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A Pew Research Center survey found that 65% of American Catholics favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, with 28% who “strongly” favor it.
The research showed that support for the death penalty among U.S. adults is 6 percentage points higher than it was in April 2021, and it is about equal to where it was in August 2020 (65%).
It found that about two-thirds of all Americans (66%) favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder.
Pew surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults from July 6–12. Participants were all members of Pew’s American Trends Panel, which is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The margin of sampling error for the sample of respondents was plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
The report, “Most Americans Favor the Death Penalty for Those Convicted of Murder,” found that 32% of Americans oppose the death penalty for people convicted of murder, 13% of whom reported they “strongly oppose” it.
While most Catholics favor it, 34% said they oppose it, with 15% who “strongly oppose” it.
When asked in the context of morality, 68% of all respondents said they see the death penalty as morally justified for those who have committed murder, while 28% believe it is morally wrong.
Of Catholics, 64% believe the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits murder, and 32% said it is morally wrong.
A 59% majority of all Americans said the death penalty is not a crime deterrent, while 39% said that it is. A majority of Americans (73%) also said there is some risk that an innocent person could be put to death, but a quarter said that there are safeguards in place to prevent this.
Since the start of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly spoken out in strong opposition of the death penalty.
“I condemn capital punishment. I believe that human life is to be respected and that all people — from conception to natural [death] — their lives should be respected and protected,” the pope said in April.
His remarks against the death penalty echo a relatively new magisterial teaching in the Catholic Church, which was promulgated by Pope Francis in 2018. The Church teaches that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267).
Views differ by political party, age, and education
The poll showed partisan divides on the death penalty persist among U.S. adults.
Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party overwhelmingly support the death penalty with 84% in favor, including 47% who “strongly favor” it. Democrats and Democratic leaners were about split between support (51%) and opposition (48%).
Most Republicans (85%) also said the death penalty is morally justified for a crime like murder, while Democrats are more split on the issue with 55% who believe it is morally justified and 42% who do not.
Republicans and Democrats were most divided over whether the death penalty is fairly applied to different races.
Most Republicans (77%), said white and Black people are equally likely to be sentenced to the death penalty for similar crimes, and only 23% of Democrats reported the same.
The report also noted that younger adults are slightly less supportive of the death penalty than older adults. Of adults ages 18 to 29, 58% said it is morally wrong, compared with 47% of those 65 and older.
Adults with a college degree, especially those with a postgraduate degree, are also slightly less likely than those with a high school degree or only some college education to favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder.
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Christ equated hate with murder and he told us that the manner by which we judge all others is the manner by which we, too, shall be judged.
If taking the life of another during the commission of a violent crime or act is wrong to such a degree that the one so doing should forfeit his or her life, the taking of a person’s life in a state sponsored act of murder is also a crime as in both cases, a life is taken, a life in ended.
Such a “punishment” destroys all hope and serves to extinguish love and love is the nature and being of God.
Taking the life from someone convicted of murder does not return life to the person or persons whom he or she may have killed. Violence never atones for violence and violence is always categorically and undeniably wrong.
We are told in the Letters of John and James that those who carry hate within their hearts do not have God within them. Please, consider that as you opine that murder deserves murder and that such is supposedly “justice”.
I must respectfully reject the premises of your position, which strike me as a misrepresentation of the principle at hand. To affirm the justice of capital punishment for those who commit egregious, life-severing wrongs is not to act out of malice or “hatred.” Rather, it stems from a profound love for the political community and a commitment to preserving the order of justice.
When a citizen intentionally and maliciously deprives another of life, they cross an ontological line from which human justice cannot return them; they have committed a rupture that no earthly act can restore. I propose that to compel society to sustain such an individual for a lifetime at immense material and moral cost fails to satisfy the demands of strict retributive justice. Where the civil authority possesses the rightful power to execute sentences, justice demands that such judgment be rendered and carried out with promptness, rather than delayed indefinitely as in our present apparatus.
