New Polls in Two Florida Counties that Heavily Use the Death Penalty Find Voters Prefer Life Sentences Instead

Recently released poll results from two Florida coun­ties that have heav­i­ly used the death penal­ty sug­gest that vot­ers actu­al­ly pre­fer life-sen­tenc­ing options instead. 

Polls con­duct­ed by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling on January 22 – 23, 2018, indi­cate that three-quar­ters of Miami-Dade County respon­dents pre­ferred some form of life impris­on­ment rather than the death penal­ty as the pun­ish­ment for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der, and two-thirds of Pinellas County respon­dents pre­ferred one of the life-sen­tenc­ing options. The mar­gin was more than 3 to 1 in Miami-Dade (75% to 21%) and more than 2 to 1 in Pinellas (68% to 30%). 

Of Miami-Dade respon­dents who chose a life-sen­tenc­ing option, a plu­ral­i­ty (40%) pre­ferred life with­out parole, plus resti­tu­tion; 18% pre­ferred life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after 40 years; and 17% pre­ferred life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In Pinellas, 48% pre­ferred life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion; 12% pre­ferred life with­out parole; and 8% chose life with parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty after 40 years. 

Sixty-eight per­cent of Miami-Dade respon­dents said they would sup­port a deci­sion by their local pros­e­cu­tor to reduce or elim­i­nate the use of the death penal­ty, com­pared to 25% who opposed. In Pinellas, 64% said they would sup­port reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing the use of the death penal­ty, as opposed to 32% against. Pinellas/​Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe report­ed­ly has filed notice that he will seek the death penal­ty in 15 pend­ing cas­es and six re-sen­tences, with nine death-penal­ty tri­als already sched­uled for 2018. 

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty released the Pinellas County poll on February 27 and the Miami-Dade poll on March 1. The orga­ni­za­tion’s direc­tor, Mark Elliott, said “[t]he sur­vey results make clear that the state attorney’s office is ignor­ing the will of the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Pinellas County con­stituents who pre­fer life sen­tences for those con­vict­ed of mur­der.” Elliott also said that “[e]xpensive death penal­ty tri­als do noth­ing to pre­vent vio­lent crime, pro­tect law enforce­ment, or help vic­tims’ fam­i­lies in mean­ing­ful ways, and mis­takes are also all-too-common.”

DPIC report­ed in 2013 that both Miami-Dade and Pinellas were among the 2% of coun­ties that account­ed for more than half of all death-row pris­on­ers and exe­cu­tions in the United States. Both were among the Fair Punishment Project’s list of 16 out­lier coun­ties that imposed five or more death sen­tences between 2010 and 2015 — more than 99.5% of all coun­ties in the country.

The polls also showed strong oppo­si­tion in both coun­ties to local pros­e­cu­tors seek­ing to impose the death penal­ty against per­sons with severe men­tal ill­ness. Miami-Dade respon­dents expressed over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion to the prac­tice, by a mar­gin of more than 4 to 1 (70% to 17%). The mar­gin was more than 3 to 1 in Pinellas, with 66% oppos­ing and 21% sup­port­ing the practice. 

The poll also found more respon­dents in both coun­ties opposed apply­ing the death penal­ty to defen­dants under age 21 than sup­port­ed that prac­tice, and — when prompt­ed with infor­ma­tion that Florida death-penal­ty cas­es cost an esti­mat­ed $1 mil­lion dol­lars per case — 65% of Miami-Dade respon­dents and 60% in Pinellas pre­ferred pros­e­cu­tors to use life with­out parole and redi­rect the sav­ings to solv­ing rapes and murders. 

Public Policy Polling sur­veyed 269 vot­ers in Pinellas County and 268 from Miami-Dade. The polls each have an error rate of ± 6 percentage points.