If you follow the news, most pundits seem to have reached consensus: if the GOP does not move towards the center on social issues, it is bound to fail. The population has turned against the right on the issues of abortion, the death penalty, and gay marriage. Unfortunately for the pundits making these predictions, they are simply untrue.
Take the death penalty. Liberals love to claim that support for the death penalty has fallen and will harm the GOP. But the evidence does not support this claim. An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll found the death penalty support at 86%. Adding the group that feels the death penalty is always acceptable (22%) to those who say it is sometimes acceptable (64%), the total support reaches an astounding 86%. Since 2011, there was an 8% increase in support for allowing prosecutors to rely on the death penalty for murder cases. Of course, these statistics may be skewed: you need to measure support for capital punishment versus support for life without parole. People may support the death penalty, but in the end favor alternative punishments. The majority still remains when this is done. According to the poll, 59% favor capital punishment over life without parole, a 3% increase since 2011. Support for life in prison was a mere 25%, a two percent decline.
A Pew Research poll supports the pundit's claims. The poll shows a declining support for the death penalty since the 1990s, but a strong majority still exists: 56% support the death penalty versus 38% who oppose. Not much of an election killer! For those who want to reverse this trend, there are a few important details in the Pew poll. The poll broke down reasons people may oppose the death penalty and measured how many people of each group supported the death penalty and how many people opposed it. I will list the three main objections to the death penalty they questioned about, and I will discuss why each objection is wrong.
First, a large objection to the death penalty is that it may lead to innocents being executed. The risk is not very large. Lawyer Joshua Marquis found a rightful conviction rate of 99.72%. Only 0.28% of those executed are potentially innocent. Marquis furthers his argument by noting that those in the medical profession kill 10,000 people by accident each year--a higher number than those executed in total since 1976--yet no one wants to ban medicines. The solution is to fix the problem, not end the system.
Second, another objection is that the death penalty does not deter crime. This isn't really an objection, but a refutation to the claim that it does decrease crime. Statistics continue to show that capital punishment does reduce the murder rate. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has tallied up the papers showing deterrence and those showing no effect. Seventeen papers show deterrence, five show no deterrence, and two are inconclusive. You may stumble upon a National Research Council study claiming no effect, but the review ignored half of the research showing deterrence. The editors of the report are both well-known anti-death penalty advocates and one of the authors (Daniel Nagin) made sure to display a study of his own published in the American Law and Economics Review, which found no effect, but ignore a paper by Paul R. Zimmerman who published a study in the same issue of the journal but came to the opposite conclusion. Nagin, who was surely aware of the Zimmerman study, did not provide any reasoning for the decision to exclude the study from the NRC review. It could be that Nagin simply was unaware of the study and, by mere coincidence, the study happened to disagree with his viewpoint. But if that is true, and the NRC is not guilty of ignoring pertinent evidence, it means they are guilty of bad fact checking and the inability to properly collect the research. The objection--that the death penalty does not deter crime--does not hold up to evidence.
The final objection is that the justice system is more likely to execute people of color. This is one of the more potent objections to the death penalty because the issue of race is impossible to argue against. If you claim that the justice system is not biased, you are labeled a racist. But like most claims of racial bias that liberals make, this too is false. The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, uses the race card against the death penalty, "there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair." Their first line of evidence is that about half of those on death row are African American, despite making up a mere 13% of the population. But African Americans are responsible for 37.7% of the homicides in this country versus 32.5% for whites. There is a large percentage, 28%, of murders where the race of the offender is unknown. If we assume the percentages carry over (37.7% of the unknown category are black), we get can add 10% to the 37.7% previously. This means African Americans commit almost half of the homicides in the United States--proportional to the amount on death row. The ACLU counters with multiple studies on the issue and the finding that the race of the victim matters as well. According to the ACLU, 77% of those on death row are guilty of killing a white person. But the numbers don't add up. The best constructed study on the issue was created by the RAND Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. The RAND study was more like three separate ones. Three sets of researchers, using different methods and datasets, all studied the same question: is the death penalty unfairly applied towards people of color. Looking at the raw data the researchers had disturbing results. The death penalty was racist. If the offender was black and the victim was white, the defendant was doomed to die. But the researchers took heinousness into account and controlled for it. Once done, there was no race effect. The death penalty was not applied because of race; it was applied due to the heinousness of the crime. If a crime is very gruesome, and the defendant happened to be African American and the victim happened to be white, an execution would result. But the studies found that race had nothing to do with it--it only had to do with how gruesome the murder was. If the offender happened to be white and the victim black, a death sentence would still occur. The death penalty isn't racist. It is just applied to the worst crimes, which by mere chance happen to occur to white victims and African American offenders.
The three objections: innocence, deterrence, and race are just flat out wrong. The death penalty still is seem as favorable among most voting blocs, so it probably won't hurt the GOP in the coming election. And some polls find increasing support, not decreasing support. Of course, in the world of statistics both may end up being wrong, but one thing is for certain: at least for the next election cycle, the death penalty will be a feather, not an ankle-weight, for the GOP.