Scriptural revelation confirms that divine justice operates beyond human sentimentality. Consider the account of the Prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 2:23–25, where those who held the prophet of God in contempt were swiftly met with divine retribution. Scripture demonstrates that while Almighty God holds the life of the innocent in absolute sacredness, He also ordains that persistent, grave evil invites temporal judgment even unto death. Indeed, throughout the Old Covenant, the Lord of Hosts explicitly commanded legitimate state authority in the execution of righteous judgment against hostile and depraved nations. God’s ultimate authority over human life includes the delegation of the sword to the civil magistrate (Romans 13:4) to repress evil, protect the innocent, and uphold the common good.
Violence is not always immoral. The Bible condoned capital punishment. The Catholic Church has doctrinally upheld the legitimacy of capital punishment by the state in principle while demurring about its application in some circumstances.
Administering the just and appropriate penalty for murder within the bounds of the law has nothing to do with hatred. Your “argument” is a dishonest straw man.
Well said
Is the act of women to abort their child an act of hate? It is killing, is it not?
the pressuring by the male on her as well
WBH III writes “Such a “punishment” [the death penalty] destroys all hope and serves to extinguish love and love is the nature and being of God”.
Jesus was Himself subjected to “Such a punishment”. It did NOT “destroy all hope”, in fact His sacrifice is the prime source of our Hope! We reenact it in our Masses every day. It did NOT “serve to extinguish love”, in fact the opposite. It is a testimony to his love of the Father who hours before His crucifixion denied His request to abolish His imminent death penalty. It is also a testimony of His love for us as He did that for US!
Finally, “…love is the nature and being of God…”. His LOVE was proven for all time by NOT declaring the Death Penalty anathema.
Words matter!!!
I agree. That quote about hope is inane. Hope is infused into our hearts at Baptism. How many murderers on death row are baptized to believe and know the Hope of Eternal Life?
In all justice, God’s Love is for man to return to God.
Rather than lecture us on a late pope’s inadmissible teaching, the USCCB bishops could focus on God by teaching God’s Hope and Love to the ignorant. The USCCB attempt to teach us of their own inadmissible belief is like planting seed in uranium-enriched soil made so by Pope Francis.
Visits to the ‘imprisoned’ could save a soul. Even a bishop’s.
Who are you accusing of hate and on what basis, unless your presumptions are an act of hate?
How is “all hope” destroyed exactly? On what basis do you presume to know and by what means are the circumstances of repentance impossible?
Most Americans also favor a woman’s “right” to abortion. Virtue is not found in a plurality of agreement.
True Boomer, but virtue is also not found in virtue signaling, something you seem to be quite fond of.
True Boomer, but virtue is also not found in virtue signaling, which you seem to be quite fond of.
One can only signal the virtue they posses.
Gerard: then you are completely oblivious to the woke virtue signaling by those whose personal lives are without virtue. You’re living in a fantasied delusional zone. But most of us have guessed that already.
Are you a Christian? Your words would say otherwise.
Gerard: you wouldn’t know a Christian if you were gobsmacked across the head by one.
Wrong. There are plenty of people that attempt to portray virtues they don’t possess, often because they imagine they possess them.
So Gerard, there is no such thing as a denial of sin and seeking to compensate by calling good evil and evil good?
Obviously concensus does not determine truth, a fact that contradicts your previous posted positions where you define freedom with conformity to the prejudices of elitists, but there are objective distinctions between moral protections of society and the slaughter of the innocent.
The Church teaches that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2267).
Abortion is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the [at least three] persons involved in the act. One mom, one dad (knowing and active or unknowing yet complicit in the procreative act), one baby, and one medical practitioner licensed to wield a knife, a pen and a prescription pad, or one suction device.
The number of people complicit in carrying out the death penalty: One criminal plus one executing-representative of the state. One criminal. One.
We are all complicit in voting for and therefore cooperating with murder in abortion and capital punishment .
Capital punishment is not murder, Boomer, and it’s inappropriate, but not surprising, for you to assert that. Was God committing murder when He judged different people in the Old Testament? Are you standing in judgment of God’s prerogative?
Explain how the self-defense of capital punishment, which Catholic doctrine allows, can be construed as “murder,” in spite of the non-Catholic beliefs of recent popes
Inadmissible means nothing. It’s Jesuit for “I don’t like it” and I can’t just declare it wrong, because that would conflict with Church history.
