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Two-hour long executions might not affect public opinion on the death penalty

Public support for the death penalty in the United States has declined, but it remains strong, with at least 60 percent of respondents in surveys saying that they favor capital punishment. Whether the public would support the kind of execution that the state of Arizona administered on Wednesday, in which a convicted murderer took two hours to die after a lethal injection, is another question, one that pollsters can't yet answer.

A poll conducted by CBS News found that support for capital punishment had declined by 5 percentage points between last year and this May. Polls conducted by Gallup and The Washington Post-ABC News found no change in public attitudes.

Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport said he doubted that prolonged executions would alter public opinion. When supporters of the death penalty are asked why they are in favor, they tend to say condemned prisoners must pay for their crimes. "The fact that the killer suffered for one or two hours more at the end may not affect those underlying attitudes," Newport said. "That's the whole idea."


Source: The Washington Post, Wonkblog, Max Ehrenfreud, July 24, 2014
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