Public Attitudes Toward Legal Abortion, Euthanasia, Suicide, and Capital Punishment

• Author: Adam Trahan
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016816682567
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Public Attitudes Toward Legal

Abortion, Euthanasia, Suicide,

and Capital Punishment:

Partial Evidence of a

Consistent Life Ethic

Adam Trahan

1

Abstract

Recent research suggests that public attitudes toward capital punishment are fundamentally value

expressive rather than instrumental. This study explores the value-expressive basis of capital

punishment attitudes by analyzing the relationships between various domains of life and the law.

Logistic regression of data from the 1972–2012 cumulative data file of the General Social Survey

was used to analyze whether composite variables for opposition to legal abortion, euthanasia, and

suicide could predict capital punishment attitudes. Findings show that main effects of opposition to

legal abortion, suicide, and euthanasia increased the odds of opposing capital punishment. Among

3 two-way interaction terms, only opposition to suicide and euthanasia was significant, and it was

associated with increased support for capital punishment rather than opposition. These findings

lend qualified support to the consistent life ethic framework and value-expressive basis of capital

punishment attitudes.

Keywords

capital punishment opinion, abortion, suicide, euthanasia, consistent life ethic

Capital punishment continues to be of the most prominent and contentions sociolegal issues in the

United States. It is one of the few such issues around which people coalesce and form group, if not

individual, identity. Religious institutions and political parties often treat capital punishment as a

central part of what defines them and their mission. We often categorize states and regions of the

country based on their apparent support or opposition to capital punishment. The same is true of

capital punishment in a global context. Much continues to be made of the United States’ place in the

world as the lone remaining Western nation to employ the death penalty. The United States con-

sistently finds itself in the company of China, Iran, and Sudan, to name a few, in terms of the number

1

University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Adam Trahan, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #305130, Denton, TX 76203, USA.

Email: adam.trahan@unt.edu

Criminal Justice Review

2017, Vol. 42(1) 26-41

ª2016 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/0734016816682567

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of executions carried out in any given year (Death Penalty Informatio n Center, 2016). Despite

concerns over wrongful convictions, inflated costs, potentially harmful executions methods, and

other critical issues, the death penalty perseveres for the time being. The constitutionality of lethal

injection protocol has been unsuccessfully challenged in several recent cases (Baze v. Rees, 2008;

Glossip v. Gross, 2015). Concern over inflated costs may have been a temporary historical effect of

the recent ‘‘great recession’’ as state and local governments struggled to balance budgets (The

Economist, 2009). Wrongful convictions and the threat of executing innocent persons often prompts

discussion of procedural safeguards that might mitigate the risk of mistakenly applying the death

penalty rather than eradicating the policy entirely.

The resiliency of the death penalty in America is arguably due in large part to the fact that a

majority of Americans have consistently supported capital punishment (Bohm, 2014). Indeed, public

opinion is a powerful driving force in the administration of capital punishment. Two of the most

significant changes in the modern era of capital punishment were caused, inter alia, by apparent

changes in public opinion. In 2002 and 2005,the Supreme Court categorically exempted the intellec-

tually disabled(Atkins v. Virginia, 2002) and juveniles (Roper v. Simmons ,2005) from execution. The

Court’s rationale in both cases was based on the Eighth Amendment’s evolving standards of decency

doctrine. In the Atkins ruling, the Court observed that, beginning with Georgia in 1986, 21 states and

the federal government had outlawed execution of the intellectually disabled. The majority of the

justices thus ruled that a national consensus, reflected by state legislative activity, had developed

against executing people with intellectual disabilities. The Court also relied upon the evolving stan-

dards of decencydoctrine in its exemption of juveniles from capitalpunishment 3 years later in Roper.

A majority of the justicesidentified a national trend awayfrom subjecting persons who were underthe

age of 18 at the time of their crimes to the death penalty. Specifically, they observed that, since 1989

when they had last visited the issue, five states had unilaterally abolished execution for juveniles and

none had established the practice. Further, only 6 of the 20 states that retained the death penalty for

juveniles had actually executed a juvenile capital offender.

These developments highlight the impact that public opinion has on the administration of capital

punishment. The public’s emerging distain for executing juveniles and the intellectually disabled, at

least in part, prompted policy reversals. These effects of public opinion on capital punishment are in

addition to those exercised everyday through local, state, and national political processes. Identify-

ing and understanding the underlying sources of people’s capital punishment opinions are therefore

imperative for both scholars and practitioners. The empirical record is quite clear as to ‘‘who’’tends

to support capital punishment. Supporters of capital punishment are disproportionately White (Bobo

& Johnson, 2004; Cochran & Chamlin, 2006; Johnson, 2001), male (Cochran & Sanders, 2009;

Robbers, 2006; Stack, 2000), Protestant (Grasmick & McGill, 1994; Sandys & McGarrell, 1994;

Young, 1992), politically conservative (Longmire, 1996; Young, 1991, 1992), and married (Bohm,

2014; Fox, Radelet, & Bonsteel, 1990–1991). These findings have been consistently observed in

nearly every modern study of capital punishment attitudes. The literature is less clear, however, as to

why people tend to support or oppose capital punishment. The research presented here was designed

to explore the underlying value systems and concomitant attitudes that buoy public opinions of

capital punishment. This article presents the results of a regression analysis of the main and inter-

active effects of public attitudes toward other ‘‘life issues’’—legal abortion, suicide, and euthana-

sia—on capital punishment attitudes.

Underlying Sources of Capital Punishment Opinion

A fundamental issue regarding sources of capital punishment opinions is whether people’s atti-

tudes toward the death penalty are instrumental or expressive. That is, are public opinions based on

the utility of the death penalty system or the moral implications of executing capital murderers?

Trahan 27