U.S. death penalty support is declining toward de facto abolition

Evidence

The death penalty is being abolished around the world. The United States is virtually alone among developed democratic nations in applying this lethal penalty. Even as the legal and empirical disputes continue, support for the death penalty is waning. Public opinion on the morality of the death penalty is sharply declining. Many states have abolished or suspended it. Most of those that retain it rarely execute the condemned inmates on their death rows, so they are practicing de facto abolition. In a surprising move, some governors in death-penalty states are refusing to implement the death penalty. For example, then governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon, a physician, announced that he would not allow any prisoners to be executed during his tenure in office on moral grounds and because of the arbitrary and unfair application of the death penalty (Yardley, 2011). Joining the governor of Colorado, the governor of Washington likewise suspended executions, arguing that the capital punishment system is too flawed for states to carry out the death penalty (Lovett, 2014). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2092

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2092