Most U.S. adults support the death sentence for people convicted of murder, according to an April 2021 Pew Enquiry Center survey. At the same time, majorities believe the decease penalty is not applied in a racially neutral mode, does not deter people from committing serious crimes and does not have enough safeguards to foreclose an innocent person from being executed.

Use of the death sentence has gradually declined in the United States in recent decades. A growing number of states have abolished it, and death sentences and executions take get less common. But the story is not one of continuous decline across all levels of authorities. While state-level executions have decreased, the federal government put more prisoners to death under President Donald Trump than at whatever indicate since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital letter punishment in 1976.

Every bit debates over the death penalty proceed in the U.Due south., here's a closer expect at public opinion on the issue, as well as cardinal facts about the nation'due south use of capital punishment.

This Pew Inquiry Center assay examines public stance nearly the death penalty in the United States and explores how the nation has used death penalty in recent decades.

The public opinion findings cited here are based primarily on a Pew Enquiry Centre survey of v,109 U.S. adults, conducted from April 5 to eleven, 2021. Everyone who took part in the survey is a fellow member of the Center'due south American Trends Console (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way near all U.S. adults take a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more most the ATP's methodology. Hither are the questions used from this survey, forth with responses, and its methodology.

Findings about the administration of the expiry penalty – including the number of states with and without capital punishment, the annual number of death sentences and executions, the demographics of those on death row and the boilerplate corporeality of time spent on death row – come from the Expiry Penalty Data Eye and the Agency of Justice Statistics.

Six-in-10 U.Southward. adults strongly or somewhat favor the death sentence for convicted murderers, according to the Apr 2021 survey. A similar share (64%) say the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a offense similar 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 capital penalty is strongly associated with the view that information technology is morally justified in certain cases. Ix-in-10 of those who favor the death penalty say it is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder; just a quarter of those who oppose capital penalisation see it as morally justified.

A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the expiry penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious offense. More than half of U.S. adults (56%) say Blackness people are more than likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes. Virtually six-in-ten (63%) say the death punishment does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and nearly eight-in-10 (78%) say at that place is some risk that an innocent person will be executed.

Opinions about the death penalty vary by party, education and race and ethnicity. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more than probable than Democrats and Democratic leaners to favor the death punishment for convicted murderers (77% vs. 46%). Those with less formal instruction are likewise more likely to support it: Effectually two-thirds of those with a high schoolhouse diploma or less (68%) favor the death penalty, compared with 63% of those with some higher education, 49% of those with a bachelor'south caste and 44% of those with a postgraduate degree. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) back up the capital punishment, simply Black adults are evenly divided, with 49% in favor and 49% opposed.

Views of the decease penalty differ by religious amalgamation. Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U.S. (66%) favor death penalty, though support is much higher among White evangelical Protestants (75%) and White not-evangelical Protestants (73%) than it is among Blackness Protestants (fifty%). Around 6-in-ten Catholics (58%) as well back up capital punishment, 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 punishment likewise varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Around two-thirds of atheists (65%) oppose information technology, as do more than half of agnostics (57%). Amidst those who say their religion is "nix in particular," 63% support capital punishment.

Support for the death penalization is consistently higher in online polls than in phone polls. Survey respondents sometimes give different answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Research Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September 2019 and August 2020, Americans consistently expressed more support for the death punishment in a cocky-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer. This blueprint was more pronounced amongst Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than among Republicans and GOP leaners, according to an analysis of the survey results.

Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public back up for the death penalty. In telephone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between 1996 and 2020, the share of U.South. adults who favor the expiry penalty fell from 78% to 52%, while the share of Americans expressing opposition rose from 18% to 44%. Phone surveys conducted by Gallup found a similar subtract in support for upper-case letter penalty during this time span.

A majority of states have the decease penalization, but far fewer utilize it regularly. As of July 2021, the death penalization is authorized by 27 states and the federal authorities – including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. war machine – and prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Capital punishment Information Center. Just even in many of the jurisdictions that qualify the death sentence, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.Due south. military machine, haven't carried out an execution in a decade or more. That includes iii 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 take done abroad with the capital punishment 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).

Expiry sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades. There were 2,570 people on death row in the U.S. at the cease of 2019, down 29% from a peak of 3,601 at the end of 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). New death sentences have as well declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to death in 2019, far below the more 320 who received death sentences each year betwixt 1994 and 1996. In recent years, prosecutors in some U.S. cities – including Orlando and Philadelphia – accept vowed non to seek the death penalty, citing concerns over its application.

About all (98%) of the people who were on death row at the stop of 2019 were men. Both the mean and median age of the nation's death row population was 51. Black prisoners accounted for 41% of decease row inmates, far higher than their 13% share of the nation'due south developed population that year. White prisoners accounted for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population. (For both Blackness and White Americans, these figures include those who identify every bit Hispanic. Overall, almost 15% of death row prisoners in 2019 identified as 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 expiry in 2020, the fewest since 1991 and far below the modern tiptop of 98 in 1999, according to BJS and the Death penalty Information Middle. The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted legal proceedings in much of the country in 2020, causing some executions to be postponed.

Fifty-fifty as the overall number of executions in the U.S. cruel to a 29-twelvemonth low in 2020, the federal authorities ramped up its utilise of the death sentence. The Trump administration executed 10 prisoners in 2020 and another three in January 2021; prior to 2020, the federal regime had carried out a total of three executions since 1976.

The Biden administration has taken a unlike approach from its predecessor. In July 2021, Attorney 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 average time between 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 6 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 terminate of 2019, meanwhile, had spent nearly 19 years on expiry row.

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

Note: This is an update to a post originally published May 28, 2015.