Most U.S. adults support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to an April 2021 Pew Research Middle survey. At the same fourth dimension, majorities believe the capital punishment is non practical in a racially neutral mode, does not deter people from committing serious crimes and does non accept enough safeguards to prevent an innocent person from being executed.

Use of the death punishment has gradually declined in the United States in contempo decades. A growing number of states have abolished it, and death sentences and executions take go less common. But the story is non one of continuous decline across all levels of regime. While state-level executions take decreased, the federal authorities put more than prisoners to death under President Donald Trump than at whatsoever bespeak since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

As debates over the death penalty continue in the U.S., here's a closer look at public stance on the event, likewise as key facts about the nation's use of death penalty.

This Pew Enquiry Center analysis examines public opinion about the death sentence in the United States and explores how the nation has used capital punishment in recent decades.

The public stance findings cited here are based primarily on a Pew Research Middle survey of v,109 U.Southward. adults, conducted from Apr 5 to 11, 2021. Everyone who took office in the survey is a member of the Center's American Trends Console (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way about all U.South. adults have a chance of option. The survey is weighted to exist representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP'due south methodology. Here are the questions used from this survey, along with responses, and its methodology.

Findings near the administration of the decease penalty – including the number of states with and without capital penalty, 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 Punishment Information Center and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Six-in-ten U.South. adults strongly or somewhat favor the expiry penalty for convicted murderers, according to the April 2021 survey. A similar share (64%) say the expiry punishment is morally justified when someone commits a crime 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

Back up for upper-case letter punishment is strongly associated with the view that information technology is morally justified in certain cases. 9-in-ten of those who favor the death punishment say information technology is morally justified when someone commits a crime similar murder; merely a quarter of those who oppose capital punishment meet it as morally justified.

A bulk of Americans take concerns about the fairness of the capital punishment and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious law-breaking. More than half of U.South. adults (56%) say Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to decease for committing similar crimes. Almost vi-in-ten (63%) say the death sentence does not deter people from committing serious crimes, and about viii-in-ten (78%) say there is some chance that an innocent person will exist executed.

Opinions about the death sentence vary by political 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 convicted murderers (77% vs. 46%). Those with less formal instruction are also more than likely to support it: Effectually 2-thirds of those with a high school diploma or less (68%) favor the death sentence, compared with 63% of those with some higher education, 49% of those with a bachelor's caste and 44% of those with a postgraduate degree. Majorities of White (63%), Asian (63%) and Hispanic adults (56%) back up the death sentence, simply Blackness adults are evenly divided, with 49% in favor and 49% opposed.

Views of the expiry penalty differ by religious affiliation. Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U.S. (66%) favor death sentence, though support is much college among White evangelical Protestants (75%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (73%) than information technology is among Blackness Protestants (50%). Around six-in-ten Catholics (58%) as well 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 decease penalty also varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Effectually two-thirds of atheists (65%) oppose it, every bit do more than than one-half of agnostics (57%). Among those who say their religion is "nothing in particular," 63% back up capital punishment.

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

Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalty. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between 1996 and 2020, the share of U.Southward. 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 found a like decrease in support for capital punishment during this time span.

A majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly. Equally of July 2021, the death punishment is authorized past 27 states and the federal government – including the U.South. Section of Justice and the U.S. military – and prohibited in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Capital punishment Information Heart. Merely fifty-fifty in many of the jurisdictions that authorize the death sentence, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.S. military, haven't carried out an execution in a decade or more. That includes iii states – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – where governors take 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 accept done away with the death penalty in recent years, either through legislation or a court ruling. Virginia, which has carried out more than executions than whatsoever state except Texas since 1976, abolished death sentence in 2021. Information technology followed Colorado (2020), New Hampshire (2019), Washington (2018), Delaware (2016), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New United mexican states (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2004).

Death sentences take steadily decreased in contempo decades. In that location were 2,570 people on expiry row in the U.Due south. at the end of 2019, downward 29% from a peak of 3,601 at the stop of 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). New death sentences have also declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to death in 2019, far below the more than 320 who received expiry sentences each yr betwixt 1994 and 1996. In recent years, prosecutors in some U.Southward. cities – including Orlando and Philadelphia – take vowed non to seek the death sentence, citing concerns over its application.

Most all (98%) of the people who were on expiry row at the end of 2019 were men. Both the mean and median historic period of the nation's death row population was 51. Black prisoners accounted for 41% of expiry row inmates, far higher than their xiii% share of the nation'southward adult population that yr. White prisoners deemed for 56%, compared with their 77% share of the adult population. (For both Blackness and White Americans, these figures include those who identify as Hispanic. Overall, about 15% of decease 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

Almanac executions are far below their pinnacle 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 sentence Information Eye. The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted legal proceedings in much of the land in 2020, causing some executions to be postponed.

Even as the overall number of executions in the U.S. fell to a 29-year low in 2020, the federal regime ramped up its use of the death penalty. The Trump administration executed 10 prisoners in 2020 and another three in January 2021; prior to 2020, the federal government 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 Department 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 between sentencing and execution was 74 months, or a little over vi years, according to BJS. By 2019, that effigy had more than tripled to 264 months, or 22 years. The boilerplate prisoner pending execution at the end of 2019, meanwhile, had spent nearly 19 years on death row.

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

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