Death Penalty Weirdness

From a couple of recent polls on the death penalty, presumably inspired by the Troy Davis fiasco: in a CNN/Opinion Research Co. poll, people are split on the appropriate punishment for murder, with 48% favoring death and 50% favoring life without parole. But, in that same poll, 72% think an innocent person has been executed in the last five years. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll finds 61% saying they favor the death penalty for murder (not specifying life without parole as the alternative always gets a higher support level for capital punishment), but 64% don't believe that the death penalty deters murders. They also find that 52% believe the death penalty is administered fairly. If I assume all of these are valid percentages, and if I line the numbers up so that no one who takes an nth-percentile anti-death-penalty position on one issue will take a position less than the nth-percentile on any other question, then I get the following distribution of American citizens. 23% believe that the death penalty deters murder, and is applied fairly, and that no innocents have been executed in the last five years, and accordingly support the death penalty, even over life without parole. 9% are like those 23%, but they do think we've killed some innocent people recently. The next 16% are like the last 9%, but don't think the death penalty deters murder. They do think it's applied fairly, however, and therefore support it completely. Another 4% follow that 16% in thinking that the death penalty is applied fairly, but would prefer life without parole. Finally we have 9% who don't think the death penalty deters murder, do think it sometimes kills innocent people, do not think it is applied fairly, and do not support it when given the alternative of life without parole, but do support it when not prompted with that alternative. Then we have 35% who oppose the death penalty on every possible measure.


Notice that I'm being generous to the intellectual consistency of the American people here: the way I lined things up is designed to maximize the percentages in the two opposing, straight-ticket support and straight-ticket opposition camps. The 38% number I attach to the groups holding some kind of mixed attitude about the death penalty is a lower bound, according to these poll numbers. Now, I get what the group that opposes the death penalty completely is thinking, 'cause I'm one of them. I also get what the group supporting the death penalty wholeheartedly is thinking, though I dislike their thinking rather a lot: we're only killing people who truly committed crimes that truly deserve the ultimate punishment, and by doing so we deter murder. What's not to love? (Other than the killing...) I suppose that the 9% "yes deterrence, but yes innocents executed" crowd think is that those innocent people that we kill, as the result of a fair system, are a price worth paying to deter some murders. The 9% who oppose the death penalty on all measures except for the straight up "do you support the death penalty for murder?" question presumably think, if they think anything at all, that while the death penalty is quite bad, it's better than the alternative of letting these evil murderers out of jail in 25 years. If you prompt them that we can literally lock these people up and throw away the key, then they'll take that option.

Then we have the group that supports the death penalty, even when compared to life without parole, despite thinking it is neither deterrent nor perfect. They do think it's a fair system, though, which presumably means they're making purely retributivist arguments: they deserve it! The remaining group consists of just 4% by my calculations, and I bet they don't exist at all: they are like the above group, but will opt out of favoring capital punishment if you give them the option of life without parole. I have a hard time coming up with an explanation for that set of attitudes.

There are probably some other groups that aren't in my calculations but do or could exist. For instance, even if I did believe that capital punishment was a deterrent, that we hadn't recently executed any innocent persons, and that the system was 'fairly' applied in some reasonable way, I would still oppose it absolutely. Notice that for every person like this hypothetical version of me, who either believes in the deterrent effects or doesn't think we've killed any innocent people recently but who still opposes the death penalty, there has to be one more person who supports the death penalty though they don't think that it is a perfectly-applied deterrent. There ought to be some people who think the death penalty is a deterrent even if it isn't applied fairly. It's weird to me that there are people who think it's applied fairly but that we've executed innocent people: how can that be fair?!?

I just don't get how you can support this thing if you believe it sometimes kills random innocent people. If it sometimes kills random innocent people, then why couldn't it kill you? Of course, some people might believe that it only ever kills random innocent non-white people, and that they and theirs are all white and therefore not in any danger. I'd love to see some crosstabs on this by race. (Actually, according to Gallup, 41% of nonwhites support the death penalty as such. That's a very high number, isn't it?) It's not the main reason why I oppose the death penalty, but I am aware that I might be wrongly convicted of a murder and then killed for it. Or, at least, I could be if I lived in a state with a death penalty, which thankfully New Jersey and Rhode Island both do not have. But I just don't get how people can have such a low opinion of this system and yet support it.