USA - California. Fewer support capital punishment in latest Field Poll.

Fewer support capital punishment in latest Field Poll. Californians are evenly divided on 2 competing death penalty proposals they may face on the November ballot: 1 seeking to speed up executions, the other to abolish them, the Field Poll reported Friday. A telephone survey of randomly selected voters between Dec. 15 and Jan. 3 found 48 % in favor of taking "steps to speed up the execution process" and 47 % in favor of repealing the death penalty and replacing it with a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole, the Field Research Corp. said. The remaining 5 % had no opinion. The results represent a shift against the death penalty since the last Field Poll in September 2014, which found 52 % favoring faster executions and 40 % preferring a repeal. It is also in line with other polls showing a gradual decline in support for the death penalty in both California and the nation. "There continues to be a very strong movement away from support for the death penalty in California," said Matt Cherry, executive director of Death Penalty Focus and a leader of the campaign for the proposed ballot measure. He said support for the repeal initiative should increase when voters are told of the cost savings from eliminating capital punishment - as much as $150 million a year, according to the Legislature's fiscal analyst. Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and a supporter of the initiative aimed at accelerating executions, said the poll probably reflects "an increase in people who don’t believe that it's feasible to have an effective death penalty because it's been obstructed so long." "The challenge for the campaign is to make the case that yes, we can fix the problems," Scheidegger said. Both ballot measures are being circulated for signatures. Californians overwhelmingly approved pro-death penalty initiatives in 1972 and 1978 and voted narrowly, 52 to 48 %, against a 2012 measure that would have abolished capital punishment. The state has nearly 750 prisoners on death row but has executed only 13 since the current law took effect in 1977. Shortly after the last execution, in January 2006, a federal judge ruled that the state's lethal injection procedures and staff training were so badly flawed that they posed an unacceptable risk of a botched and agonizing execution. Gov. Jerry Brown's administration recently settled a lawsuit by death penalty advocates with an agreement to use a single dose of a powerful sedative in executions, rather than the 3-drug combination employed in the past. One provision of the proposed initiative to speed up executions would eliminate the currently required period of public comment on the single-drug plan. Other provisions would limit appeals of death sentences, set deadlines for state Supreme Court rulings on appeals, and expand the pool of defense lawyers by requiring attorneys who accept court appointments to represent the indigent on criminal cases to also take capital cases. The Field Poll found voters divided on the subject, as usual, by age, gender, race and religion. Among all voters, 48 % favored speeding up executions and 47 % favored abolishing them. Among men, 51 % favored speedups and 45 % favored abolition. Among women, 46 % favored speedups and 49 % favored abolition. By religion, 58 % of Protestants favored speedier executions, while 52 % of Catholics, 62 % of those of other religions, and a plurality of 49 R of those without religious preference favored abolishing executions. By race and ethnicity, 52 % of non-Latino whites and 51 % of Asian Americans favored speedier executions, while 54 % of Latinos and 61 % of African Americans favored abolition. Pollsters said 1,003 registered voters were surveyed, and the margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 % points.