POLL: Washington State Voters Overwhelmingly Prefer Life Sentences to Death Penalty

A new poll of like­ly vot­ers in Washington State shows that Washingtonians are near­ly 3 times more like­ly to pre­fer some form of a life sen­tence to the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment for defen­dants con­vict­ed of murder. 

The poll, com­mis­sioned by the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI), was con­duct­ed by Public Policy Polling and released on July 12, 2018. It found that 69% of like­ly vot­ers in the state pre­ferred some ver­sion of a life sen­tence as pun­ish­ment for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der, as com­pared to 24% who said they pre­ferred the death penalty. 

In a state­ment describ­ing the poll results, NPI said ​“not a sin­gle sub­sam­ple with­in the sur­vey favored the death penal­ty… not even Donald Trump vot­ers. … What this tells us is that there is broad agree­ment across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum for get­ting rid of the prac­tice of putting con­vict­ed mur­ders to death.” 

The poll asked respon­dents: ​“Of the fol­low­ing list of choic­es, which pun­ish­ment do you pre­fer for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der: life in prison with NO pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, life in prison with NO pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole and a require­ment to work in prison and pay resti­tu­tion to the vic­tims, life in prison with a pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after at least forty years, or the death penal­ty?” The most pre­ferred option was life in prison with­out parole, plus resti­tu­tion, which 46% of all respon­dents sup­port­ed. An addi­tion­al 10% pre­ferred life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, while 13% favored life in prison with parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty after at least forty years. 8% said they were not sure. 

Every polit­i­cal demo­graph­ic pre­ferred some ver­sion of a life sen­tence over the death penal­ty: 82% of respon­dents who iden­ti­fied them­selves as Democrats favored one of the life options, as did 63% of Independents or sup­port­ers of a minor par­ty, and 54% of Republicans. 48% of respon­dents who said they vot­ed for Donald Trump pre­ferred one of the life-sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tives, as com­pared with 46% who pre­ferred the death penalty. 

In 2014, Gov. Jay Inslee imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, say­ing that “[t]he use of the death penal­ty in [Washington] state is unequal­ly applied.” A bipar­ti­san bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty passed the state sen­ate and was approved in the House Judiciary Committee in 2017, but House Speaker Frank Chopp, a Democrat, did not bring the bill to a vote in the full House before the leg­is­la­ture adjourned.

“Five Republicans stood with us in the Senate,” said Reuven Carlyle, a Democratic sen­a­tor from Seattle, ​“but the House lead­er­ship was still unwill­ing to bring it to the floor.” 

Washington’s Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who along with his Republican pre­de­ces­sor Rob McKenna have urged leg­is­la­tors to repeal the state’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute, said he was ​“not shocked by the num­bers.” He said the pub­lic mood about the death penal­ty has ​“been chang­ing quick­ly” and ​“we need addi­tion­al leg­is­la­tors to help out. … This poll will fur­ther sig­nal to them that not only is this the right thing to do, to abol­ish the death penal­ty law in Washington state, but is pre­cise­ly what the peo­ple of Washington state want and expect their leg­is­la­ture to do.” (Click to enlarge graph­ic.)

Washington juries have not imposed any new death sen­tences in more than five years and the state last car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 2010.