Innocent Man Executed in TX, New Poll Shows CA Voters Reject Death Penalty

Yesterday, the New Yorker released an exhaustive new investigative report showing that Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004, was innocent. "The New Yorker's investigation lays out this case in its totality and leads to the inescapable conclusion that Willingham was innocent. There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed," said Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck. "The question now turns to how we can stop it from happening again."

Today, a new poll was released by a University of California, Santa Cruz Professor Craig Haney showing that support for the death penalty in California is on the decline. The new survey, which queried 800 jury-eligible Californians in February and March, also offered respondents an alternative to the death penalty--a sentence that guaranteed a prisoner would spend the rest of his or her life in prison and be required to work to pay restitution to the victim's family. With this alternative, support for the death penalty plunged to only 26 percent. Even when work and restitution were removed, 55 percent still preferred the alternative of life in prison without parole, compared to 37 percent who preferred capital punishment (and 8 percent who said they weren't sure).

The survey also revealed that 64 percent of respondents oppose sentencing severely mentally ill individuals to death, an issue that is currently being litigated in a number of courts around the country.