A May 2004 Gallup Poll found that a grow­ing num­ber of Americans sup­port a sen­tence of life with­out parole rather than the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. Gallup found that 46% of respon­dents favor life impris­on­ment over the death penal­ty, up from 44% in May 2003. During that same time frame, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as an alter­na­tive fell from 53% to 50%. The poll also revealed a grow­ing skep­ti­cism that the death penal­ty deters crime, with 62% of those polled say­ing that it is not a deter­rent. These per­cent­ages are a dra­mat­ic shift from the respons­es giv­en to this same ques­tion in 1991, when 51% of Americans believed the death penal­ty deterred crime and only 41% believed it did not. Only 55% of those polled respond­ed that they believed the death penal­ty is imple­ment­ed fair­ly, down from 60% in 2003. When not offered an alter­na­tive sen­tence, 71% sup­port­ed the death penal­ty and 26% opposed. The over­all sup­port is about the same as that report­ed in 2002, but down from the 80% sup­port in 1994.(Gallup Poll News Service, June 2, 2004) Read the Gallup Press Release. See Public Opinion. See also Life Without Parole.

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