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Public support for the death penalty is at its lowest level in a half-century, with opposition higher than any time since 1966, according to the 2020 annual Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about capital punishment.
Fifty-five percent of respondents to a national survey conducted between September 30 and October 15, 2020 told Gallup that they were “in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder,” down one percentage point from the levels reported in 2018 and 2019. The figure tied with 2017 for the lowest support for capital punishment since 50% of Americans told Gallup in March 1972 that they were in favor of the death penalty, just months before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes in Furman v. Georgia.
Forty-three percent of respondents told Gallup that they were opposed to the death penalty as a punishment for murder, the most since 47% of Americans expressed opposition to capital punishment in the May 1966 Gallup survey. The number was one percentage point higher than the level of opposition reported in 2019 and two percentage points higher than in 2017 and 2018.
The results followed the continuing pattern of declining death-penalty support found in the organization’s polling. In May 2020, a record-low 54% of Americans said they believed the death penalty is “morally acceptable,” and in October 2018, 49% of Americans — also a new low — said they believed the death penalty was “applied fairly.” The 2019 national survey found that a record 60% of Americans favored life imprisonment over the death penalty, which Gallup called “a dramatic shift from prior years.”
Gallup Senior Editor Jeffrey M. Jones said the pollster’s questions on death penalty trends reflect that “[m]any Americans are … conflicted on the death penalty. … [A]bout one in five Americans express theoretical support for use of the death penalty but believe life imprisonment is a better way to punish convicted murderers,” Jones said.
Despite its defeat at the polls on November 3, the Trump administration is pressing forward with efforts to conduct an historically unprecedented number of lame duck executions and in announcing new federal capital prosecutions that it will not be in position to carry out.
After the close of business on Friday, November 20, 2020, one day after carrying out the first execution during a presidential transition period in more than a century, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its intention to proceed with three additional executions before Joseph R. Biden is sworn in as the nation’s 46th president on January 20, 2021. DOJ set the execution of Alfred Bourgeois for December 11, 2020, the same week it is scheduled to execute Lisa Montgomery, the first woman to be executed by the federal government in more than 60 years, and Brandon Bernard, the youngest offender to be executed by the federal government in 68 years. It also scheduled the executions of Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs for January 14 and January 15, 2021, less than one week before Biden takes office.
No lame duck president has carried out more than one execution in a presidential transition period since Grover Cleveland’s first presidency in 1888-1889. If all of the scheduled executions are carried out, they will be the most ever during a transition period between U.S. presidencies. According to the Espy file, an historical compilation of executions in the U.S. and its colonies, the five executions conducted between November 1884 and February 12, 1885 at the end of Chester A. Arthur's presidency are the most in American history.
“This has been an administration that’s been historically out of step. Not just out of step with the views of America in 2020, but out of step with federal practices by administrations, Democratic or Republican, for the course of [a] century,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham told The Washington Post.
Federal prosecutors also filed court papers in federal court in Long Island, New York on November 20 announcing their intent to seek the death penalty against Jairo Saenz in connection with seven murders they allege were committed by a local clique said to be associated with the MS-13 gang. That action followed by one day the appointment of death-penalty counsel to represent five defendants charged with capital murder by federal prosecutors in Houston.
The new announcements may be largely symbolic, for the ultimate decision on whether the cases will proceed to trial as capital prosecutions will be made by the incoming Biden administration. In the interim period, federal taxpayers will be required to pay for six sets of capitally qualified lawyers to begin the extensive and costly preparation for a federal death penalty trial that may ultimately be non-capital.
