Death Penalty Support Continues Its Steady Decline in Nation’s Leading Execution County

Just 27% of Houston-area residents prefer the death penalty over life sentences for those convicted of first-degree murder, according to a new report by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Harris County, the largest county in the Houston metropolitan area, “earned its reputation as the ‘death penalty capital of America,’” the report says, “having executed more people since 1976 … than any other county in the nation.” At its peak, Harris County sentenced 44 people to death during a three-year period (1994-1996). However, declining public support for capital punishment has contributed to a drop in the number of death sentences the county imposes. Over the last three years, five people were sentenced to death in Harris County, with no new death sentences imposed in 2015. Texas is experiencing a similar statewide trend: while the state imposed a high of 48 death sentences in 1999, it imposed only two new death sentences in 2015. The percentage of Houston residents who consider the death penalty the most appropriate punishment for murder has “dropped steadily,” the report says, including a decline of 12 percentage points since 2008. It attributes the erosion of support for the death penalty to “recent revelations of discriminatory sentencing, innocent persons being freed from Death Row just before their scheduled executions, and botched lethal injections,” along with the comparatively greater costs of seeking the death penalty, rather than life imprisonment, which the report says “have risen dramatically.” (Click image to enlarge.)

(R. Holeywell, “Greater Houston is Becoming Increasingly Democratic, and Other Highlights From Our 2016 Survey,” The Urban Edge, April 25, 2016; “Thirty-five years of the Kinder Houston Area Survey: Tracking Responses to a Changing America,” Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University, April 25, 2016.) See Public Opinion and Sentencing.