The Impact of Information on an Individual's Support of the Death Penalty: A Partial Test of the Marshall Hypothesis among College Students

• Author: Eric Lambert,Alan Clarke
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403401012003003
• Published date: 01 September 2001
• Date: 01 September 2001
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY REVIEW / September 2001Lambert, Clarke / PARTIAL TEST OF MARSHALL HYPOTHESIS

The Impact of Information on an

Individual’s Support of the Death

Penalty: A Partial Test of the Marshall

Hypothesis Among College Students

Eric Lambert

Alan Clarke

Ferris State University

In Furman v.Georgia, Justice Marshall hypothesized that informed individuals would

not support the death penalty.To test this hypothesis, survey resultsfrom 730 students

at a Michigan universitywere used. Students read one of three essays; one focusing on

death penalty deterrence research,another on the chances of sentencing an innocent

person to death, and the thirdon the general reasons for punishing offenders (i.e., the

control essay). The innocence essay resulted in a small but statistically significant

reduction of support. There was no statistically significant reduction in support for

the death penalty among the deterrence and control essay groups. The findings are

discussed and recommendations for future research are made.

The death penalty has long stirred passionate debate in this country. Polls

during the past two decades show that the majority (70% to 80%) of Ameri-

cans support the death penalty (Durham, Elrod, & Kinkade, 1996; Zeisel &

Gallup, 1989). Although the majority of Americans indicate that they sup-

port the death penalty, abolitionists havelong tried to reduce public support

for capital punishment. Many abolitionists draw hope from Justice Thurgood

Marshall’s arguments in Furman v.Georgia (1972) that (a) “American citi-

zens know almost nothing about capital punishment,” and (b) If people

“were fully informed as to the purposes of the penalty and its liabilities,

215

AUTHORS’NOTE: This article is part of a presentation made at the 1999 American Society

of Criminology Annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. The authors thank Teresa Brown and

Janet Lambert for helping to edit the article. The authors also thank Matthew Call and Julie

Mack, criminal justice graduate students at Ferris State University,for their assistance in col-

lecting the survey data. Finally,the authors are grateful for the comments and suggestions of

the reviewers.

Criminal Justice Policy Review, Volume 12, Number 3, September 2001 215-234

© 2001 Sage Publications

[they] would find the penalty shocking, unjust, and unacceptable.” These

two testable propositions have since come to be known in the literature as

the Marshall hypotheses. Twenty-eight years later, abolitionists still argue

that most of the American public knows little about the death penalty, and

that most would not support it if they knewthe truth about the death penalty.

The public’s support of the death penalty is critical in determining public

policy on capital punishment. Ellsworth and Gross (1994) argue that “the

legal status of the death penalty in the United States depends on popular

support, actual and perceived” (p. 21-22). Politicians argue that the public

wants the death penalty (Whitehead, Blankenship, & Wright, 1999). If pub-

lic support for the death penalty was reduced, public policy concerning the

death penalty would likely change. Ellsworth and Gross (1994) point out that

popular support may well be necessary to the continued use of the death pen-

alty in this country. If a clear majority comes to reject this form of punish-

ment, we predict that the Supreme Court, if not Congress and the state legisla-

tures, will soon follow suit. (p. 23)

Although legislators tend to overestimate public demand for capital punish-

ment, it is also clear that the public is not fully informed about the death pen-

alty (McGarrell & Sandys, 1996; Whitehead et al., 1999). This, of course, is

precisely the argument presented by Marshall—that if the public was better

informed, support for the death penalty would decline, and public policy on

capital punishment would change. One area that has not received much

attention is how the issue of innocence affects support for capital punish-

ment. Therefore, this study purposes to examine the second Marshall

hypothesis using updated information concerning the issue of sentencing

innocent persons to death.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Marshall’s first postulate appears to be accurate. The literature strongly

suggests that the general public is both uninformed about the death penalty

and unaware of whether it achieves its desired outcomes (Bohm, 1987,

1989, 1998; Bohm, Clark, & Aveni, 1990, 1991; Bohm, Vogel, & Maisto,

1993; Ellsworth & Ross 1983; Firment & Geiselman, 1997; Sarat &

Vidmar, 1976; Vidmar & Dittenhoffer, 1981; Wright, Bohm, & Jamieson,

1995). The same cannot be said of the second Marshall hypothesis, which

has not been fully studied.

216 CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY REVIEW / September 2001