Virtually U.S. adults back up the death punishment for people convicted of murder, co-ordinate to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey. At the same time, majorities believe the decease penalization is not practical in a racially neutral way, does not deter people from committing serious crimes and does not have enough safeguards to prevent an innocent person from being executed.

Use of the death penalty has gradually declined in the United states in contempo decades. A growing number of states have abolished it, and death sentences and executions have go less common. Merely the story is not ane of continuous decline across all levels of government. While state-level executions accept decreased, the federal government put more prisoners to expiry nether President Donald Trump than at any point since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital penalization in 1976.

Every bit debates over the capital punishment proceed in the U.S., here's a closer wait at public opinion on the issue, besides every bit cardinal facts nigh the nation's utilize of capital punishment.

This Pew Research Middle assay examines public opinion nigh the death sentence in the The states and explores how the nation has used capital punishment in recent decades.

The public opinion findings cited here are based primarily on a Pew Enquiry Heart survey of 5,109 U.S. adults, conducted from April 5 to 11, 2021. Everyone who took part in the survey is a fellow member of the Center's American Trends Console (ATP), an online survey console that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.Southward. adults have a run a risk of selection. The survey is weighted to exist representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan amalgamation, education and other categories. Read more than about the ATP's methodology. Here are the questions used from this survey, along with responses, and its methodology.

Findings about the administration of the death penalty – including the number of states with and without capital letter punishment, the annual number of death sentences and executions, the demographics of those on death row and the average amount of fourth dimension spent on death row – come from the Death Penalty Information Center and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Six-in-ten U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor the death punishment for bedevilled murderers, according to the April 2021 survey. A similar share (64%) say the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a law-breaking like murder.

A bar chart showing that the majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but nearly eight-in-ten see 'some risk' of executing the innocent

Support for death penalty is strongly associated with the view that information technology is morally justified in certain cases. 9-in-x of those who favor the capital punishment say information technology is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder; only a quarter of those who oppose capital punishment see it as morally justified.

A bulk of Americans take concerns near the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime. More than than one-half of U.South. adults (56%) say Blackness people are more than likely than White people to be sentenced to expiry for committing like crimes. About 6-in-ten (63%) say the death sentence does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and nearly eight-in-x (78%) say at that place is some adventure that an innocent person will be executed.

Opinions about the capital punishment vary by party, educational activity and race and ethnicity. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to favor the death penalty for bedevilled murderers (77% vs. 46%). Those with less formal didactics are as well more likely to back up information technology: Around two-thirds of those with a loftier school diploma or less (68%) favor the death penalty, compared with 63% of those with some college instruction, 49% of those with a bachelor's degree and 44% of those with a postgraduate degree. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) support the expiry penalty, merely Black adults are evenly divided, with 49% in favor and 49% opposed.

Views of the death penalty differ by religious amalgamation. Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U.S. (66%) favor capital punishment, though support is much higher amid White evangelical Protestants (75%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (73%) than it is amidst Black Protestants (l%). Around six-in-x Catholics (58%) besides back up death sentence, a figure that includes 61% of Hispanic Catholics and 56% of White Catholics.

Atheists oppose the death penalty about as strongly as Protestants favor it

Opposition to the expiry penalisation too varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Effectually 2-thirds of atheists (65%) oppose it, as do more one-half of agnostics (57%). Among those who say their religion is "nothing in particular," 63% back up death sentence.

Support for the death penalty is consistently college in online polls than in phone polls. Survey respondents sometimes give unlike answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Inquiry Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September 2019 and August 2020, Americans consistently expressed more support for the death penalty in a cocky-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer. This pattern was more than pronounced amid Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than amidst Republicans and GOP leaners, co-ordinate to an analysis of the survey results.

Telephone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalization. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Enquiry Middle between 1996 and 2020, the share of U.S. adults who favor the death penalty fell from 78% to 52%, while the share of Americans expressing opposition rose from 18% to 44%. Phone surveys conducted by Gallup constitute a similar decrease in support for capital punishment during this time bridge.

A bulk of states have the death penalty, but far fewer apply it regularly. Equally of July 2021, the death sentence is authorized past 27 states and the federal government – including the U.Southward. Section of Justice and the U.S. military – and prohibited in 23 states and the Commune of Columbia, according to the Death sentence Information Center. But even in many of the jurisdictions that qualify the death punishment, executions are rare: 13 of these states, forth with the U.Due south. armed services, oasis't carried out an execution in a decade or more. That includes three states – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – where governors have imposed formal moratoriums on executions.

A map showing that most states have the death penalty, but significantly fewer use it regularly

A growing number of states have washed away with the death penalty in recent years, either through legislation or a court ruling. Virginia, which has carried out more executions than any state except Texas since 1976, abolished death sentence in 2021. It followed Colorado (2020), New Hampshire (2019), Washington (2018), Delaware (2016), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2004).

Death sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades. There were ii,570 people on death row in the U.Southward. at the stop of 2019, down 29% from a peak of 3,601 at the end of 2000, according to the Agency of Justice Statistics (BJS). New expiry sentences accept also declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to expiry in 2019, far beneath the more 320 who received death sentences each year between 1994 and 1996. In recent years, prosecutors in some U.S. cities – including Orlando and Philadelphia – have vowed not to seek the death penalization, citing concerns over its application.

Nearly all (98%) of the people who were on death row at the finish of 2019 were men. Both the hateful and median age of the nation's decease row population was 51. Black prisoners accounted for 41% of expiry row inmates, far higher than their xiii% share of the nation's developed population that yr. White prisoners accounted for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population. (For both Black and White Americans, these figures include those who identify equally Hispanic. Overall, about 15% of death row prisoners in 2019 identified every bit Hispanic, according to BJS.)

A line graph showing that death sentences, executions have trended downward in U.S. since late 1990s

Annual executions are far below their peak level. Nationally, 17 people were put to decease in 2020, the fewest since 1991 and far beneath the modern height of 98 in 1999, according to BJS and the Death Penalization Information Middle. The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted legal proceedings in much of the country in 2020, causing some executions to exist postponed.

Even as the overall number of executions in the U.S. roughshod to a 29-year depression in 2020, the federal regime ramped up its apply of the death punishment. The Trump assistants executed x prisoners in 2020 and another three in January 2021; prior to 2020, the federal government had carried out a total of iii executions since 1976.

The Biden administration has taken a different approach from its predecessor. In July 2021, Attorney Full general Merrick Garland ordered a halt in federal executions while the Justice Section reviews its policies and procedures.

A line graph showing that prisoners executed in 2019 spent an average of 22 years on death row

The boilerplate time betwixt sentencing and execution in the U.S. has increased sharply since the 1980s. In 1984, the average time betwixt sentencing and execution was 74 months, or a little over six years, according to BJS. By 2019, that figure had more than tripled to 264 months, or 22 years. The average prisoner awaiting execution at the end of 2019, meanwhile, had spent nearly 19 years on decease row.

A variety of factors explicate the increase in time spent on decease row, including lengthy legal appeals by those sentenced to expiry and challenges to the way states and the federal government carry out executions, including the drugs used in lethal injections. In California, more than death row inmates accept died from natural causes or suicide than from executions since 1978, according to the state's Section of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Annotation: This is an update to a postal service originally published May 28, 2015.