Francis had the reverse Midas Touch. Everything he touched was turned to lead, and not one of the stable isotopes (Pb 206-208), either.
It’s been a while since Chem 101, so I had to research lead’s unstable isotopes. “205 Pb – synthetic; ε decay to 205 Tl, half-life ~17 Myr.” I don’t know what T1 means, but Myr signifies Million years. Good luck to the future church in diminishing the remains of Francis’ fingers.
Lead 206 -208 are the stable isotopes. The others are radioactive, so worse.
205 Tl is Tellurium 205, the isotope that Pb-205 decays into, via electron capture. A 17 million year half life is pretty long, and all you get from it are low-energy X-rays, so I suspect Lead 205 is more a problem because of lead poisoning, then because it is radioactive.
But I totally agree on “inadmissable” being Jesuit for “I don’t like it”. The CCC is not infallible, and what it says must restate Scripture, Tradition, and past Magisterium to have authority.
It might be nothing relative to ambient background radiation, but I’d still rather not deal with it. I have a weakness for bananas and I prefer my radioactivity in the form of Potassium 40.
In his letter to the U.S. Bishops made public in 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger accurately and succinctly explained 2,000-year-old Catholic teaching:
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion…There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about…applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion…”
No amount of verbal gymnastics like Francis’ declaring the death penalty “inadmissible” will change this fact.
As The Pitchfork Rebel says so well: “Inadmissible means nothing. It’s Jesuit for ‘I don’t like it’ and I can’t just declare it wrong, because that would conflict with Church history.”
Thanks.
Pas moi. But I get the need to take crime more seriously. If we didn’t turn dangerous criminals back out on the streets to reoffend, there might be less support for capital punishment. A life sentence should mean life.
Exactly, mrscracker! We have judges releasing CONVICTED murderers back onto the streets only to murder again.
Deacon . With all due respect: according to AI ( for what it’s worth) statistics repeatedly show that those convicted of murder who are released are the lowest reoffending of all other groups of criminals released. Apparently common belief on this matter is not backed up by statistics.
So, AI statistics aside 🙄, would you be comfortable if a convicted murderer moved in next door to you, or next door to where your grandchildren live? How wiling are you to put your money where your mouth is?
A convicted murderer, sentenced to confinement at a New Hampshire mental institution, simply walked away. With lax security and minimal restriction, the man has never been seen or heard from since his escape in 1974.
https://www.fosters.com/story/news/local/2008/03/10/decades-after-killer-s-escape/52492577007/
Close to half of all homicides in the US go unsolved. Since 2000, the number of never-caught, never-convicted murderers is estimated to be 250,000. (opencrime.us)
Now adjust for age at release.
who pays for that though?
Surely the Group 9 report allows Catholics to believe capital punishment is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with murderers. True, I don’t think capital punishment is directly addressed in said document, but the document does make clear that things like homosexual relationships are legit even though the “official” teaching of the Church says they aren’t, so, by extention I think a case could be made that C.P. is also acceptable
We have cafeteria Catholics on both sides of the aisle, and this is Protestantism! 😓
Or prudential judgment.
Catholics all knew that the state could execute certain criminals for certain crimes. Why? Because the Bible and the Church have always taught this.
It seems we have a problem here. Exactly what IS “Catholic teaching” :Is it what the Church teaches? What and who makes Church teaching? Can Church teaching be changed or modified? If so by whom and how and when? We have a big problem here ; we have cafeteria Catholics on both sides of the aisle! 🥵
Heretics and apostates used to be burned at the stake, too. Things change.
I don’t know how others feel, but if I don’t even trust the state with my children’s education or with my tax dollars why would I trust them with the power of life and death? No thank you.
We do need to keep dangerous people locked up and serve their full sentences though. No early release.
The death penalty can be argued both ways. That said, executions should be humane. Some recent botched executions are rather disturbing, if you are going to do them, do them right.
firing squad, like on the one on Treasure on the Sierra Madre when the bandits jumped Bogart and stole his burros after killing him; they even let them dig their own graves and allow the leader to retrieve his sombrero when the wind blew it off, moments before the shots rang out. Gets the job done, right or wrong, I guess.
