New Voices

In the 1990s, the Gallup Poll mea­sured sup­port for the death penal­ty in the United States at 80%. Since then it has fall­en into the mid 50%s. The death penal­ty has long been opposed by human rights and civ­il rights activists, who ques­tion whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can be applied fair­ly and whether the risks of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple are too great, and by those who con­sid­er it moral­ly wrong for the gov­ern­ment to take the life of a pris­on­er who has already been inca­pac­i­tat­ed by incar­cer­a­tion. But a grow­ing num­ber of non-tra­di­tion­al voic­es have raised new con­cerns about the death penal­ty, ques­tion­ing its cost, its inef­fec­tive­ness in pro­tect­ing the pub­lic and police, the dis­ser­vice it does to fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims, its incon­sis­ten­cy with a pro-life eth­ic and the val­ues of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, and whether the mon­ey spent on the death penal­ty could be used more effec­tive­ly. These new voic­es rep­re­sent a vari­ety of per­spec­tives, from judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and law enforce­ment vet­er­ans to leg­is­la­tors, aca­d­e­mics, spir­i­tu­al lead­ers, and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.

For more infor­ma­tion about new voic­es in the death penal­ty dis­cus­sion, see news features about:

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