The Pew Research Center recently released a poll on a variety of social issues, including the death penalty. The poll found that 64% of the U.S. adults support the imposition of the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. This is a decline of 14 percentage points from 1996, when 78% of respondents said they supported it. The Center reported that support for the death penalty was higher among men than women, and was substantially higher among whites (69%) than among African Americans (44%) and Hispanics (45%).
(Yahoo News, June 20, 2007; based on Pew Research Center Poll, March 22, 2007).

See DPIC’s latest report, “A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty.”