Survey Reveals How Asian Americans Feel About Death Penalty

In a recent survey of California registered voters, the National Asian American Survey found that like most Californians, Asian/Pacific Islander Americans were in favor of keeping the death penalty, with 47.1 % in favor.

Overall, 55.9 % of Californians were in favor, with 57.3 % of non-Hispanic whites, 57.5 percent of Latinos, and 46.4 % of African Americans in favor of keeping the death penalty.

However, when asked about a federal ruling that California's death penalty law is unconstitutional because it takes so long for the state to carry out, answers were more ambivalent, with 43.8 % of Asian/Pacific Islander Americans in favor of speeding up the process and 39.4 % in favor of replacing the death penalty with life in prison.

"More AANHPIs [Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders] are undecided about the death penalty," said Paul Jung, a Law Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, "indicating that we need more community education on criminal justice issues and particularly in Asian languages."

Latinos were similarly ambivalent. Overall, 51.9 % of respondents were in favor of speeding up the process and 39.6 % were in favor of replacing with life in prison.

This issue is of historic importance to the Asian/Pacific Islander American community. "One of the first national pan-Asian movements was the campaign to free Mr. Chol Soo Lee who was wrongly convicted of a killing in 1973," said Jung. "Due to the investigative reporting by K.W. Lee and Asian-American organizing that led to the Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, Mr. Lee was freed from death row in 1983."

Source: NBC news, October 27, 2014

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