POLL: Nearly Two-Thirds in Utah Prefer Life-Sentencing Alternatives to the Death Penalty

According to a new poll, near­ly two-thirds of Utah res­i­dents say they pre­fer some form of life sen­tence, rather than the death penal­ty, as the pun­ish­ment for mur­der, and a major­i­ty sup­port replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. 

The statewide poll of 784 Utah vot­ers con­duct­ed by Public Policy Polling on January 13 – 15, 2017 and released on February 9 found that Utah res­i­dents pre­ferred life-sen­tence alter­na­tives over cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by a mar­gin of 35 per­cent­age points. 47% said they pre­ferred life in prison with­out parole, plus a require­ment that the con­vict­ed per­son work in prison to pay resti­tu­tion to the vic­tims; 9% select­ed life in prison with­out parole; 8% chose life in prison with a pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after 40 years; and 29% pre­ferred the death penal­ty. The pref­er­ence for alter­na­tives held true across polit­i­cal par­ty, reli­gion, age, gen­der, and race. 

The poll also found that a major­i­ty (53%) of Utahns said they would strong­ly or some­what sup­port a bill to replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole, a mea­sure esti­mat­ed to save the state more than $1.6 mil­lion per case. 41% of respon­dents opposed the bill. 

“The death penal­ty is los­ing favor in our state because it wastes tax dol­lars, is inef­fec­tive in stop­ping vio­lent crime, and risks pos­si­bly killing an inno­cent per­son, and none of those things align with our con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples,” said said Kevin Greene, Organizing Director of Utah Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a project of the Utah Justice Coalition. 

In 2016, a death penal­ty repeal bill spon­sored by Republican Senator Steve Urquhart passed the Utah Senate and a House leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee, but was not con­sid­ered by the full House before the leg­isla­tive session ended.