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Thread: United States Capital Punishment Public Opinion Polling

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Californians remain staunchly in favor of death penalty, poll finds

    As death penalty opponents work to get a ballot measure before California voters next fall to abolish capital punishment, a new Field Poll indicates the initiative would be a tough sell.

    More than two-thirds of state voters – 68 percent – favor keeping the death penalty, the poll found, with 27 percent favoring abolition and 5 percent expressing no opinion.

    "We've polled on this for 55 years," Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. "It's changed a little here and there, but just removing the death penalty as a potential punishment is opposed. That's pretty clear."

    Death penalty opponents launched an effort in August to replace capital punishment with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, something they said would save the state millions of dollars each year.

    On that point, the poll released today found that more voters – 48 percent – now support imposing a life-without-parole sentence for first-degree murderers than those who favor the death penalty – 40 percent – in such cases.

    "I think what the public had in mind is the use of the death penalty for very heinous crimes, like multiple cop killings or terrorists," DiCamillo said.

    But, he added, the poll makes it clear that "the public wants to maintain (capital punishment) as a potential form of punishment."

    The Field Poll has consistently found over the years that a majority in the state want the death penalty to remain law.

    Despite that, those in favor of abolishing it say they believe they can convince voters that the death penalty is too costly and should be replaced with a sentence that guarantees a prisoner will remain incarcerated for life.

    "I think there's a decent chance," said Sacramento attorney Don Heller, who wrote the voter-approved measure that reinstated the death penalty in California in 1976 and who now supports abolishing it.

    In announcing their ballot measure campaign in August, opponents of capital punishment said California spends $184 million annually on the death penalty.

    But crime-victim advocate Harriet Salarno scoffed at the argument that the death penalty is too costly, saying the costs are increased by opponents pushing for repeated legal appeals.

    She added that the latest poll results simply confirm what California voters have supported for years.

    Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/29/394...#ixzz1ZL7pLcPx

  2. #22
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    "We've polled on this for 55 years," Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. "It's changed a little here and there, but just removing the death penalty as a potential punishment is opposed. That's pretty clear."

    The Field Poll has consistently found over the years that a majority in the state want the death penalty to remain law.
    and then....

    Despite that, those in favor of abolishing it say they believe they can convince voters that the death penalty is too costly and should be replaced with a sentence that guarantees a prisoner will remain incarcerated for life.
    Convince voters with lies and no facts to support their claims. Again if they say it over and over again it must be true.

  3. #23
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Plus, don't level with voters and tell them that the main reason for the death penalty's greater expense is that antis pull out all the stops to make appeals as plentiful and drawn-out as they can. On this point, I'd be curious to know what capital cases in Virginia cost from trial to execution, and how such cost compares with that of an LWOP convict who ends up serving, say, 40 years. I specify Virginia because the average death-row inmate there gets executed, on average, within about seven years of sentencing. So, I'd imagine much less money gets spent there than in states such as California or Pennsylvania where appeals get dragged out for 25 to 30 years.

  4. #24
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    Good point Moh!

    I think also that the costs for LWOP will increase after the DP would have been abolished, because the antis will find a new playground. Save the LWOP-inmates with unfair trials (or which are innocent). At the moment the DR-inmates get the most attention.

  5. #25
    Senior Member Frequent Poster stixfix69's Avatar
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    My take on the DP is every state should make it law, i have watched too many shows where convicts are more comfortable in prison than they are in society. Unless there is something that is in place to make them pay the ultimate for their crimes, then a LWOP sentence means nothing to them........

  6. #26
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Michael View Post
    Good point Moh!

    I think also that the costs for LWOP will increase after the DP would have been abolished, because the antis will find a new playground. Save the LWOP-inmates with unfair trials (or which are innocent). At the moment the DR-inmates get the most attention.
    Good point. The anti-DP wimps will start crying LWOP is too cruel if they abolish the DP!
    Last edited by Moh; 09-30-2011 at 05:32 AM. Reason: Vulgarity

  7. #27
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Gary Johnson says executions cost more than life imprisonment
    Half-True


    Opposition to the death penalty is one of those issues where the libertarian wing of the Republican party sometimes loops around to meet left leaning Democrats. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and contender for the GOP nomination, enjoys stirring the pot within his party, and on a visit in New Hampshire he said, "It costs more money to put a person on death row than it does to lock them up for the rest of their lives because of attorney fees."

    Set aside for a moment that capital punishment is mainly up to the states. Beyond the federal death penalty, presidents don't have much to do with the matter. Johnson is making a fiscal argument -- the death penalty costs too much -- and he's making it at a moment when state budgets face huge pressures. Elected officials and taxpayers in every state might be curious to know if he's right.

    The Johnson campaign cites the Death Penalty Information Center as the source of its claim. The website of this anti-death penalty group lists 18 studies that examine costs. All of them conclude that as soon as a prosecutor decides to go for capital punishment, the price tag just for the legal work itself goes up. How much depends on the state. A 2008 study in Maryland found it was three-times more expensive; an analysis from Indiana in 2002 said it costs five- times more.

    No one on either side of the issue disputes these higher costs. Remember, we’re only talking about the legal process, not the cost of keeping someone behind bars or paying for the executions themselves. DPIC Executive Director, Richard Dieter, says when the death penalty is on the table, the constitutional scrutiny is intense with more lawyers and more hearings. "People are more skeptical," Dieter said. "There are more tests -- DNA, mental illness, retardation, experts are brought in."

