The ongoing argument about the legitimacy of the death penalty
recently made its way to the Supreme Court. In March, the high
court heard oral arguments for death row inmate David L. Nelson,
one of 15 condemned prisoners to challenge the legality of the
lethal injection process in the last year.
The debate about whether capital punishment should be used at
all has raged continuously since it was reinstituted in the United
States in 1976. The latest statistics on the death penalty reveal
that 71% of Americans favor it for individuals convicted of murder,
while 26% oppose it. But recently, some of the focus has shifted to
the question of how painless this mode of carrying out the death
penalty really is. Nelson has joined a growing chorus calling
execution by lethal injection "cruel and unusual punishment."
A Gallup Poll conducted at the time of the Nelson hearing*
indicates that three-fourths (75%) of Americans agree that "states
should be allowed to execute prisoners sentenced to the death
penalty by means of lethal injection." Twenty-one percent said it
should not be permitted because it is a form of cruel and unusual
punishment.
Perhaps in an effort to find a less painful and more humane way
to carry out the death sentence, lethal injection was first
proposed as a means of execution in New York as early as 1888, but
the state instead chose electrocution. Almost 100 years later, in
1977, lethal injection legislation was adopted in Oklahoma, but
Texas was the first state to actually carry out an execution by
lethal injection in 1982. Since that time, there have been 742
executions by lethal injection in the United States; it is
currently the preferred method of putting prisoners to death in 37
of the 38 states that impose the death penalty.
For many years, capital punishment was carried out by firing
squad, the gas chamber, the electric chair, hanging, or
decapitation. In light of those methods, how can lethal injection
be considered "cruel and unusual"? The argument is that human error
during the lethal injection process can lead to problems, sometimes
causing an extended period of time (up to 45 minutes) before the
person dies. Such complaints have led at least one state (New
Jersey) to review the entire process, effectively putting the death
penalty on hold until the issue can be resolved.
A closer look reveals that there are varying levels of support
among certain demographic and political groups:
- Women are less likely than men to support the use of lethal
injection (70% vs. 82%).
- Nonwhites are much less likely than whites to support it (58%
vs. 80%).
- Liberals are less likely to support it (57%) than conservatives
(81%).
But regardless of whether it is possible to implement the death
penalty in a completely painless and humane way, feelings about
capital punishment -- and the demographic differences -- are
probably driven less by the method of execution than by
the philosophical issues that surround the death penalty itself.
These demographic differences are also similar to what is found for
basic support for the death penalty.
*Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,001 national
adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 26-28, 2004. For results
based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95%
confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3
percentage points.
