Study: Public Demand for Executions Fading
A new research study has found that fewer Americans support the death penalty as a result of the growing number of inncents on death row. A whopping 75% believe that an innocent person has been executed in the last five years.
The study is based on a 2003 Gallup poll which shows:
- 67 percent favor the death penalty.
- 74.6 percent believe an innocent person has been executed in the past five years.
- 36.7 percent believe the death penalty is applied unfairly.
The study is published in Criminology & Public Policy, the journal of the American Society of Criminology in Columbus, Ohio
The study notes that in 1986, 61 percent of Americans held the view that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, but that has since dropped to 33 percent.
More analysis of the study is available here.
The authors concluded that an execution of an innocent person would erode, but not erase, national support for the death penalty — which stood at 66 percent in 2000, according to Gallup.
Additionally, they suggested that more than half of the nation will continue to support capital punishment unless Americans come to see wrongful executions as an unavoidable and recurring flaw in the criminal justice system.
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