Take the death penalty. Liberals love to claim that support for the death penalty has fallen and will harm the GOP. But the evidence does not support this claim. An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll found the death penalty support at 86%. Adding the group that feels the death penalty is always acceptable (22%) to those who say it is sometimes acceptable (64%), the total support reaches an astounding 86%. Since 2011, there was an 8% increase in support for allowing prosecutors to rely on the death penalty for murder cases. Of course, these statistics may be skewed: you need to measure support for capital punishment versus support for life without parole. People may support the death penalty, but in the end favor alternative punishments. The majority still remains when this is done. According to the poll, 59% favor capital punishment over life without parole, a 3% increase since 2011. Support for life in prison was a mere 25%, a two percent decline.
A Pew Research poll supports the pundit's claims. The poll shows a declining support for the death penalty since the 1990s, but a strong majority still exists: 56% support the death penalty versus 38% who oppose. Not much of an election killer! For those who want to reverse this trend, there are a few important details in the Pew poll. The poll broke down reasons people may oppose the death penalty and measured how many people of each group supported the death penalty and how many people opposed it. I will list the three main objections to the death penalty they questioned about, and I will discuss why each objection is wrong.
First, a large objection to the death penalty is that it may lead to innocents being executed. The risk is not very large. Lawyer Joshua Marquis found a rightful conviction rate of 99.72%. Only 0.28% of those executed are potentially innocent. Marquis furthers his argument by noting that those in the medical profession kill 10,000 people by accident each year--a higher number than those executed in total since 1976--yet no one wants to ban medicines. The solution is to fix the problem, not end the system.
Second, another objection is that the death penalty does not deter crime. This isn't really an objection, but a refutation to the claim that it does decrease crime. Statistics continue to show that capital punishment does reduce the murder rate. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has tallied up the papers showing deterrence and those showing no effect. Seventeen papers show deterrence, five show no deterrence, and two are inconclusive. You may stumble upon a National Research Council study claiming no effect, but the review ignored half of the research showing deterrence. The editors of the report are both well-known anti-death penalty advocates and one of the authors (Daniel Nagin) made sure to display a study of his own published in the American Law and Economics Review, which found no effect, but ignore a paper by Paul R. Zimmerman who published a study in the same issue of the journal but came to the opposite conclusion. Nagin, who was surely aware of the Zimmerman study, did not provide any reasoning for the decision to exclude the study from the NRC review. It could be that Nagin simply was unaware of the study and, by mere coincidence, the study happened to disagree with his viewpoint. But if that is true, and the NRC is not guilty of ignoring pertinent evidence, it means they are guilty of bad fact checking and the inability to properly collect the research. The objection--that the death penalty does not deter crime--does not hold up to evidence.
The final objection is that the justice system is more likely to execute people of color. This is one of the more potent objections to the death penalty because the issue of race is impossible to argue against. If you claim that the justice system is not biased, you are labeled a racist. But like most claims of racial bias that liberals make, this too is false. The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, uses the race card against the death penalty, "there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair." Their first line of evidence is that about half of those on death row are African American, despite making up a mere 13% of the population. But African Americans are responsible for 37.7% of the homicides in this country versus 32.5% for whites. There is a large percentage, 28%, of murders where the race of the offender is unknown. If we assume the percentages carry over (37.7% of the unknown category are black), we get can add 10% to the 37.7% previously. This means African Americans commit almost half of the homicides in the United States--proportional to the amount on death row. The ACLU counters with multiple studies on the issue and the finding that the race of the victim matters as well. According to the ACLU, 77% of those on death row are guilty of killing a white person. But the numbers don't add up. The best constructed study on the issue was created by the RAND Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. The RAND study was more like three separate ones. Three sets of researchers, using different methods and datasets, all studied the same question: is the death penalty unfairly applied towards people of color. Looking at the raw data the researchers had disturbing results. The death penalty was racist. If the offender was black and the victim was white, the defendant was doomed to die. But the researchers took heinousness into account and controlled for it. Once done, there was no race effect. The death penalty was not applied because of race; it was applied due to the heinousness of the crime. If a crime is very gruesome, and the defendant happened to be African American and the victim happened to be white, an execution would result. But the studies found that race had nothing to do with it--it only had to do with how gruesome the murder was. If the offender happened to be white and the victim black, a death sentence would still occur. The death penalty isn't racist. It is just applied to the worst crimes, which by mere chance happen to occur to white victims and African American offenders.
The three objections: innocence, deterrence, and race are just flat out wrong. The death penalty still is seem as favorable among most voting blocs, so it probably won't hurt the GOP in the coming election. And some polls find increasing support, not decreasing support. Of course, in the world of statistics both may end up being wrong, but one thing is for certain: at least for the next election cycle, the death penalty will be a feather, not an ankle-weight, for the GOP.
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