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| California Death Chamber |
Support for the death penalty among registered voters in California has dropped to 56 %, the lowest level reported in nearly 50 years but one that still indicates a considerable majority in favor of capital punishment, according to a Field Poll released Friday.
The survey, conducted from Aug. 14 to Aug. 28, found 34 % in favor of abolishing the death penalty and 10 % with no opinion.
In 2011, the same poll found 68 % in support of the death penalty and 27 % opposed. The current majority is the lowest on record since 1965, when 51 % of the state's registered voters said they favored capital punishment.
The poll numbers may actually understate public opposition, in view of the narrow defeat of a 2012 ballot measure that would have repealed California's death penalty and replaced it with life in prison without parole. More than 47 % of those who went to the polls supported the proposal.
A spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which backed the 2012 initiative, said the latest survey is a further indication that capital punishment is losing support.
"I think that the public is becoming very aware that the California death penalty is broken beyond repair ... that we're spending millions on a system that fails to deliver the promise of justice, is wildly unfair, doesn't deter crime, and it will always risk (taking) an innocent life," said the spokeswoman, Daisy Vieyra.
Tired of waiting to fix
Death penalty backer Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said the poll shows that public support remains strong but that some are tired of waiting for solutions to problems in California's death penalty system. The state, which has more than 750 inmates on death row, has not had an execution since 2006, when a federal judge found multiple flaws in lethal injection procedures and staff training.
"I think if the people had a choice between fixing (the system) and abolition, they would vote overwhelmingly to fix it," said Scheidegger, whose organization proposed an initiative this year that would have limited the right to appeal death sentences and sought to speed up the review process. The measure failed to qualify for the ballot, but Scheidegger said it will be circulated again in 2016.
The Field Poll also asked voters about a federal judge's ruling in July that declared California's death penalty unconstitutional because of delays of 25 years or more in carrying out executions, which the judge said have led to an arbitrary and irrational system.
Asked how the state should respond, 52 % said it should speed up the execution process, 40 % said it should replace the death penalty with life without parole, and 8 % voiced no opinion.
Support for the death penalty varied by age, gender, religion, region and political ideology.
The poll said 51 % of voters aged 18 to 29, and 50 % of those 65 and older, were in support, compared with majorities of 57 to 61 % for other age groups.
Men were more likely to be pro-death penalty than women, by 59 to 53 %, while both Protestants and Catholics favored death sentences by 60 % or more, about 15 % higher than the support from members of other religions and nonbelievers.
Lowest in Bay Area
Regionally, support for capital punishment was lowest in the Bay Area, at 51 %, and highest in the Central Valley, at 64 %. It was also highest among those who described themselves as strongly conservative, at 78 %, compared with 29 % among self-described strong liberals.
The Field Research Corp. said its telephone survey of 1,280 registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2014
Field Poll: Death penalty support slips in California
Support for the death penalty in California is at its lowest point in nearly 50 years, although more than 1/2 of the state's registered voters still favor it, a new Field Poll has found.
The poll found 56 % still believe the death penalty should be kept as a punishment for serious crimes, with 34 % opposed and 10 % undecided.
The findings come as states nationwide are grappling with a shortage of drugs used for lethal injections and critics who say some recent executions have been botched and left inmates suffering as they died. They also come after a July ruling by a federal judge in Los Angeles that found lengthy delays in executing California inmates have made the death penalty unconstitutional in the state.
Support for the death penalty in California has been eroding steadily for years, falling from a high of 83 % in 1985 and 1986 Field Polls to its current level, the lowest since a 1965 survey found only 51 % approval. The last Field Poll done on the issue, in 2011, found 68 % in favor of keeping the death penalty, compared to 27 % opposed.
"To me, it's interesting that a small plurality is continuing to support the death penalty," said poll director Mark DiCamillo, who noted that the Field Poll has asked the same question of voters since 1956, when support for the death penalty was 49 %, the only year it has fallen below 50 %.
But opponents and supporters still differ sharply over whether the latest figures mean the state can expect a successful effort to ban the death penalty, as a handful of other states have done in recent years. Both sides say they expect to see ballot measures in 2016 over the issue.
"I think the trend is going to be in the direction of 'Let's abolish it' for the foreseeable future until it is abolished," said Sacramento attorney Don Heller, a 1-time supporter of capital punishment who campaigned 2 years ago for California to become the 19th state that does not allow for execution as a punishment option.
That effort, which would have voided death sentences for the state's 749 condemned inmates and replaced them with sentences of life without parole, failed 52 % to 48 %. But the close result encouraged death penalty opponents into believing they eventually can succeed in banning executions.
"I think with some of the things that have occurred around the country - screw-ups with executions, people on death row that were exonerated by DNA evidence - those are the things that cause reasonable people to say, 'Let's just abolish it and life without parole is a sentence that protects the safety of the general public,'" Heller said.
The 2012 campaign for Proposition 34 was well-funded and based on selling the public on the argument that maintaining the death penalty was wasting billions of dollars, especially in light of the fact that only 13 inmates have been executed since 1978, the last in 2006.
But death penalty supporters reject those arguments and say opponents have created the delays and added the expense of maintaining the system through endless court appeals.
"I don't think there's a real shift in the number of people who believed that the death penalty is right," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento.
Scheidegger conceded that there may be a "fatigue factor" among some supporters because of delays and skepticism over whether the system ever will see executions resume on a regular basis.
"I do think that it is important that we fix the problems and get it restarted," he said. "The best argument they have is that because they've been blocking it we should give up," he said. "There are people who believe that death is the just and correct punishment for the worst murderers, but who are just frustrated and fatigued."
The issue of continued delays led to pollsters crafting a new question for voters based on the federal judge's ruling that California's death penalty is so slow it is unconstitutional. That question asked what California should do in light of the ruling, and 52 % of respondents said the state should speed up the execution process. By comparison, 40 % said the death penalty should be replaced with life without parole, and 8 % had no opinion.
There were few surprises in which voters support keeping the death penalty and who opposes it, DiCamillo said, with registered Republicans and conservatives, as well as Protestants and voters living in the Central Valley the strongest in favor of maintaining capital punishment.
Those most likely to oppose death as an option were Democrats, liberals, Bay Area residents, voters under 30 and those who expressed no religious preference.
Source: Sacramento Bee, Sept 12, 2014
