http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377821/another-round-death-penalty-debate-john-r-lott-jr
From: Trout, Larry
'Support for the death penalty in 1994 was the highest ever recorded (80%), according to Gallup. But consider instead all the 43 surveys from 1936 to 2012. Those surveys showed that an average of 63.8 percent of Americans supported the death penalty. Sixty percent in 2013 is down slightly from the average over the preceding 76 years….
And why has support dropped? Probably because crime has fallen. In 1994, the murder rate was 9.0 per 100,000 people. By 2012, it had fallen to almost half that, 4.7…
In murder cases, whites are executed much more frequently. Nationally, from 1977, when the death penalty was reinstituted, to 2011, the last year for which the FBI has compiled data, 64.7 percent of those executed were whites, but whites committed only 47 percent of the murders.
Furthermore, DNA evidence has improved its accuracy in trials over the past couple of decades, as it has become more commonly used.
Finally, all this ignores one extremely important point: There is overwhelming evidence that the death penalty deters murder and saves lives. Combine that with the fact that errors, few to begin with, are becoming ever less common, and objections to the death penalty are basically eviscerated.'
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377488/shaky-case-against-death-penalty-john-r-lott-jr
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