The nexus between attribution theory and racial attitudes: a test of racial attribution and public opinion of capital punishment

Research has shown that attribution theory and racial attitudes are among the most consistent attitudinal predictors of capital punishment opinion. This study explores the overlap of these two constructs, racial attribution, and its ability to account for support and opposition to the death penalty. Using data from the 1972–2016 cumulative data file of the General Social Survey, three logistic regression models were used to analyze the effect of internal and external racial attribution on capital punishment opinions for (a) the aggregate sample, (b) White respondents only, and (c) Black respondents only. Respondents were asked whether racial inequalities were due to structural disadvantages or personal deficiencies of Black Americans. Findings showed that respondents in all three models were more likely to support the death penalty when they attributed racial inequalities to personal deficiencies of Blacks and less likely to support the death penalty when they endorsed structural disadvantages, although the effects were somewhat muted for Black respondents. These findings suggest that ongoing public support for capital punishment in the United States is based at least in part on a fundamental attribution error in which Whites and some Blacks alike blame Blacks for their own deprivation.     

“Knowledge and Death Penalty Opinion: The Marshall Hypotheses Revisited.”

This study tests the three hypotheses derived from the written opinion of Justice Thurgood Marshall in Furman v Georgia in 1972. Subjects completed questionnaires at the beginning and the end of the fall a semester. Experimental group subjects were enrolled in a death penalty class, while control group subjects were enrolled in another criminal justice class. The death penalty class was the experimental stimulus. Findings provided strong support for the first and third hypotheses, i.e., subjects were generally lacking in death penalty knowledge before the experimental stimulus, and death penalty proponents who scored “high” on a retribution index did not change their death penalty opinions despite exposure to death penalty knowledge. Marshall’s second hypothesis--that death penalty knowledge and death penalty support were inversely related--was not supported by the data. Two unexpected findings were that death penalty proponents who scored “low” on a retribution index also did not change their death penalty opinions after becoming more informed about the subject, and that death penalty knowledge did not alter subjects’ initial retributive positions. Suggestions for future research are provided.     

Death penalty views in China, Japan and the U.S.: An empirical comparison

Many nations impose the death penalty, yet most of the literature on capital punishment has focused on Western nations, particularly the U.S. China and Japan are two retentionist nations. Based on the data collected in 2005, this study examined the level of death penalty support and views on capital punishment among college students from China, Japan, and the U.S. It was found that Chinese respondents reported the highest level of death penalty support, followed by Japanese and U.S. students. Respondents from China and Japan were more likely to believe in the deterrence value of capital punishment than their U.S. counterparts. Views on retribution differed among the respondents. U.S. students were most likely to feel that innocent people are sentenced to death. In multivariate analyses, deterrence was the strongest correlate of death penalty views among Chinese and Japanese respondents, followed closely by retribution. For both Chinese and Japanese students, the barbarity of government taking the life of a person was the strongest predictor for opposing the death penalty. For U.S. respondents, retribution was the strongest reason for supporting capital punishment and the barbarity of executions was the strongest reason for opposing the death penalty.     

Attitudinal change among students in a capital punishment class: It may be possible

Students who participated in a class on capital punishment recorded their attitudes toward the topic on a weekly basis and completed a one year follow-up. The results demonstrate that by the end of the semester 65% of the students indicated opposition to capital punishment. Moreover, one year after the class 73% of the students maintained some degree of opposition to capital punishment. The difficulties associated with assessing attitudinal change as a result of participating in a class and reasons for the discrepancy between the findings of this study and previous research are discussed.     

The Death Penalty: A Multi-level Analysis of Public Opinion

Considerable research has examined public opinion of the death penalty using simplistic questions such as, “Do you favor or oppose the death penalty.” Simply categorizing people into favoring or opposing capital punishment does little to address the array of factors and circumstances that are part of every murder. We examine variables concerning the nature of homicides from a set of 40 murder vignettes used to gauge respondents’ level of support for capital punishment in murder cases. The data are structured such that vignette responses are nested within individuals, meaning a multi-level analysis is appropriate. We used HLM to explore how vignette-level or homicide related characteristics influence support for the death penalty, as well as how individual-level characteristics condition these factors. Analyses revealed that individual-level variables were non-significant when analyzed independently; however, cross-level interactions indicated significant individual-level influences on homicide-level characteristics as they relate to respondents’ support for the death penalty.     

