Sir, – Donald Clarke (Opinion & Analysis, September 24th) writes that “a recent Gallup poll revealed that only 29 per cent of Americans oppose the death penalty’’.
However, in the same poll, when asked to choose the appropriate penalty for murder, 46 per cent of respondents chose the option of life imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole.
Meanwhile, 49 per cent of those polled responded with a preference for the death penalty.
Although these figures still suggest more Americans favour the death penalty than oppose it, the fact that almost half of those polled chose life imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole, as an alternative to the death penalty, is a significant one.
One explanation for this is that these respondents see the deprivation of an individual’s freedom as a better alternative to the deprivation of an individual’s life. – Yours, etc,