the death penalty is morally right.

    Like so much else in American political life, this is a partisan issue, with the percentage of Democrats who say it is morally acceptable plummeting even further in the past year.

    Moral acceptance may remain high even as the death penalty dwindles in actual application. There are times when Americans appear to unite behind a death penalty conviction -- as in the case of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and before him, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh -- and thus the average American might want the option preserved for such situations.

    Survey Methods

    Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 6-10, 2015, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

    Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/183503/am...gn=syndication
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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