Taking Capital Punishment Seriously

Although Asia is the most important region of the world when it comes to capital punishment, it is also one of the most understudied. This article identifies four research questions that deserve attention from students and scholars who believe taking capital punishment seriously requires studying Asia seriously too. What are the empirical contours of capital punishment in contemporary Asia? What are the histories of capital punishment in Asia? Can Western theories of capital punishment explain patterns and changes in Asia? And what is the future of capital punishment in Asia? If researchers take the trouble to explore these questions, the death penalty will not only become an interesting window into law and society in Asia, but Asia will prove to be an instructive window into the death penalty—the gravest real-life problem in the law.     

Can information change public opinion? Another test of the Marshall hypotheses

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall offered his opinion regarding the utility of public opinion polls as a tool for assessing the “evolving standards of decency” regarding capital punishment. His arguments became known as the Marshall hypotheses and spawned a considerable body of empirical testing. The three Marshall hypotheses are: (1) support for capital punishment is inversely associated with knowledge about it, (2) exposure to information about capital punishment produces sentiments in opposition to capital punishment, but (3) exposure to information about capital punishment will have no impact on those who support it for retributive reasons. The results of previous tests of these hypotheses were somewhat mixed but supportive. None of these studies, however, examined the effects of change in knowledge levels with changes, if any, in death penalty attitudes and beliefs as needed for a more complete test of the Marshall hypotheses. The present study addressed this shortcoming. The results provided mixed support for these three hypotheses. That is, death penalty supporters were somewhat less informed than death penalty opponents; exposure to death penalty information and knowledge gains tended to be associated with attitudinal change in a directions suggested by these hypotheses; but, retributivists' attitudes toward and beliefs about capital punishment were not any more resistant to change than were the attitudes and beliefs of non-retributivists.     

Bureaucracy, “domesticated” elites, and the abolition of capital punishment. Processes of state-formation and the number of executions in England and Habsburg Austria between 1700 and 1914

The paper argues that the introduction of bureaucracy civilized death penalty and brutal punishment. The study bases on a quantitative analysis of the numbers of death sentences and executions in England and Habsburg Austria from 1700 to 1914 and on a qualitative analysis of historical literature about the death penalty in both countries. The paper shows that professional law enforcement specialists, bureaucrats, civil servants, and detached juridical stuff formed a new class of “domesticated middlemen elites”. In strong states, this new class becomes the dominating group. In weak states, however, old elites that combine economic and political power preserve their privileged positions. For them capital punishment is the most proper mean to deter criminals because old elites fear the alternative: the introduction of strong-state institutions. Beside obvious power struggles between central and local elites—which effects penal policy pro and con capital punishment—there is a civilizing process going beneath the surface of rationality and political interests. In strong states, the formation of a “habitus” averse to brutal punishment is initiated amongst “domesticated middlemen elites” who are acting in peaceful living- and working conditions.     

Death as a Penalty and the Fantasy of Instant Death

In this essay I take up the question of how death can be a penalty, given that each of us will eventually die. I argue that capital punishment in the United States rests on contradictory demands for painless death delivered humanely through pharmaceuticals and yet denies the accused the possibility of natural death. The death penalty must be at once humane and punishing. Analyzing what we mean by ‘botched’ executions, along with the language of the Supreme Court in upholding lethal injection as a humane application of the death penalty, I argue that the fantasy of instant death is at the heart of the tension between death as painless and death as penalty. In the end, I turn to Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminar Volume One, particularly his discussion of Kant’s defence of the capital punishment, and the pivotal role of time in his discussion. Finally, I suggest that the fantasies of instantaneous death and our technological mastery of it result in the fantasy of the ‘good’ punishing death.     