    To get at the full picture, the legal costs, plus everything else, arguably the most useful report is one that doesn’t appear on the DPIC web site, although it is cited by several that do. It comes from George Mason University and sizes up what it called three of the best studies with an eye on the big question, does a sentence of life without parole cost less than the death penalty?

    The results tend to support the idea that imprisonment is cheaper but not across all three states examined. In North Carolina, researchers said a life sentence would save $163,000 per case; Indiana pegged the number a bit lower at $116,000. But in Tennessee, analysts concluded that executions were cheaper by a lot -- some $773,000.

    The value of the George Mason study is it picks apart the data behind those numbers. It has high praise for the Indiana work, calling it the gold standard for assessing costs. It gives a nod to the North Carolina team but notes that the work was done in the early 1990’s and is dated because the rules for death penalty cases have changed. As for the Tennessee research, it notes that it relied on very limited data, something that the authors in Tennessee acknowledged. Not the least of the problems was that Tennessee had executed just one person during the period the study analyzed.

    The main problem Gov. Johnson might have in supporting his claim is that the death penalty plays out differently from state to state. States apply the death penalty to different crimes. Some put more money into giving the accused a strong defense and find their convictions upheld. Others cut corners on the front end and wind up paying for two trials. The court systems in some states get bogged down administering the cases of hundreds of people on death row; others work with ten or fewer.

    All of these factors affect how quickly a state processes a death penalty case and speed has big implications for a key piece of Johnson’s argument, that it’s the legal fees that make the death penalty more expensive.

    The common belief is that appeals are where most of the dollars go. That too depends on the state. A detailed study of more than two decades of murder prosecutions in Maryland found that 70% of the costs come in the pre-trial and trial phases. But the author of that study, John Roman, says in other states, lengthy appeals eventually can add up. In 2008 alone, California set aside $42 million just for the appeals process, or about $68,000 per inmate on death row.

    As with every other step in these cases, the government generally pays for both the prosecution and the defense during appeals.

    To some people, the solution lies in making the death penalty swifter. Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that supports the death penalty, says states like Virginia have built a process that is fair and, in capital punishment terms, speedy. From conviction to execution takes about seven years in Virginia. In California, it runs closer to 20 years. The average is over 10 years.

    "You get more bang for your criminal justice buck in Virginia," Rushford said. "Johnson can make that speech in California. He couldn't make it in Virginia or Delaware."

    At the end of the day, it’s difficult to make broad statements about the cost of the death penalty that hold true in every state. The dollars spent depend on many factors, including how many people the government tries to put on death row, how it handles appeals and the fraction of death row inmates that ultimately are executed. The author of the Maryland study, John Roman, has a rough rule of thumb for determining which is cheaper, life imprisonment and death. It's not one that the death penalty opponents would like.

    "If you don't execute lots of people," Roman said, "the death sentence is more expensive." Because the costs of appeals add up over time. On the other hand, Roman continues," If you execute lots of people, then life imprisonment probably turns out to be more expensive." And that's because, the shorter the time between sentencing and execution, the less the government spends on appeals and imprisonment.

    Our Ruling

    Johnson said life imprisonment is cheaper than the death penalty because of attorney fees. If we define attorney fees broadly, there is ample evidence that as soon as a prosecutor decides to seek capital punishment, it dramatically increases the price tag for taxpayers, who are paying for the defense as well as the prosecution.

    The meter continues to run during the appeals process. The shorter that process, the greater the cost effectiveness of an execution. But as a practical matter, for reasons rooted in both state and federal procedure, the process often lasts close to a decade or more.

    That means that the costs in some states don't support Johnson's claim that life imprisonment is cheaper because of attorney's fees. So we rate his statement Half True.

    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...e-life-impris/

  8. #28
    Senior Member Member Slayer's Avatar
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    I've just seen a report in a british left-wing newspaper that a poll taken after Troy Davis was put down showed support for the death penalty was at a 39-year low but I can't find who did the poll but it can't be true because Iam sure that Heidi had said that a poll had been taken after Davis had been put down showing that support for the death penalty was unchanged any help?:frown:

  9. #29
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    The poll you are referring to was done by Gallop and it reported a 3% drop from 64% to 61% In U.S., Support for Death Penalty Falls to 39-Year Low the articles that have quoted the poll are basing the results of the national average result on the question "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" As Moh has said in the past, and I agree,

    So, a series of questions which would be fairer and which I imagine would elicit more "Yes" responses would be: "Do you think the death penalty should be a possible punishment for those convicted of premeditated murder which involved either":
    1) rape;

    OR

    2) multiple murders;

    OR

    3) torture;

    OR

    4) murder of a law-enforcement officer;

    OR

    5) murder of a minor

    etc. etc.

  10. #30
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    And to be fair to Gallup, in a way, they're stuck with asking "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" because that's the question they've been asking year after year since 1936. So, it's useful to keep asking that particular question to measure changes in support over the years.

    However, nothing's stopping Gallup from asking further questions that reflect the fact that a mandatory death penalty has been considered unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court since the 1970s and that what had been a perfectly appropriate question for decades now seems exceptionally poorly worded.

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