According to Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a Harvard law pro­fes­sor who taught President Obama and the First Lady when they were law stu­dents, the President may be chang­ing his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Obama has said that he sup­ports exe­cu­tions for ​“espe­cial­ly hor­rif­ic” mur­ders, but has also raised con­cerns about the death penal­ty. Ogletree said that Obama’s recent focus on racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as well as declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty, may dri­ve the President to oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“He’s not there yet, but he’s close,” Ogletree said. ​“Even if he does­n’t change his mind in the next year and a half, I think the pub­lic’s point of view is going to influ­ence him.” A for­mer strate­gist for President George W. Bush, Matthew Dowd, recent­ly com­pared chang­ing pub­lic views on the death penal­ty and same-sex mar­riage, say­ing, ​“Twenty years from now, peo­ple that are for the death penal­ty are going to be in the same place as peo­ple that are against gay mar­riage.” In 2014, Obama com­ment­ed on the death penal­ty after the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett. ​“In the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in this coun­try, we have seen sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems — racial bias, uneven appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty,” he said. A grow­ing body of research sup­ports Obama’s state­ment about racial bias. For exam­ple, a study in Philadelphia found that the odds of a jury hand­ing down a death sen­tence were 29 times high­er if the defen­dant was black, and that mur­der cas­es involv­ing a black defen­dant and a white vic­tim result­ed in death sen­tences at 5 times the rate of cas­es in which the races were reversed.

(M. Ehrenfreund, ​“Why Obama is ​‘close’ to oppos­ing the death penal­ty, accord­ing to a long-time asso­ciate,” The Washington Post, July 16, 2015.) See Race and Public Opinion.

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