Americans Favor The Death Penalty, But Few Want The Executed To Suffer

Most Americans favor the death penalty as a punishment for people convicted of murder, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. But the poll also finds that few people want to inflict unnecessary pain on those who are executed.

According to the poll, 62 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for people who are convicted of murder, while only 26 % are opposed. That support crossed party lines -- 87 % of Republicans, 58 % of independents and 51 % of Democrats said that they were in favor of execution as a punishment for murder.

The survey found that lethal injection is the most favored method of execution among Americans by far, and the only one approved of by at least half of Americans. 54 % of respondents said that they approved of lethal injection as a method of execution, including 44 % of Democrats, 50 % of independents and 79 % of Republicans.

But a significant number of those polled said that just because a prisoner should be put to death doesn't mean he or she needs to suffer.

43 % of respondents said that execution methods should be as quick and painless as possible, while just 11 % wanted them to be as slow and painful as possible, and 8 % weren't sure. Another 38 % weren't asked the question because they said they were opposed to the death penalty, or they weren't sure if they were in favor of it or not.

The poll was conducted after the execution of Dennis McGuire, an Ohio inmate who reportedly gasped for air and took 26 minutes to die after being injected with an untested cocktail of lethal injection drugs last week.

States that allow the death penalty have struggled in recent years to find drug combinations that guarantee a quick and painless death, after European manufacturers cut off supplies to drugs previously used for execution by lethal injection.

If Americans were to come to view lethal injection as too slow and painful, the poll shows little support for other methods that might take its place. No other method of execution, including hanging, gas chambers, the electric chair, firing squads and beheading, received the support of more than 35 percent of Americans in the poll.

Much of that support was clustered among Republicans, of whom 54 % said they would approve of the electric chair and 51 % said they would approve of gas chambers as a method of execution. Among Democrats and independents, no alternative method of execution received more than 34 % approval.

The poll also found that for most Americans, life in prison without a chance of parole actually sounds like a worse form of punishment than execution. Asked which of the 2 they personally thought would be worse, only 30 % of respondents said execution, while 52 % said that life in prison with no possibility of parole would be the worse form of punishment.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Jan. 18-19 among 1,000 U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.

Source: Huffington Post, January 26, 2014

Death Penalty News: "Should execution methods be as quick and painless as possible?" 8 % of respondents... weren't sure. My God, what kind of world are we living in?

Florida Set to Execute Man Who Said He Killed to Reach Death Row, Challenging Misconception that Death Penalty Deters Crime

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state.

Saudi Arabia executes two Bangladeshis over 'immoral act' inside mosque

Saudi Arabia has carried out the death penalty on two Bangladeshi nationals in Mecca. The country's Interior Ministry announced this in a statement on Wednesday. According to the report, they were sentenced over allegations of involvement in immoral acts inside a mosque in Mecca. The information was reported by Ajel News, citing the Saudi Interior Ministry's statement. The two Bangladeshis executed were a man and a woman, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sithi Akhter. The “immoral acts” referred to illicit heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual activity.

Florida executes James Robertson

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida prisoner who said he killed his cellmate specifically to get on death row was executed Tuesday, nearly 18 years after the attack. James Robertson, 63, declined to offer any last words before receiving a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later. It was a stark contrast to the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee two weeks ago, where she was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

Florida | Former firefighter, police officer sentenced to death in Fort Pierce killing

Otto Lenke, a Sebastian resident and former Indian River County firefighter/paramedic, as well as a former Melbourne police officer, was convicted in May 2026 of first-degree murder with a firearm and first-degree arson for the February 2021 killing of Richard Benson, owner of Fast Frank’s Cycle Concepts in Fort Pierce. SEBASTIAN—A Nineteen Judicial Circuit judge on Tuesday sentenced former Indian River County firefighter and Melbourne police officer Otto Lenke of Sebastian to death for the 2021 killing of a Fort Pierce motorcycle shop owner.

Buffalo Tops shooter files last-minute bid to avoid death penalty

Payton Gendron, who is already serving life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, is asking a federal judge to throw out the case that could send him to death row. Defense attorneys filed the motion Monday — a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin — seeking to dismiss Gendron’s federal indictment. They argued that Black residents are underrepresented in the jury pool for New York’s Western District, according to WIVB and WKBW.

USA | Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

Florida | William Reaves set to be executed on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m.

With his execution date looming, convicted killer William Reaves will soon be moved from Raiford's Union Correctional Institution to a death watch cell in nearby Florida State Prison, a maximum-security complex also known as "The Rock." Reaves, 77, a former Gifford resident in Indian River County who’s been on death row for 38 years, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m. His execution will fulfill a sentence of death imposed for the 1986 fatal shooting of Indian River County Sheriff’s Cpl. Richard “Raz” Raczkoski outside a Zippy Mart store on State Road 60 west of Vero Beach.

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

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