That's the title of an ABC News report on a ABC News-Washington Post Poll. It's written by Damla Ergun.
A majority of Americans favor life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty for convicted murderers, a first in ABC News/Washington Post polls.
Given a choice between the two options, 52 percent pick life in prison as the preferred punishment, while 42 percent favor the death penalty – the fewest in polls dating back 15 years. The result follows a botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma in late April.
Without an alternative offered, 61 percent continue to support the death penalty, matching 2007 as the fewest in polls back to the early 1980s. That’s down sharply from 80 percent in 1994.
Clearly there’s remaining ambivalence; when offered the option of life imprisonment with no chance of parole, 29 percent of death penalty supporters prefer the alternative.
You can view the complete poll, with infographics, in Adobe .pdf format.
"Support for death penalty still high, but down," is the Washington Post report by Reid Wilson and Scott Clement.
A clear majority of Americans still support the death penalty for convicted murderers in the wake of Oklahoma’s botched execution attempt in April, but the percentage who say they back capital punishment has fallen in recent years.
Sixty percent of Americans say they favor the death penalty, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows, while 37 percent are opposed. That number is down from roughly two-thirds who supported it in polls from 2002-2006, and well below the 80 percent high-water mark for capital punishment in a 1994 survey.
But for the first time in Post-ABC polling, more than half of Americans say they prefer life sentences for convicted murderers, rather than the death penalty. Fifty-two percent of those polled said they would choose life in prison, while 42 percent said they favored execution.
Those attitudes have changed thanks to shifting opinions among non-whites, who favor life sentences over the death penalty by more than a 2-to-1 margin, 65 percent to 28 percent. Eight years ago, non-whites favored life terms by 55 percent to 41 percent. White voters split 50 percent to 45 percent toward preferring the death penalty, though the margin is not statistically significant.
Politico posts, 'Death penalty poll: Most prefer life," by Jonathan Topaz.
For the first time, a majority of Americans prefer that convicted murderers spend life in prison rather than receive the death penalty, a new poll says.
According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Thursday, 52 percent of Americans say they would prefer that people convicted of murder spend life in prison with no chance of parole, compared to 42 percent who prefer the death penalty for those people. That marks the first time in the Post-ABC News poll that a majority of Americans have preferred a life sentence for convicted murderers.
And:
Most Americans still back the death penalty, the poll says, but that support has declined in recent years. Thursday’s poll reports that 60 percent of Americans support the death penalty, down from almost two-thirds support in surveys in 2002-06. Support for the death penalty was at 80 percent in 1994.
Thirty-seven percent of Americans oppose the death penalty, according to the survey.
Related posts are in the public opinion polling category index.
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