Public support for death penalty lowest in decades

American attitudes toward condemning people to die have changed. 

A 2025 Gallup poll found that public support for the death penalty has declined to the lowest numbers in more than 50 years, although many people still believe the punishment should fit the crime. 

“There must be consequences,” said San Quentin Correctional Officer S. Montantes, who escorted condemned residents on Death Row for four years. “The death penalty holds those who commit the most heinous crimes accountable for their actions.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the assumption that capital punishment is the popular way of addressing violent crime has become an outdated phenomenon.

The Gallup poll confirms opposition to the death penalty has nearly tripled over the last three decades.

“Public support for the death penalty has been falling steadily since 1994,” noted Gallup. “Less than half of all adults ages 18–54 support the death penalty.”

According to Gallup, political affiliation is part of the expansion and disapproval. While 80% of Republicans maintain steady support for the death penalty, only 32% of Democrats and 47% of registered Independents still support sentencing people to die. This is a 24-percentage-point decline for Democrats and a 21-percentage-point decline for Independents from 2000–2025.

Despite growing opposition, history has shown it’s common during an election year to see an uptick in elected officials and politicians who talk about the death penalty to promote a “tough on crime” reputation to sway the public vote.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reinstate capital punishment in the federal prison system on his first day in office. According to the New York Times, 13 people were executed on federal death row during his first presidency.

Now, the Trump administration is taking it a step further, announcing in April that it would reintroduce firing squads and lethal injection for federal prisoners sentenced to death, stated the NYT article.

The article added that before the last year, the only firing squad executions in the country in modern times had been carried out by Utah between 1997 and 2010. Six people were executed.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the NYT the decisions by former President Joe Biden to pull back on capital punishment “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, the rule of law itself.”

However, Richard J. Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, told the NYT that the Justice Department is “turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of  the federal death penalty — a cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

The San Quentin community is similarly split on the issue. 

San Quentin resident Marvin Walker, 66, lived on Death Row for 43 years. After being resentenced, he now lives amongst the facility’s general population. He said the public’s growing disapproval of the death penalty doesn’t surprise him. “The government has killed innocent people,” Walker said.

DPIC research confirms that since 1973, at least 202 wrongfully convicted people were sentenced to death, then exonerated.

Walker expressed concerns about flaws in the system. He said thanks to modern technology some of those on The Row escaped the death chamber and went home to their families. 

“People who get their liberty taken away for crimes they didn’t commit is basically the worst thing the government can do,” Walker said. “DNA analysis has given some on The Row a second chance at life.”

Serving a 27-to-life sentence at San Quentin, Troy Makanski said he believes in the death penalty. “If someone goes into a school and shoots a bunch of innocent people, they deserve to die,” Makanski said.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on the death penalty by executive order. But a new governor could change that, adding California to the list of 27 states that still execute people.

The past 30 years have shown a decline from 80% of Americans who were once in favor of capital punishment. Gallup research shows that that number has dropped to 52%.

“Studies find no meaningful evidence that the use of the death penalty deters crime,” noted DPIC.