Capital punishment views in China and the United States: a preliminary study among college students

There is a lack of research on attitudes toward capital punishment in China, and there is even less research on cross-national comparisons of capital punishment views. Using data recently collected from college students in the United States and China, this study finds that U.S. and Chinese students have differences in their views on the death penalty and its functions of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. This study also reveals that the respondents' perspectives of deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation all affect their attitudes toward the death penalty in the United States, whereas only the first three views affect attitudes toward capital punishment in China. Furthermore, retribution is the strongest predictor in the United States, whereas deterrence is the strongest predictor in China.     

Death Qualification in Black and White: Racialized Decision Making and Death‐Qualified Juries

Death qualification has been shown to have a number of biasing effects that appear to undermine a capital defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair jury. Attitudes toward the death penalty have shifted modestly but consistently over the last several decades in ways that may have changed the overall impact of death qualification. Specifically, the very large gap between black and white Americans' current support for capital punishment raises the question of whether death qualification procedures disproportionately exclude African Americans from capital jury participation. In order to examine this possibility, we conducted two countywide death penalty attitude surveys in the California county that has the highest percentage of African American residents in the state. Results show that death qualification continues to have a number of serious biasing effects—including disproportionately excluding death penalty opponents—which result in the significant underrepresentation of African Americans. This creates a death‐qualified jury pool with the potential to be significantly more likely to ignore and even misuse mitigating factors and to rely more heavily on aggravating factors in their death penalty decision making. The implications of these findings for the fair administration of capital punishment are discussed.     

A New Look at the Gender Gap in Offending

Studies of public support for capital punishment have consistently observed a strong and enduring gender gap in the level of death penalty support, with males consistently more inclined than females to support capital punishment. This unexplained relationship has endured over time and space as well as across a myriad of research designs. The present study uses attribution theory in a factorial survey design to account for this relationship. Analyses of data obtained from jurors provide mixed support for attribution theory yet fails to bridge the gender gap in death penalty support. The implications of these findings as they relate to gender, socialization, and attributions are discussed.     

Desert, Justice and Capital Punishment

Our purpose in this paper is to consider a procedural objection to the death penalty. According to this objection, even if the death penalty is deemed, substantively speaking, a morally acceptable punishment for at least some murderers, since only a small proportion of those guilty of aggravated murder are sentenced to death and executed, while the majority of murderers escape capital punishment as a result of arbitrariness and discrimination, capital punishment should be abolished. Our targets in this paper are two recent attempts, by Thomas Hurka and Michael Cholbi respectively, to defend the view that ‘levelling down’ (that is, reducing the punishment imposed on a criminal from the punishment he absolutely deserves to a less severe punishment in order to achieve proportionality relative to the criminals who have escaped the punishment they absolutely deserve) is, in the context of capital punishment, morally permissible. We argue that both Hurka and Cholbi fail to show why the arbitrariness and discrimination objection impugns the death penalty.

Not everyone strongly supports the death penalty: Assessing weakly-held attitudes about capital punishment

Polls exploring attitudes toward the death penalty typically impose a simple, dichotomous response structure: respondents are asked whether or not they support or oppose capital punishment. This polling strategy deprives respondents of expressing an indication of the strength of their opinions. When asked whether they support (or oppose) the death penalty “strongly” or “not strongly,” significant proportions of respondents select the latter category. This suggests that many proponents and opponents of the death penalty have weakly-held views regarding the issue. These respondents are of great interest because they are the individuals most likely to change their views. This article analyzes responses to two national surveys in order to explore the variables that differentiate respondents with strongly-held and weakly-held views. A theoretical account is offered to explain why some people have weakly-held views on this critical social issue.     

