"Public's Changing Attitudes on Capital Punishment," is Diann Rust-Tierney's latest at Huffington Post. She's the Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Here's the beginning:
When capital punishment was halted in the United Sates by the Supreme Court in 1972, Justice Thurgood Marshall cautioned against relying too heavily on public opinion polls that measure the attitudes of a specific punishment based on "its mere mention." Justice Marshall believed correctly that most Americans knew too little about the death penalty and its workings for such an exercise to be an accurate reflection of the public's morality and sense of justice.
In the years that followed, support for the death penalty skyrocketed, peaking in 1994 with 80 percent of the population supporting its use, according to Gallup. Now a poll confirms, what many close to this issue already believed, that support for the death penalty is on the decline -- at 60 percent -- the lowest level of support for the practice in 41 years, according to Gallup's analysis. Moreover, in polls that present more information about the death penalty to respondents, including alternatives to capital punishment, majority support for the practice vanishes.
Justice Marshall's premise that an informed citizen will come out in favor of justice is correct. In the decades that followed capital punishment's eventual reinstatement in the U.S., details about the problems that plague it have persisted. Most prominent among the concerns is the risk of executing the innocent. Over a period of years, regular news reports about wrongful capital and non-capital convictions have shaken public confidence in the criminal justice system.
Earlier coverage of the October Gallup Poll begins at the link. You can also find more from Diann Rust-Tierney on HuffPost.
Related posts are in the public opinion polling category index.
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