Capital Punishment Preferences for Special Offender Populations

• NCJ Number: 203565
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 31 Issue: 6 Dated: November/December 2003 Pages: 553-565
• Author(s): Denise Paquette Boots; John K. Cochran; Kathleen M. Heide
• Editor(s): Kent B. Joscelyn
• Date Published: November 2003
• Length: 13 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined capital punishment preferences for special offender populations and whether existing Supreme Court rulings were consistent with public sentiment.

Abstract

The application of the death penalty continues to draw attention and controversy in the media and legislative statehouses nationwide, and in particular, the execution of special offender groups. Utilizing a factorial survey methodology, this study attempted to measure the public’s capital punishment preferences for special offender populations which include: juveniles, the mentally incompetent, and the mentally retarded offenders. The data for the study were obtained from a survey administered to jury pools in Hillsborough County, FL in 2000. There was a response rate of 80 percent with 697 completed and usable surveys out of 872. A quasi-experimental approach or the factorial survey design was used. The study employed two multidimensional factorial vignettes to gauge the public’s level of capital punishment preference for various special offender groups. The public’s level of capital punishment preference was considerably lower than recent general polls regarding support for capital punishment would suggest. The results showed that the respondents, drawn from a jury pool, carefully weighed the offender and offense characteristics presented in the factorial vignettes, with the two extremes on a “death-worthiness” continuum receiving vastly different sentencing recommendations. The study also studied the degree of societal consensus in the public’s capital punishment preferences across several major sociodemographic categories with the results indicating that males, those less educated, political conservatives, southerners, and violent crime victims were statistically more likely to prefer capital punishment. Over all, these data indicate that results from generalized polling strategies might drastically overestimate the public’s inclination to recommend the death penalty. Appendix and references