The Changing Attitude Towards the Death Penalty in the US

Pre-University Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Law - Penology, grade: 1, , language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to describe to what extend the public opinion about capital punishment in the United States has changed and to outline the reasons for that. Based on the hypothesis that support has generally dropped, this paper provides an overview why and when support slowly started to decrease. The examinations are limited to approximately the last twenty-five years, and the three main chapters are structured according to the time periods of the then-ruling presidents. They respectively comprise information about the president’s death penalty policy, the changes in law, some incidents that have occurred, as well as the development in people’s attitude. Consequently, it can be concluded that more and more Americans oppose the death penalty as the system’s fallibility and inefficiency are becoming obvious. However, while moral positions have not changed significantly, the impossible flawlessness and expensive application of the death penalty triggered many shifts in opinion.