Declining Support for the Death Penalty - Essay Example

Lecturer: Declining support for the death penalty Introduction Most of the citizens of the US support the death penalty for the people who have been found guilty of murder, however, support for the death penalty currently at its lowest point in forty years. a research that was conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that he fifty six percent of people in American prefer the death penalty for people found guilty of murder, while thirty eight percent do not support it, therefore, fraction of the population that supports the death sentence has decreased by six percentage points from sixty two percent since 2011. During the eighties and the nineties, support for the death penalty had been higher than seventy percent with a survey in 1996 revealing that seventy eight percent of the people supported the death penalty while only eighteen were against it. Most of the decrease in this support through the last two decades has been seen among the democrats with only forty percent of the democrats currently favoring the death penalty, while fifty six percent of them are against it. However, in the survey that was conducted in 1996, the democrats had an almost overwhelming support for the death penalty (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). These forms of significant changes in opinion have not been seen among the Republicans as they have continue to support the death penalty with a decline in support of only ten percentage points since 1996. On the other hand, the fraction of independents in support of the death sentence has decreased by twenty-two points over the same period from seventy nine percent to fifty-seven percent, (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Opinions about the death penalty In theory, 32 states as well as the federal government of the US permit capital punishment, however, in practice, this approach to punishing criminals has been essentially abandoned in most of the states. Most of the juries now sentence defendants to death and there has been a decrease in the number of executions between 1976 and the present for a variety of reasons. A predominant reason is the recent unavailability of drugs that are used for lethal injection all over the country, and numerous states imposed moratoriums as they waited for the Supreme Court to decide Glossip v.Gross that may result in changes in the approaches used for execution (Jost 269). This and the prolonged appeal processes that usually follow convictions cannot affect the rate of death penalties. Undeniably, death sentences as well as executions continue to be statistically concentrated in a limited number of states including Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Missouri and Arizona among others. Even in the states that still use the death sentence often, the data originating from the Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrates an impulsive decrease. For instance, juries in Texas handed forty eighty people the death penalty in 1999 but ten years later in 2009, only eight people were handed the death penalty. The number of death sentences is decreasing and in the states that are most death oriented, the sentences that remain are mainly concentrated in several enclaves at the county level. Studies in 2012 researched the statistics of death sentences as well as executions in the key death penalty states like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and California among others. Through considering cases through a period of five years between 2004 and 2009 in different counties, it was revealed that there were considerable geographical disparities in the manner in which the death penalty was applied. Studies and research have indicated that increased cognizance of wrongful convictions is a dynamic that has greatly contributed to the decreasing support for the death penalty. Data from various sources indicates that approximately 1400 people have been acquitted from 1989 and this number includes more than one hundred people who had initially been handed the death sentence. In about thirty percent of the exonerations, DNA evidence was utilized, with other factors resulting in exonerations including false accusations as well as some kinds of official misconduct. There has been a lot of support for the death penalty by various religious groups; however, the study by Pew Research Center has demonstrated that colour creates some difference (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Approximately two thirds of evangelical Protestants who are white, sixty-four percent white principal Protestants and about sixty percent of the Catholics who are white are in support of capital punishment or the extension death penalty. On the other hand, only a third of the population of black Protestants and thirty-seven percent of Catholics of Hispanic origins support the death penalty. These findings have also demonstrated that almost two thirds of the white Americans favour capital in comparison to a third of the African American populations and forty percent of the Hispanic population. The overall number of executions that being conducted each year has been continually decreasing based on statistics at the Death Penalty Information Center, for instance, ninety eight people went through the death penalty in 1998 while in thirty nine people were executed in 2013 and the number keeps decreasing (Deathpenaltyinfo.org). Another reason that has influenced this decline is moratoriums, which are issued by different states. Additionally, even though the number of executions has been decreasing significantly in the US, it seems to be increasing in other areas all over the globe. According to Amnesty international, various forms of execution including hanging, beheading, firing squads as well as electrocutions among others, have escalated by fifteen percent in 2013 in comparison to 2012 (Amnesty International USA). Even the most zealous district attorneys are controlled by budgets and the cases that are associated with capital punishments are costly and extremely time-consuming. These cases need years of appeal, extensive hours of testimonies from experts as well as witnesses and numerous person-hours for all the people involved and these overheads accumulate extremely fast. Prior to Maryland abolishing the death sentence in 2012, the costs associated with the death sentence were almost triple those associated with the prosecutions for life sentences. On the other hand, California was spending more than one hundred and eighty million every year on its wide capital punishment system while executing only thirteen convicted criminals since the late seventies. For the comparatively smaller and more rural counties associated with threadbare tax resources, the escalating costs associated with capital punishment more often than not discourages prosecutors from pursuing this path. Conclusion With the death penalty becoming more rare, difficult and more costly to implement, those who support its abolition have had a better chance of making the case in various states, while arguing that it will be better to eliminate the practice completely. The strategies that are used by the people in supports of abolishment of the death penalty may eventually be successful as they attempt to convince the various states to get rid of their death penalty laws since they do not implement it in any case. In the event that they are able to win a sufficient number of states, they will eventually attempt to persuade the Supreme Court that the evolving principles of decency require that the death penalty be abolished since it is a strange and cruel form of punishment (Sidlow and Henschen 89). Nonetheless, this may not materialize soon since instead of getting rid of the death penalty, some of the states are seeking to deal with the problems associated with it and states like Florida have already come up with measures that are supposed to speed up the process. As far as the issues of the death penalty is concerned, states have had differing opinions, and regardless of the fact that capital punishment may continue to exist in some of the states, the countrywide trend is clearly against it being used on a large scale. This may be considered part of the endgame for the states that still have the laws in capital punishment but do not execute the people who are sentenced. Works cited Amnesty International USA,. Death Sentences And Executions 2014. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Deathpenaltyinfo.org,. Execution List 2013 | Death Penalty Information Center. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Jost, Kenneth. Trending Toward #Justice. Ironwood, Lulu Publishing Services, 2015. Print. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press,. Less Support For Death Penalty, Especially Among Democrats. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Sidlow, Edward, and Beth Henschen. Govt 6. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Lerning, 2015. Print. Read More