Capital Punishment, 30 Years On: Support and Ambivalence

July 1, 2006— -- Thirty years after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, most Americans continue to support capital punishment in principle -- but not necessarily in preference, given the alternative of mandatory life.

Sixty-five percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll support the death penalty for people convicted of murder. But given life in prison without parole as an alternative, preference for the death penalty drops sharply, to 50 percent.

That result, stable for the past six years, reflects the public's longstanding ambivalence about capital punishment. On one hand polling has shown substantial concerns about its administration. On the other, majorities want it available for the most heinous crimes.

For instance, while Americans divide about evenly, 50-46 percent, on whether they prefer the death penalty or mandatory life for murderers in general, majorities in past polls have preferred execution over life terms in several notorious cases -- for example, for Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

The Supreme Court suspended the death penalty in 1972, then reinstated it in a ruling, Gregg v. Georgia, issued on July 2, 1976. The first execution in a decade followed six months later when Gary Gilmore, convicted of killing a motel clerk, was executed by firing squad at Utah State Prison in Salt Lake City. Another 1,028 executions have taken place since, with 3,370 inmates currently on death row.

Support for the death penalty in the support/oppose formulation has been stable, between 63 and 66 percent, since 2000. It declined - along with crime rates - after peaking at 80 percent in 1994. Indeed there's been a close correlation between the murder rate and support for the death penalty since the mid-1980s. (Any significant correlation indicates a relationship, but not necessarily a causal one.)

That correlation exists even though fewer than half of Americans think the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder -- 42 percent said so in an ABC/Post poll last year, down from 62 percent in a Gallup poll in 1985. Many instead simply see it as punishment.