By Jeff Jacoby
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
According to a Washington Post-ABC poll released last
week, 70 percent of Americans want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put to death if he is
convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing. Support for execution was higher
among some respondents (conservatives, the elderly, whites) and lower among
others (liberals, young adults, blacks). But no matter how the results were
sorted, within every demographic subgroup there was majority support for the
death penalty in this case.
That is no anomaly. It is a reminder that despite the
well-funded efforts of death-penalty abolitionists, the true level of approval
for the death penalty in America remains very high.
If you take your cues from the headlines, you could be
forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Maryland last week became the 18th state without capital
punishment when Governor Martin O'Malley, a longtime opponent, signed repeal
legislation before a crowd of applauding allies. That came about a year after
similar action in Connecticut, where Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed a bill
banning executions in April 2012.
Foes of capital punishment foes like to point to such
developments as proof of America's ineluctable retreat from the death penalty.
News accounts of declining public support for executing murderers have become
something of a yearly tradition. Anti-execution activists regularly forecast
the coming demise of Death Row.
"I don't know exactly what the timing is, but over
the longer arc of history I think you'll see more and more states repeal the
death penalty," O'Malley told reporters after signing the Maryland repeal.
Law professor Jamin Raskin, a Maryland state senator, echoed that sentiment.
"The trend lines are clear," he said. "There's nobody who's
adding the death penalty to their state laws. Everybody is taking it
away."
Everybody? It would be more accurate to say that some
willful politicians have taken it away by flouting voters' wishes. The
Washington Post reported in February that on this issue, a majority of Marylanders
opposed O'Malley; 60 percent wanted the state to retain the death penalty as an
option for especially heinous killings, while only 36 percent believed life
without parole should be Maryland's harshest penalty.
In Connecticut, too, ending capital punishment meant
riding roughshod over public opinion. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted as
Connecticut's abolition bill awaited Malloy's signature found that 62 percent
of the state's voters supported the death penalty, and that six out of 10 said the
legislature's abolition decision was a "bad idea."
Elected lawmakers disregarding their constituents?
Shocking, I know. Yet the death penalty for murder has commanded majority
support for decades, rising to a record high of 80 percent in the 1990s. In no
state, not even the bluest, has the death penalty been successfully repealed by
referendum. Last November, as Californians were voting to re-elect President
Obama, they were simultaneously defeating a ballot measure that would have
abolished execution as the ultimate penalty for murder. Opposition to capital
punishment enjoys plenty of support among media and political elites, and
Americans are routinely reminded that most modern democracies have outlawed it.
Yet whenever the question is put to voters directly – repeal or retain? -- they
choose to retain it.
Of course no reasonable person suggests that every
homicide should get the death penalty. What the great majority of Americans do
believe is that for the most egregious or cold-blooded killers, execution
should be a possibility. Most opinion surveys merely ask some version of the
question Gallup routinely poses: "Are you in favor of the death penalty
for a person convicted of murder?" But that understates the true level of
support. Yes, there is an influential minority of Americans that opposes
capital punishment, period. But the overwhelming majority of us believe that it
should be available in at least some cases – the "worst of the
worst."
Just where that line should be drawn – which aggravating
factors should be required to make a crime death-eligible – is a legitimate
subject for debate. But sometimes debate is superfluous.
The horror Tsarnaev is accused of is practically a
textbook example of aggravating factors: Multiple murder, murder of a child,
murder of a police officer, bombing in a public place, wanton cruelty,
substantial premeditation, intention to terrorize. In such a case, should the
judge and jury have the option of imposing the death penalty if they decide
that's what justice requires? Seven out of 10 Americans say yes. Which is
another way of saying that 7 out of 10 Americans are pro-capital punishment.
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