Deck 12: American Death Penalty Opinion

Question 1

According to the Gallup poll (Oct, 2015), approximately what percent of people in the United States support the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?

A) 46
B) 53
C) 61
D) 70
E) 82

Answer 1

C

Question 2

According to the Gallup polls, in what year did the highest percentage of people in the United States support the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?

A) 1985
B) 1989
C) 1994
D) 1999
E) none of the above

Answer 2

C

Question 3

According to the Gallup organization, in what year have the fewest people in the United States supported the death penalty?

A) 1936
B) 1953
C) 1966
D) 1977
E) none of the above

Answer 3

C

Question 4

In which of the following ways may strong public support contribute to the continued use of capital punishment?

A) It probably sways legislators to vote in favor of death penalty statutes (and against their repeal).
B) It likely influences some prosecutors to seek the death penalty for political rather than legal purposes in cases they might ordinarily plea bargain.
C) To retain their positions, some trial-court judges may feel pressured by strong public death penalty support to impose death sentences in cases in which a death sentence is inappropriate, or some appellate-court judges may uphold death sentences in cases in which they should not.
D) It might be used, at least indirectly, by justices of both state supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court as a measure of "evolving standards of decency" regarding what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in state constitutions and under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
E) all of the above

Question 5

According to a 1936 opinion poll on death penalty opinion in the United States, what percent of Americans were in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?

A) 44
B) 57
C) 61
D) 71
E) 86

Question 6

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, what year was perhaps the most significant single year affecting death penalty opinion in United States history?

A) 1937
B) 1966
C) 1994
D) 2000
E) 2010

Question 7

Which of the following conservative commentators has not criticized the death penalty?

A) Pat Robertson
B) Oliver North
C) Tom Osborne
D) George Will
E) all of the above have criticized the death penalty

Question 8

For which of the following demographic characteristics has differences between the opinions of death penalty proponents and opponents been greatest (on average)?

A) sex
B) race
C) income or SES
D) age
E) education

Question 9

Which of the following is not a characteristic of black proponents of the death penalty?

A) male
B) married
C) politically conservative
D) low incomes
E) all of the above are characteristics of black proponents

Question 10

Which of the following is not a characteristic of black proponents of the death penalty?

A) come from middle and upper class backgrounds
B) live in urban areas and the South
C) are not afraid of crime
D) have never been arrested
E) all of the above are characteristics of black proponents

Question 11

Which of the following characteristics showed the greatest variation in the 2006 Gallup death penalty poll?

A) race
B) sex
C) age
D) ideology
E) none of the above

Question 12

According to Grasmik, Cochran, Bursik, and Kimpel which religious group had the highest level of support for the death penalty?

A) Catholics
B) Evangelical Protestants
C) Moderate Protestants
D) Those who expressed no religious preference
E) None

Question 13

Which of the following Supreme Court Justices believed that, given information about the death penalty, "the great mass of citizens would conclude . . . that the death penalty is immoral and therefore unconstitutional."

A) William Rehnquist
B) Thurgood Marshall
C) Antonin Scalia
D) Clarence Thomas
E) none of the above

Question 14

Which of the following was found by Bohm and his colleagues?

A) Subjects generally lacked knowledge about the death penalty and its administration prior to exposure to the experimental stimulus, but were more informed following it.
B) To the degree that retribution provided the basis for support of the death penalty, knowledge had little effect on opinions.
C) Exposure to death penalty information may result in the polarization of opinions.
D) When opinions about the death penalty do change, it is most likely because of administrative reasons such as racial discrimination or executing innocent people.
E) all of the above

Question 15

In no year for which public opinion polls are available has a majority of Americans opposed capital punishment.

Question 16

Professor Baumgartner and his colleagues claim that the majority opinion in each major death penalty decision in the last century cited polling data by Gallup or other major survey houses in support of the ruling, whether for or against capital punishment.

Question 17

The American Institute of Public Opinion, producer of the Gallup polls, conducted interviews for the first scientific death penalty opinion poll in the United States in December 1946.

Question 18

Research shows that the wording of death penalty opinion questions and the response categories that are provided can make a significant difference in the distribution of death penalty opinions.

