The enduring myths about the death penalty in America are that the practice is supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, that Blacks strongly oppose the punishment and, in contrast, Whites support it, and that the death penalty is a highly partisan issue.
A new Pew Research Center study produced some surprising data on those questions, data that is relevant in death penalty states like Mississippi.
Pew researchers found that 66% of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder while 32% oppose it. In the same survey, 59% of respondents said the death penalty “does not deter people from committing serious crimes,” while 39% believed that the death penalty is a crime deterrent.
The research indicated that support for the death penalty is 6% higher than it was five years ago. The Pew Research Center surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults between July 6 – 12 of this year.
In the survey, Pew reported that 73% of respondents say there is some risk an innocent person would be executed, while only 25 % believed there are adequate safeguards to prevent that from happening.
For Mississippi, with the nation’s highest percentage Black population, it is notable that 49% of those surveyed said: “Blacks are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for committing similar crimes, but 48% say this is not the case.”
The partisan split shows that 84% of Republicans and voters who lean Republican support the death penalty. In comparison, 51% of Democrats and those who lean Democrat support the punishment, and 48% oppose the practice.
The widest ideological chasm on the death penalty came over questions of fairness. Some 77% of Republicans said, “White and Black people are equally likely to be sentenced to death for similar crimes,” while only 23% of Democrats shared that view.
Mississippi currently has 35 inmates on Death Row, 34 men and one woman. Of those inmates, 23 (65.5%) are Black, 10 (28.6%) are White, 1 (2.9%) is Hispanic, and 1 (2.9%) is Asian/Pacific Islander.
The last Mississippi Death Row inmate to be executed was Charles Ray Crawford on Oct. 15, 2025. Crawford was executed by lethal injection for the 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of Kristy Ray, 20, of Tippah County. Crawford had a prior rape conviction as well as other violent crimes.
The pace of executions in Mississippi has slowed due to the lengthy federal and state appeals process, post-conviction litigation, mental health and competency challenges, and legal disputes over execution methods and protocols.
Chemicals used in lethal injections have been particularly frequent targets of litigation and business protests to the point that several companies have stopped producing or selling the materials. State legislatures have in recent years broadened execution methods available to state officials as a means of bypassing chemical shortages.
Mississippi currently allows executions by lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, or firing squad.
There is also the very real question of racial and economic disparities. As I have written before, there are valid objections to the death penalty — the moral argument, the fairness argument, and the due process argument. As a journalist, I covered crime from the actual crime scenes to the courts to the execution chamber at Parchman — and the extreme outlier is seeing monied inmates who could afford private attorneys executed at the same rate as indigent inmates who relied on court-appointed counsel.
But the notion that in venues where the voters embrace use of the death penalty there is some magic execution method in which inmates are guaranteed not to experience pain is a fool’s errand. The death penalty is neither clean, easy, nor painless — it is the deliberate decision of the taxpayers to take the life of an individual as punishment for their crimes.
Death Row never was and never will be a place free from pain and a degree of chaos. That is the nature of the capital punishment beast. The only way to change that is to either get out of the capital punishment business or stop trying vainly to sanitize that process.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
25 comments:
Remember- Dead pediphiles don’t reoffend
Sid makes some good points. There is little nexus between the crime and the execution, which is at least 20 years. For life sentences, as a substitute for a death penalty, there is also the possibility of a governor commuting the sentence.
I too believe that the death penalty is rarely a deterrent, if at all.
Defending death penalty clients is a lucrative business.
The same applies to dead pedophiles
Lawyers skilled enough to defend those sentenced to death could make way more money doing other things. It pays. But it’s far from lucrative.
Tell me how much more sorrow and compassion you feel over any pain the condemned might feel than sorrow you feel over the pain, the agony, and the terror that the condemned’s victims go through.
Could it be effective to offer accelerated execution to Death Row inmates, monthly perhaps?
True, not here anyway. I was thinking about another state where the former state employed appellate attorneys receive a pension of $150,000-$200,000 when they retire, based on a salary of $200,000-$300,000/year while employed.
@9:07, which state? Surely you can name it.
For those who think a death sentence is not a deterrent please tell us how many who have been put to death commits anymore crimes. Of course the people who commit crimes will be against the death penalty and those who are victims of crimes will be for the death penalty.
We have to many people who have killed another person walking the streets, especially here in Ms.
Sure. California.
The death penalty is popular due to the heinousness of the crimes for which it applies.
The DP would be a great if they carried it out within a year. Of course nut cases gonna nut but I believe murder would go way down. It certainly needs to be applied to certain pedos.
The only choice is to abandon the death penalty or VAINLY attempt to remedy concerns that may or may not be relevant to whether the penalty should be imposed? By putting it that way, Salter is actually asserting that we should no longer impose death sentences. Why would a person attempt to correct a problem that can’t be corrected? There is, in fact, another course to take, one that Salter doesn’t mention. That would be to make a death sentence the only sentence for certain kinds of homicide. That might not cure potential issues when it comes to prosecutorial decisions about what form of homicide to prosecute, but it certainly would cure the problems of Salter mentions when it comes to trial court decisions about whether to impose the penalty. It would take the federal Supreme Court to overrule its death penalty decisions—decisions that have no basis in the actual constitution— to make it possible to take this route, but it would go a way to ease the concerns of those who think potential disparity is more important to deal with than dealing with a killer.
The death penalty at least gives these proven sinners a date by which they must come to Jesus or not.
Judicial Branch of California | Appellate Courts Salary Listings
to 8;44.....'lucrative business''?...............what have you been smoking?
Start executing and make prison a living hell and not a vacation and there’s your deterrent, nothing but pure fear. Never listen to a bleeding heart they’re how we got into this situation.
Once again, Wordy Sid nails the word count at just over 650, which I assume is his contractual obligation? Or is it random that every column is right at 670 words?
The death penalty is a proven and indisputable direct deterrent to murder. It is also a secondary deterrent, albeit disputable, to murder. We know that if a murderer is executed that person can never murder again. That is a primary deterrent and it is infallible. Also, the threat of capital punishment is arguably a secondary deterrent for would-be murderers. Some death penalty opponents disagree, but it has to be on the minds of perps when they are considering taking the life of another person, especially during a robbery or other crime.
That describes Parchman.
I'd be careful for rooting for the government to have MORE POWER to take a life faster. In no way should their incarceration be a picnic, but increasing the speed at which we legally kill people is not something I'd want to bestow on anyone, regardless of how heinous the crime.
I'm more comfortable with a society that eats the price of locking away these monsters as the cost of safety. Not a society that is vengeful or worse, a society that kills to save cost or effort.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
It's funny that you think a person out of their mind enough to kill is weighing the pros and cons in their head at the moment.
You are trying to attach rational thought to the irrational.
Rational people don't murder.
Sure wish the "law and order" crowd could figure out how badly they're being played and act accordingly.
The statistics also show a great racial disparity in persons who have been convicted of a felony sent to prison and later exonerated. Mostly Black. Black people are well aware of it and more often oppose the death penalty which is final. It's just a matter of bad history.
I remember the day there was a loud argument over whether a Dodge convertible or a Chevy El-Camino would transport Santa in the Iuka Christmas parade. Steve Holland wrote an opinion piece.
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