Death penalty support shifts

Are Americans losing their taste for capital punishment?

In April, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a bill repealing the death penalty in Connecticut.

And a proposal that qualified for the November ballot in California would shut down the largest death row in the country and convert sentences to life without parole.

The National Research Council concluded that no reliable studies exist that show capital punishment is a deterrent to homicide.

That study follows a Gallup Poll last fall that found support for the death penalty had slipped to 61 percent nationally, the lowest level in 39 years.