Question 19

It appears that many people support the death penalty because they fear an alternative penalty will not be punitive enough or that it may be inappropriate given the severity of the crime.

Question 20

The average prison term served by someone sentenced to life imprisonment is less than 10 years.

Question 21

Studies show that when people are given the option between the death penalty and life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole and the payment of restitution by the offender (who would work in prison industry) to the victim's family or the community, more than half of those people still prefer the death penalty over the alternative.

Question 22

A recent study found that people's willingness to impose the death penalty may be greater than public opinion polls indicate.

Question 23

Democrats have been more likely to support capital punishment than have Republicans.

Question 24

According to a national survey, the public is very skeptical about the ability of correctional authorities to keep capital murderers imprisoned for life.

Question 25

Based on the results of a 20-year study of the development of moral judgment in American males by Kohlberg and Elfenbein, society is morally developing to a stage where the public will not support the death penalty.

Question 26

According to Zimring and Hawkins, public support for the death penalty is crucial to the retention or abolition of the death penalty in the United States.

Question 27

According to Judge Paul Cassell, European countries do not have the death penalty because they are less democratic, or at least more insulated from public opinion, than the United States.

Question 28

Abolition of capital punishment, where it has occurred, generally has been achieved despite relatively strong public support for retention.

Question 29

According to the author of this text, the key to understanding temporal variations in death penalty opinions probably lies in the fear and anxiety engendered by the social events of an era.

Question 30

According to the author of this text, levels of death penalty support and opposition seem to demarcate the threshold level of people's tolerance of media-reported crime, and, at the same time, serve as an indicator of people's threshold tolerance of social change.

Question 31

According to the author of this text, it seems reasonable to assume that historical changes, such as a political shift away from the conservative social policies of the last decade [and a half or so], are apt to either produce a dramatic shift in future death penalty opinions or to be marked by changed death penalty opinions as the political shift passes a certain threshold level.

Question 32

It is unlikely that the practice of capital punishment could be sustained if a majority of American citizens were to oppose it.

Question 33

Professor Harcourt rejects the notion that international law will play an increasingly greater role in the Court's interpretation of the Eighth Amendment's "evolving standard of moral decency."

Question 34

According to Professors Steiker and Steiker, the inherent danger in constitutional litigation is the insulation and entrenchment of capital punishment if the constitutional challenges are brought and rejected, especially by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Question 35

Professors Steiker and Steiker endorse a waiting strategy when it comes to the death penalty because they believe that such a strategy would make the death penalty an increasingly marginalized outlier practice in a few jurisdictions.

Question 36

Professor Baumgartner and his colleagues contend that the "discovery of innocence" in the mid-1990s has reframed the death penalty debate away from traditional morality-based and constitutional arguments and has effectively changed U.S. public opinion and public policy about the death penalty, as evidenced by reduced public support for the death penalty (especially when respondents are provided with the option of LWOP), and by declining numbers of death sentences and executions.

Question 37

Professor Baumgartner and his colleagues report that the media effects of the shift to the innocence frame alone account for a decline of more than 100 death sentences per year in recent years; the number attributable to declining homicide rates is about three quarters as much.

Question 38

According to Professor Baumgartner and his colleagues, aggregate change in death penalty opinion is a slow process for two reasons. First, the death penalty is not a salient issue for most people; discussions about the death penalty are not in the news very often, and the death penalty does not directly affect the lives of most Americans. Second, Americans' views on the death penalty are closely tied to their moral and religious beliefs, and those beliefs do not change much over time.

Question 39

Since 1993, and through 2006, Southern whites have been somewhat less likely to support the death penalty than have non-Southern whites.

Question 40

Professor Lord and his colleagues found that information about the death penalty polarized opinions, instead of changing them from in favor to opposed or vice versa.

Question 41

Contrary to the expectations of many other death penalty opponents, information about the death penalty may not significantly reduce the overwhelming public support that currently exists for capital punishment.

Question 42

Research suggests that people do not hold coherent moral positions toward the death penalty, whether they are informed or not.