As murders increase, support for the death penalty will too - The Boston Globe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

43% : And as homicides decreased, support for the death penalty did too.
43% : The use of the death penalty is gradually disappearing in the United States," begins a new Pew report. "
42% : Like many in elite media and opinion circles, he disapproves of the death penalty.
42% : Biden, who has always adapted his views to his party's mainstream, jettisoned his longtime support for the death penalty when he launched his presidential campaign in 2019.
41% : Yet the death penalty for people convicted of murder continues to draw support from a majority of Americans despite widespread doubts about its administration, fairness, and whether it deters serious crimes."
41% : Americans are right to support the death penalty, and they are right to have reservations about it.
40% : And if history is any guide, an upward climb in the murder rate is likely to lead to a surge in something else: support for capital punishment.
40% : By the early 1990s, when some 24,000 Americans were being killed each year and the murder rate had soared to 9.8 per 100,000, support for the death penalty was overwhelming: In 1994, it reached an all-time high of 80 percent.
40% : Our never-ending capital punishment debate ultimately comes down to one question: Should a judge and jury have the option of imposing the death penalty if they decide that's what justice requires?
38% : Capital punishment as a policy has always been controversial and always generated strong arguments, pro and con.
38% : Indeed, Gallup's compilation of decades of poll results consistently shows the share of respondents with no opinion on the death penalty to be in the low single digits.
37% : And yet six out of 10 Americans continue to believe that capital punishment should not be discarded from the criminal justice toolbox -- a belief that intensifies as murder grows more prevalent.
36% : Soon thereafter, the Pew Research Center was reporting that "the share of Americans who support the death penalty for people convicted of murder is now at its lowest point in more than four decades."
36% : "Capital punishment is withering away," wrote George F. Will approvingly in 2015.

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