Wasn’t that a great movie?
I believe the kid who sold the lottery tickets later was Beretta on the 70s police show?
William, I agree. I have friends who have suffered this torture.
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
How many botched executions are acceptable?
How many victims of recidivism are acceptable?
I personally do not agree with capital punishment but would NOT say that it was not within the purview of legitmately-elected government to punish capital crimes this way. I prefer to see life imprisonment and, in the case of premeditated and planned murder, no chance of parole. I do think, though, that judges who release those with sentences of life imprisonment for capital crimes and go on to commit another capital crime ought to themselves be sent to the electric chair. These judges are acting in ways beyond their jurisdiction as judges.
Thank you Deacon Edward. I’m having similar thoughts. Maybe not actually sending judges to execution but at least holding our judicial and criminal justice system more accountable.
Plea bargains are another way that alliw offenders to get back on the streets faster.
The serial killer I met at work had plea bargained his first murder charge that way and he then went on to kill perhaps a dozen more women afterwards.
“I prefer to see life imprisonment”
There’s already a movement to abolish that.
We have a big problem here: What IS Catholic teaching and must Catholics believe and support it? What is the penalty if we don’t? It seems that we have “cafeteria Catholics on both sides of the aisle! 🥵
In the one Gospel, the one robber/criminal told the other one to quit jeering Jesus, as he had done nothing wrong, but they both were getting what they deserved.
I really dislike capital punishment. But I have, over the now rather long span of my life, concluded that there are cases in which it is necessary for the protection of the rest of us and to satisfy the need for retributive justice. It is a punishment to be meted out sparingly and with as much wisdom and prudence as we humans can muster, but that doesn’t make it unnecessary.
Michael B in answer to William B addresses much of what I would say, but I do have a couple of other comments.
Everyone may not have the ability to research almost two thousand years of Church history and theology on the death penalty, but before accusing the state of murder one should at least do a little research. I would hope that bishops would have done so, but by their statements they either have not, or choose to ignore Church history on the subject.
Regarding botched executions, that did not happen with hanging, gas chamber and electric chair. That came about due to opponents of the death penalty advocating for methods that would just put the person to sleep permanently.
As to allowing the convict time to repent, C. S Lewis long ago wrote an essay in which he said he was unaware of any studies that would show that having 30 years in prison vs. 30 days waiting to be hung was more likely to bring about repentance.
In the past lack of prisons was never the reason for the death penalty. It was because the DP was the appropriate penalty for the crime, and that is retribution, not vengeance, as so many bishops term it.
The Catechism refers to an increased understanding of human dignity. Really? In this country over one million unborn babies murdered every year. We now have ten states with euthanasia laws. We have been mutilating people, including the young, for years supposedly changing their gender. Massachusetts just passed and signed into law legalizing killing the unborn up to the day of birth, and the state’s bishops only issued a rather perfunctory written objection two days before the senate vote.
Much more could be said, but I will leave it go at this.
I think it’s somewhere in the vicinity of 90% of men in prison who were sexually abused as children.
Employing the death penalty or life imprisonment with no parole, early release, or compassionate release to sexual abusers might go further toward preventing murders then applying the same penalty to murderers. Which does not mean that murderers shouldn’t be liable to those punishments where warranted.
I don’t know about gas chambers, but botched executions have occurred with hangings and electric chair, and also guillotines. I don’t think that is sufficient to nix the idea. There’s nothing we can’t mess up, given enough time, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing.
“I condemn capital punishment. I believe that human life is to be respected and that all people — from conception to natural [death] — their lives should be respected and protected,” the pope said in April.
Well, Leo, respecting and protecting convicted criminals who chose not to respect and protect the lives of their innocent victims is not only hypocritical, it is profoundly unjust.
No criminal act removes your humanity. So the Holy Fsther is correct and you are not.
Well Boomer, humans are always humans, but engaging in criminal behavior makes you a criminal subject to the appropriate penalties defined by the law. They are not mutually exclusive, therefore you are incorrect, as usual.
Your callow reply is telling. I will explain it once more in simple terms that you may understand. No criminal act removes your stamp as a child of God. We must respect that no matter what you showed to your victims.