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Abstract
Over years of U.S. polls, women have consistently opposed capital punishment—especially in comparison to the attitudes of males. In addition, there has been a shift in the United States away from using the death penalty in cases of murder and toward using the long-term, open-ended, and often permanent confinement provided by the sentence of life without parole among all U.S. respondents. Using data from a poll of a representative sample of Kentucky residents conducted by the University of Kentucky’s Survey Research Center from March 4 to April 30, 2016, this study compares the attitudes of females and males concerning both capital punishment and life without parole to determine if a “gender gap” exists.
Notes
1 The University of Kentucky Research Center closed on June 30, 2020. The data are no longer available. https://www.research.uky.edu/survey-research-center.
2 Education was measured in the survey as: (1) grade school only, (2) some high school, (3) graduated high school, (4) GED, (5) 1 or 2 years college, no degree, (6) graduated junior or community college, (7) vocational/technical degree, (8) 3 or 4 years of college, no degree, (9) Bachelor’s degree, (10) Some graduate work, (11) Graduate degree (MA, MS, Ph.D., JD, …).
3 Witherspoon v. Illinois (Citation1968, 391 U.S. 510) established the process of “death-qualification” of capital juries. The U.S. Supreme Court held that prospective jurors could be excused for cause if they would automatically vote against sentencing a defendant to death regardless of the evidence presented at trial or if their beliefs about capital punishment prevented them from making an impartial decision about the guilt of the defendant (Bohm, Citation2017, p. 80).