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Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Have Been Executed

By TChris, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Fri Dec 02, 2005 at 01:08:32 PM EST
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by TChris

The bad news is that Kevin Boyd was executed this morning, making him victim 1,000 of the death penalty since its reinstatement in 1976. The good news is that the nation appears to be falling out of love with death.

Amid the refinement of DNA techniques and the sporadic release of inmates from death row because of uncertain guilt, a growing number of people tell pollsters they believe that innocent prisoners have been executed. Although the majority of cases over the past three decades have been upheld, legal errors and sometimes poor defense work revealed during layers of appeals have convinced many Americans that the system is imperfect.

"There's a skepticism about the accuracy of the system and, to some degree, the fairness," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "It's not quite the ticket to the statehouse if you promise to execute more and more and speed it up. You have religious leaders voicing concerns. You have conservatives. The lines aren't as clear as they were before."

If it is established (as now seems likely) that Texas executed an innocent man — Ruben Cantu — expect further erosion of support for this uncorrectable punishment.

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    Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Have Been Executed | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Ha (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:36 PM EST
    Wow TChris.... you're really grasping on this one... First you say... Support For Death Penalty Declines a very strong statement... Then you say....the nation appears to be falling out of love with death. Big difference in it 'declining' and then 'appearing' to decline! Then...when one reads the link, it turns out to have 'supposedly' dropped a whopping 5% in 12 years! I'd hardly call that 'significant'. Public opinion polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, but that is a significant drop from the peak, in 1994, when 80 percent of respondents told Gallup pollsters they were in favor of capital punishment. But keep plugging away.... maybe in 12 more years ( with a constant bombardment of political correctness) you can get it down another 'significant' 5%?

    Re: Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Ha (none / 0) (#2)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:37 PM EST
    Political correctness = publicizing that innocent people have been executed. Ooooook

    Re: Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Ha (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:37 PM EST
    BB:
    Then...when one reads the link, it turns out to have 'supposedly' dropped a whopping 5% in 12 years! I'd hardly call that 'significant'.

    Public opinion polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, but that is a significant drop from the peak, in 1994, when 80 percent of respondents told Gallup pollsters they were in favor of capital punishment.

    But keep plugging away.... maybe in 12 more years (with a constant bombardment of political correctness) you can get it down another 'significant' 5%?

    Forget political correctness, how about some simple mathematical correctness? You seem to be under the mistaken impression that two thirds is equal to 75%. How else do you arrive at your claim that the drop in support from 80% to two-thirds was only 5%? But -- since you are obviously not mathematically adept -- if you will just get out your calulator, divide 2 by 3, and multiply the result by 100, you'll find that two-thirds is actually 66.67%. Subtracting that from 80 will demonstrate that the actual drop has been 13.33% in 12 years -- a rate of more than 1% a year. Not so trivial after all, eh? So if it were to drop for 12 more years at the present rate, as you suggest, support for the death penalty will be down to 53.33% by 2018, and below 50% by 2022. Now that your reasoning has been proved faulty, will you now revise your conclusions?

    Re: Support For Death Penalty Declines As 1,000 Ha (none / 0) (