Sentencing Alternatives

Views on Sentencing Alternatives

General Public Opinion

A 2022 poll of 1,009 Americans by the Gallup found that 55% sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, while 42% opposed the death penal­ty. Overall, about one-third (35%) of Democrats said they favored the death penal­ty, while 77% of Republicans said they favored the death penal­ty. A 2022 poll by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State University found that 51% of Louisiana respon­dents pre­fer life with­out parole, ver­sus 43% who chose the death penal­ty as the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for a per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der. A 2021 poll con­duct­ed in Texas by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling in June 2021 indi­cate that three-quar­ters of Dallas County vot­ers pre­ferred some form of life impris­on­ment rather than the death penal­ty as the pun­ish­ment for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der, while two-thirds of Dallas County vot­ers pre­ferred one of the life-sen­tenc­ing options. Dallas County was among the 2% of coun­ties that DPIC report­ed in 2013 account­ed for more than half of all death-row pris­on­ers and exe­cu­tions in the United States.

The Texas results are con­sis­tent with recent polls in oth­er death penal­ty states, such as Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Utah, where a 2017 poll showed that a major­i­ty of res­i­dents sup­port replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

Victims’ Families

While the death penal­ty is often char­ac­ter­ized as pro­vid­ing jus­tice and clo­sure for fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims, fam­i­ly mem­bers share no sin­gle, uni­form response to the death penal­ty. A 2007 study pub­lished by Scott Vollum, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sociology & Criminology at University of Minnesota, found that just 2.5% of co-vic­tims — fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims — report­ed achiev­ing clo­sure as a result of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. 20.1% said the exe­cu­tion did not help them heal. A 2011 analy­sis of news arti­cles by Thomas J. Mowen and Ryan D. Schroeder includ­ing state­ments by or on behalf of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers between 1992 and 2009, indi­cates an increas­ing resis­tance to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from these indi­vid­u­als dur­ing the giv­en peri­od. This study found that ​“oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has increased fol­low­ing the rise of ret­ri­bu­tion and clo­sure jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the death penal­ty, while media cov­er­age of this fam­i­ly mem­ber oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er in both scope and pri­ma­cy dur­ing the same peri­od. Highlighting a mul­ti­tude of cas­es, the authors deter­mined ​“that over­whelm­ing­ly the news­pa­per reflects that the death penal­ty is not what most [fam­i­ly mem­bers] desire. Rather, many court sys­tems, judges, lawyers, and juries insist that the death penal­ty is what the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly should want”(original emphasis).

A 2012 Marquette University Law School study report­ed that co-vic­tims had improved phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health and greater sat­is­fac­tion with the legal sys­tem in cas­es where per­pe­tra­tors received life sen­tences, rather than death sen­tences. The authors of that study said co-vic­tims, ​“may pre­fer the final­i­ty of a life sen­tence and the obscu­ri­ty into which the defen­dant will quick­ly fall, to the con­tin­ued uncer­tain­ty and pub­lic­i­ty of the death penal­ty.” A 2013 study by Corey Burton and Richard Tewksbury ana­lyzed 138 vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­ber state­ments on exe­cu­tions between 2006 and 2011. Results indi­cate that 35% of fam­i­ly mem­bers believed the exe­cu­tion of their loved one’s mur­dered rep­re­sent­ed jus­tice, while just 31% of fam­i­ly mem­bers believed the exe­cu­tion brought them clos­er to heal­ing and closure.

Families of Defendants

A 2016 arti­cle for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by Professor Michael Radelet of the University of Colorado at Boulder describes the ret­ribu­tive effects of the death penal­ty on the fam­i­ly, friends, and attor­neys of death row pris­on­ers. Radelet com­pares these impacts to the effect of life with­out parole and argues ​“that the death penalty’s added pun­ish­ment over LWOP often pun­ish­es the fam­i­ly just as much as the inmate, and after the exe­cu­tion the full brunt of the pun­ish­ment falls on the fam­i­ly. This added impact dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pun­ish­es women and chil­dren.” These effects on peo­ple oth­er than the inmate, he writes, ​“under­mine the prin­ci­ple that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem pun­ish­es only the guilty and nev­er the inno­cent. The death penal­ty affects every­one who knows, cares for, or works with the death row inmate.”

Members of the cap­i­tal juries have con­sid­ered these effects when delib­er­at­ing whether to sen­tence a defen­dant to die. In January 2018, a Wake County, North Carolina jury reject­ed the death penal­ty for 24-year-old Donovan Jevonte Richardson and sen­tenced him to two life sen­tences, mark­ing the ninth con­sec­u­tive Wake County cap­i­tal tri­al to result in a life ver­dict. In light of the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that Richardson’s father aban­doned him and refused to acknowl­edge his son until after a pater­ni­ty test, jurors con­clud­ed that exe­cut­ing Richardson could have an unnec­es­sary, detri­men­tal impact on his young sons.