The BBC interviewed Americans and international tourists in Washington, D.C., about their views on the death penalty, a question that still divides the country even as public support for capital punishment sits near its lowest level in more than 50 years.
The man-on-the-street segment, filmed in the nation's capital, asked passersby whether states should be allowed to execute convicted criminals. The BBC did not release a tally of how many respondents backed or opposed the practice.
National polling gives a clearer picture. Gallup reported in October 2024 that 53% of Americans favor the death penalty for murder, down from 80% in 1994 and the lowest reading since the firm began tracking the question in 1936. Opposition stood at 44%, the highest share Gallup has recorded.
The gap runs along political and generational lines. Gallup found 65% of Republicans support capital punishment versus 41% of Democrats, and support falls to 46% among adults under 35 compared with 62% among those 55 and older.
Washington, D.C., itself has no death penalty. The district abolished capital punishment in 1981, and Congress has repeatedly blocked attempts to reinstate it. That makes the city an unusual backdrop for the debate: the last federal execution at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, took place in January 2021, when the Trump administration put Dylann Roof to death for the 2015 Charleston church massacre.
Thirteen people were executed at the federal level between July 2020 and January 2021, the first federal executions in 17 years. President Biden's Justice Department imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021, and no federal inmate has been put to death since.
At the state level, 27 states still authorize the death penalty, 23 have abolished it or imposed a governor's moratorium. Virginia became the first Southern state to repeal capital punishment in March 2021, and executions have been carried out in just a handful of states in recent years, led by Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
The Death Penalty Information Center counted 25 executions in the United States in 2024, up from 18 in 2023 but far below the peak of 98 in 1999. The nonprofit also reported that 2024 marked the tenth consecutive year in which fewer than 30 people were executed nationwide.
International opinion diverges sharply from the American position. According to Amnesty International, 112 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes as of the end of 2023, while 55 retained it. The United States is the only G7 nation that still carries out executions.
Those contrasting views were on display in the BBC's interviews, which drew responses from foreign visitors as well as U.S. residents walking the streets of the capital.
