New Mexico

The emp­ty­ing of death row by Governor Tony Anaya in 1986 set the tone for the ero­sion of sup­port for the death penal­ty in New Mexico. As a state with a grow­ing Roman Catholic and non-white pop­u­la­tion, the shift­ing demo­graph­ics became appar­ent in 2009 when Gov. Richardson asked his con­stituents for feed­back on death penal­ty abolition.