Reasons for South Korean attitudes towards the death penalty: exploring the nexus between strong public support and history of misapplication

As of this writing, South Korea (officially, the Republic of Korea) is an abolitionist-in-practice nation; capital punishment is legal, but no death sentences have been carried out since a moratorium was enacted in 1997. Public support for the death penalty has decreased over time; however, the factors that determine support for or opposition to the death penalty of the South Korean general public are largely unknown. Using survey data from a nationwide sample of 416 respondents, this study examined the potential predictors for public attitudes towards capital punishment support. A majority of survey respondents (83%) supported the death penalty, a higher percentage than recent surveys of the South Korean general public. The deterrence and retribution perspectives were positively related to death penalty support, while crime severity, neighbourhood safety, the brutalisation effect, and innocence were negatively related. This study provides the first multivariate analysis of factors associated with South Korean attitudes towards the death penalty.     

当代美国的死刑制度

美国最高法院在1972年曾经宣布暂停死刑执行,但是在1976年又恢复了死刑的执行,目前美国是唯一仍然保留并适用死刑的所谓西方文明国家。美国联邦系统和38个州的刑法都规定了死刑,可以适用死刑的罪行还比较多,但是罪名相对比较集中;死刑诉讼程序严格且复杂;相对于美国庞大的犯罪数字,尤其是暴力犯罪而言,其死刑判决和实际执行死刑数量仍属较低;美国死刑执行方式呈现为以注射方式为主多种执行方法并存的特点。美国死刑程序复杂但是死刑错判率仍然较高。     

中美两国死刑制度之立法原因比较

中美两国尽管在文化传统、社会制度、经济发展水平等方面均存在较大差异,但在废止或严格限制死刑的世界性潮流面前,对死刑却采取了相似的政策——既保留死刑又限制其适用,其中既有民意因素,也有政治因素。美国现阶段的高犯罪率、南方的私刑传统、历史上未经纳粹统治等因素导致其支持死刑的民意高涨,这对于政治精英、联邦最高法院及地区法官和检察官都有影响;在中国,现阶段社会治安形势恶化、礼法传统与家族主义的深远影响,以及缺少西方启蒙运动洗礼等因素导致民意支持死刑,这对于执政党、立法机关和司法机关,以及法官与检察官个人,都产生了深刻的影响。在政治因素方面,美国联邦与各州的权限划分以及盛行的联邦主义是影响其现行死刑制度的重要原因;在中国,统治者所奉行的"乱世用重典"的治国之策和重刑主义的历史传统、特殊历史时期所形成的"左"的错误,都是影响中国死刑制度的重要原因。对于中美两国死刑制度进行改造,应注意从民意与政治因素方面着手进行。     

American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

It is often said that American capital punishment fulfills no purposes, serves no functions, and possesses no coherent rationale. In Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2010), David Garland argues that American capital punishment is functional, meaningful, and effective, especially in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse. He also demonstrates that America's radically local version of democracy helps explain why the death penalty has persisted in the United States long after it disappeared in other Western democracies and that many of the peculiar forms through which American capital punishment is now administered have been designed to deny association with the lynchings that have occurred in American history. Garland arrives at these conclusions by comparing capital punishment in contemporary America with death penalty systems from the American past and from other Western nations. This essay argues that comparison with Asia further illuminates what is peculiar—and ordinary—in American capital punishment.     

The Death Penalty: An Unusual Punishment America is Inflicting Upon Itself

The United States is the only Western, industrialized nation still executing criminal offenders. The Constitutional provision that is most often used to call the appropriateness of capital punishment in the United States into question is the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Opponents of capital punishment have often argued various reasons why the death penalty is a cruel punishment, but the Supreme Court of the United States has not agreed. A new approach to abolition advocacy is needed. Since the death penalty has not been determined cruel, I submit a new legal argument based on the unusual nature of capital punishment. Utilizing systems theory, I posit the death penalty is an unusual criminal punishment due to the extraordinary range of persons beyond merely the defendant who are negatively impacted by executions.     

死刑废除的国际要求与反思

死刑废除已经是世界性趋势和国际公约的要求,我国刑法学界已在限制死刑上达成了一定的共识,但在死刑废除的论证上还存在诸多争议。德里达对死刑的解构有助于死刑废除。死刑在关系到社会基本公正实现的同时也影响到社会的基本功利的实现,当其不再是为社会公正的基础或主要方面时,便是其被废除之日。