Public Opinion
The Field Research Corporation found in February 2004 that when asked how they personally felt about capital punishment, 68% supported it and 31% opposed it (6% offered no opinion). This was a fall from 72% two years previous, and a rise from 63% in 2000. The 2004 poll was asked about the time that Kevin Cooper had his execution stayed hours before his scheduled death after 20 years on Death Row.
When asked if they thought the death penalty generally fair and free of error in California, 58% agreed and 32% disagreed (11% offered no opinion). When the results were broken down along ethnicity, of the people who identified themselves as African American, 57% disagreed that the death penalty was fair and free of error.
A poll from March 2012 that found that "61% of registered voters from the state of California say they would vote to keep the death penalty, should a death penalty initiative appear on the November 2012 ballot" and an August 2012 poll which found that "support for Prop 34, which would repeal California's death penalty, fell from 45.5% to 35.9%."
Polling as recent as September, 2012 shows that 55% of all adults and 50% of likely voters prefer life in prison without the possibility of parole over the death penalty when given the choice.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In California
Famous quotes containing the words public opinion, public and/or opinion:
“Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern—can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
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—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)