Public support for the death penalty is at its lowest level since the Supreme Court suspended capital punishment in 1972.
A Pew Research poll published late last month revealed that only 49 percent of Americans now favor executing murderers, a seven-point decline from March 2015.
Those poll numbers may reflect growing public concern about botched executions, the high costs of operating death rows, and the suspicion that states may have executed innocent people.
The polls have lifted the hopes of death penalty abolitionists as more states move away from executions either in policy or in practice and as execution rates keep falling.
T hat momentum, however, is about to run smack dab into four ballot measures in three states that will test the popular mood and perhaps shape the national debate over capital punishment into 2017 and beyond.
In Nebraska, the issue pits the Republican governor against a bipartisan majority in the legislature. Citing the cost of housing inmates on death row through years of appeals, along with a lack of deterrent effect, a coalition of lawmakers last year repealed the death penalty over the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts. ..
Read more at:
http://www.businessinsider.com/states-voting-on-death-penalty-election-2016-10
