A slim majority of Americans favor life in prison over the death penalty for murders, a recent poll disclosed. The margin was 50 to 48 percent.
Even though the number of states carrying out capital punishment has decreased, the number of executions in the country remains constant, a report shows.
“Capital punishment has become marginalized and meaningless in most of the country,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of Death Penalty Information Center and author of a report that predicts more efforts will be made to eliminate capital punishment in the future.
Only nine states carried out executions in 2012, putting 43 men to death with lethal injection. Texas led the nation with 15 executions; Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Texas accounted for three-fourths of men put to death in 2012.
According to Dieter’s report, “fewer states have the death penalty, fewer carried out executions, and death sentences and executions were clustered in a small number of states. It is very likely that more states will take up the question of death penalty repeal in the years ahead.”
Polling researchers believe that many Americans want to abolish the death penalty. But CCN polling director Keating Holland said his analysis shows “a difference between thinking the government should have the death penalty as an option and actually wanting to see it applied.”
Southern states such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia traditionally support the death penalty. No one was executed in any of those states in 2012.
Bill Mears of CNN reported that there is a “growing number who believe that at least one person in the past five years has been executed for a crime that he or she did not commit.”
California voters decided to keep the death penalty in November. However, Dieter predicts a “fresh effort on the death penalty” will be forthcoming. It is more likely that states will make an effort to repeal it in the future.
