Documented execution failures have eroded public confidence in capital punishment

Evidence

Previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of deathpenalty statutes; suspension or abolition of the death penalty in some states; wrongful executions of innocent inmates; DNA exonerations of prisoners on death row; arbitrary, and unfair disparities in trials and executions for capital crimes; and repeated failures to devise a constitutionally fair death penalty statute have shaken the public’s confidence in the death penalty. If public support for the death penalty continues to wane, society may well end up with a constitutionally permissible lethal punishment that no one wants to carry out any longer. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2100

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2100