Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Demonstrators march to protest the death penalty during a rally organized by Catholics Against the Death Penalty-Southern California in Anaheim Feb. 25, 2017. Most Americans support life imprisonment over the death penalty, according to a Gallup poll released Nov. 24, 2019, revealing a shift in the majority opinion on this issue for the first time in 34 years. (CNS photo/Andrew Cullen, Reuters)

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Most Americans support life imprisonment over the death penalty, according to a Gallup poll released Nov. 24, revealing a shift in the majority opinion on this issue for the first time in 34 years.

The poll, based on results from telephone interviews conducted Oct. 14-31 with a random sample of 1,526 adults in the U.S., showed 60% prefer that convicted murders receive a sentence of life imprisonment, while 36% said capital punishment would be better.

This view marks a shift in Americans' opinion over the past two decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, the majority opinion leaned toward the death penalty. The survey also is just the second time more people said they thought life in prison was a better punishment than the death penalty; in 2007 they did so by 1 percentage point, with 48% favoring life in prison and 47% favoring the death penalty.

The current poll, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, breaks down respondents by age, sex and party affiliation. Within these groups there were differing opinions: Women showed stronger support for life in prison (66%) than men (53%). Younger people also were more likely to show support for life in prison (68%) than older people (57%). Along party lines, 58% of Republicans supported the death penalty over 38% who said life in prison was the better option, and 79% of Democrats preferred life in prison while 19% preferred the death penalty be administered.

Five years ago, the American Values Survey by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 48% of Americans preferred life without parole as the punishment for murder and 44% preferred the death penalty.

This poll revealed religious divides on the issue and showed that Catholics, Jews, members of other non-Christian religions and the religiously unaffiliated preferred life without parole as a punishment over the death penalty. Only white evangelicals (59%) and white mainline Protestants (52%) expressed majority support for the death penalty.

Catholics in the 2014 survey were sharply divided by race: Among white Catholics, 45% favored the death penalty and 50% favored life in prison. In contrast, only 29% of Hispanic Catholics favored the death penalty while 62% said convicted murderers should be given life imprisonment sentences.

In an Oct. 10 roundtable discussion about the death penalty with Catholic bishops, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City said: "It's really important for our Catholic people to really dig into and learn, study, read the teachings of the magisterium of the church" on this issue.

He said with the popes -- St. John Paul II and Popes Benedict and Francis -- there has been "a steady movement toward a greater clarity in terms of the morality and the inadmissibility of the death penalty."

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

City and state/province, or if outside Canada or the U.S., city and country. 
When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Discover how a 4th-century poem by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius to respond to Christian heresies evolved into “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” by the 19th century.
Pope Francis offered a heartfelt appeal for death row prisoners in the United States, which significantly comes as Joe Biden, the second Catholic president in the country’s history, nears the end of his term.
Gerard O’ConnellDecember 08, 2024
"At times, in our spiritual lives and our pastoral activity, we risk focusing on what is incidental and forgetting what is essential."
Pope FrancisDecember 07, 2024
When Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi receives the red hat and cardinal’s ring from Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 7, he will be the seventh Japanese cardinal in the history of the Catholic Church.
Gerard O’ConnellDecember 06, 2024