Californians’ sup­port for the death penal­ty is declin­ing accord­ing to results of a new sur­vey con­duct­ed in February 2006 by the Field Poll. The statewide poll revealed that only 63% of respon­dents favor keep­ing the death penal­ty for seri­ous crimes, a fig­ure that is low­er than the 72% sup­port for the death penal­ty mea­sured in 2002 and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the 83% who voiced sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in both 1985 and 1986. The sur­vey also found a grow­ing seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion ques­tion­ing the fair­ness of the death penal­ty. The poll asked Californians if they believed the death penal­ty has been ​“gen­er­al­ly fair and free from error.” Among respon­dents, 48% said yes, 39% said no, and 13% had no opin­ion. When the same ques­tion was posed dur­ing a poll two years ago, 58% said the sys­tem was fair, and 31% dis­agreed. ​“The sophis­ti­ca­tion of Californians on this issue is grow­ing. We’re get­ting close to that point when the death penal­ty can no longer dri­ve polit­i­cal deci­sions as it has in the past,” not­ed Lance Lindsey, Executive Director of Death Penalty Focus.

In the three months lead­ing up to the Field Poll, California car­ried out two exe­cu­tions, includ­ing the high­ly pub­li­cized exe­cu­tion of Stanley Williams and the exe­cu­tion of Clarence Ray Allen, who at 76 years old was blind and so fee­ble that he had to be wheeled to the death cham­ber. On February 21, a fed­er­al judge blocked the exe­cu­tion of Michael Morales due to con­cerns about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the lethal injec­tion process. A hear­ing in May is sched­uled to deter­mine whether California’s pro­ce­dures for lethal injec­tion pose a sig­nif­i­cant risk of leav­ing the pris­on­er con­scious and in pain dur­ing exe­cu­tions.

(San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 2006). See Public Opinion.

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