American Views on Capital Punishment

At RealClearPolicy Joseph Bessette and Andrew Sinclair observe that American popular support for the death penalty remains high:

The Pew Research Center recently reported that 60% of Americans support the death penalty for murder. Gallup, which has been asking Americans about capital punishment since the late 1930s, gauges current support at 55%. These are clear majorities but well below the modern peak of around 80% in the mid-1990s. Political choices have begun to reflect this systematic decline in support. Despite championing the death penalty in the 1990s, President Biden joined nearly every other Democratic presidential candidate in calling for its abolition in his 2020 campaign. Virginia (in 2021) and Colorado (in 2020), both states trending towards the Democratic Party, recently abolished the death penalty.

Although the two of us disagree about whether capital punishment should be public policy in the United States, we agree that a nuanced approach is required for understanding public opinion on this issue. The standard type of death penalty question, asked over and over again for more than half a century, leaves policymakers, scholars, and citizens with an incomplete picture of support, or potential support, for the death penalty. We are far from the first to observe that the answer you get depends on the question you ask. We have begun a project, though, of systematically trying to understand what these different responses can tell us about how many American voters support capital punishment.

Both Gallup and Pew ask a generic question. Gallup asks, “Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?” Although Pew gives more options to measure level of support, its question is otherwise nearly identical: “Do you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?” Other polling organizations tend to ask versions of this question as well. Yet, these questions do not distinguish between most murders and the specific kinds of aggravated murders that make someone eligible for the death penalty in the 27 American states that retain capital punishment. If you oppose the death penalty for most murders, but not all murders, how would you answer the generic question?

The authors’ research suggests even stronger support than that:

Our first question takes a different approach than the Gallup question. We ask if the respondents “support the death penalty for the crime of murder” but provide three options: (A) “I support the death penalty for most or all types of murder”; (B) “I support the death penalty only for the most aggravated murders”; (C) “I oppose the death penalty for most or all types of murder.” The weighted responses are: 35% supported for most or all; 35% supported for the most aggravated murders; 22% opposed for most or all; and 8% declined to answer these questions. Among the 92% of respondents answering the question, 38% supported for most or all and 38% supported for the most aggravated murders. Thus, 76% expressed some kind of support and 24% opposed the death penalty for most or all murders. Even if every one of the respondents who declined to answer the questions was truly a death penalty opponent (an unlikely event), that would mean only 30% opposed the death penalty for most or all murders, although half of the supporters want it restricted to the most aggravated murders.

For our second question, we asked respondents whether they favored the death penalty for any of fifteen specific types of murder commonly found in death penalty statutes and among those sentenced to death in the United States. Almost half of the respondents who opposed the death penalty on the first question, when given this list, selected at least one crime from it. Of all the respondents who answered these questions: 86% selected at least one crime, including 80% who selected “raping and murdering a child” and 75% who selected “killing dozens of people as part of a terrorist attack.” At the low end, only 49% selected “killing someone in the course of a robbery.”

My own view is that the death penalty is awarded too casually in the U. S., particularly in some states, e.g. Texas. I think it should not be applied in most cases but that proportionality requires it be available at some point. I guess that makes me a B.

While I don’t think that either crimes or punishments should be determined based on opinion poll, I do find it interesting that the Democratic leadership is as out of touch with the American people on this subject as it clearly is.