Photo credits: Loren Santow
Flash movie credit: Trey Thomas

The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence

Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna De Boef, and Amber Boydstun

Cambridge University Press, 2008

• Purchase the book from Cambridge University Press
• Purchase the book from Amazon.com
• Read a prospectus of the book.
• Download Datasets and Do-files associated with the analyses presented in the book, or see the original spreadsheets containing all the data to produce each of the figures in the book.

A TV interview with Frank Baumgartner discussing the book

Friday, April 4, 2008, 5:30-6:00 pm, Pennsylvania Inside Out, from WPSX-TV.

The segment begins with a discussion of the race for in Pennsylvania's 5th congressional distirct. Then, Patty Satalia talks with Penn State political scientist Frank Baumgartner about his new book “The Decline of The Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence”.

Dowload and view the podcast. (mp4 format, 30 minutes of video)

A Radio Interview with Baumgartner and Boydstun

Title: The Decline of the Death Penalty, Take Note Radio, with Patty Satalia, broadcast by WPSU-FM

Sunday, March 2, 2008, 7:30-8:00 AM
Guests: Frank Baumgartner, Amber Boydstun, & Andrew F. Susko

Andrew Susko is President of the Pennsylvania Bar Association

In theory, most Americans support the death penalty, but the possibility of mistakes and recent discoveries of innocence have led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in executions. Last fall, the American Bar Association released a study criticizing Pennsylvania's death penalty system. Is capital punishment on its deathbed?

Click here to listen to the show (mp3 format, 28 minutes of audio)

Mentions of our Project or Book in the Press and on the Blogs

Put Your Best Facet Forward, Milo Public Affairs, January 2008

StandDown Texas Project, October 19, 2007

National Journal, April 2007

Death Penalty Focus, September 2006.

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, posted November 2005

Victims Family Members Crusade Against the Death Penalty, Austin American Statesman, October 29, 2005

Research on Capital Punishment in America

Since 2003 Frank Baumgartner and colleagues have been involved in a project tracing the changing politics and issue-definitions associated with the death penalty. The question is to determine the degree to which the new "innocence" frame is displacing the traditional "morality" frame relating to this issue. Important substantive issues about the future of the death penalty in America can be addressed as well as difficult methodological issues concerning how to study the links among issue-definition, public opinion, the media, and public policy.

With Suzanna De Boef, graduate student Amber Boydstun, and occasional other collaborators on different parts of the project, Baumgartner and others have addressed a number of questions relating to these issues. The research has focused on substantive issues relating to how the media has covered the death penalty (with particular reference to the use of various frames), public opinion (in particular the cognitive process by which individuals react to the "moral" and the "innocence" frame, based on experiments), and the history of the issue since 1960.

• Read our article "Media Framing of Capital Punishment and Its Impact on Individuals' Cognitive Responses" (Frank E. Dardis, Frank R. Baumgartner, Amber E. Boydstun, Suzanna De Boef, and Fuyuan Shen), forthcoming, Mass Communication and Society 2007.
• Read our paper "The Discovery of Innocence and the Decline of the Death Penalty" (Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun) presented at the American University Research Conference on Issue Framing, June 21, 2007.
• Read an article entitled "Death and Innocence" published in the National Journal in April 2007 that focuses on some of our research.
  

Click on the links below to see various papers or presentations drawn from this project.

• The Discovery of Innocence: Americans and the Death Penalty. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, Chicago IL, March 21, 2008.
• The Discovery of Innocence. Presentation to the Public Policy Institute of California, October 27, 2006.
  
• The Discovery of Innocence. Presentation to the UCLA Law School Conference on Wrongful Convictions, April 8, 2006.
  
• Issue-Definition and Policy Change: Capital Punishment and the Rise of the “Innocence Frame,” 1960–2003. Frank R.Baumgartner, Suzanna De Boef, and Amber E. Boydstun. Working paper, December 7, 2005.
  
• Framing Capital Punishment: Morality, Constitutionality, and Innocence, 1960-2003, a presentation to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Austin Texas, October 28, 2005.
  
  • See the Powerpoint presentation.
  • Read a longer background paper giving more detail.This paper presents the full results of our study, Comments are welcome.
    

• All Frames Are Not Equal: Framing and Conflict Displacement. Suzanna De Boef, Frank R. Baumgartner, Amber E. Boydstun, Frank E. Dardis, and Fuyuan Shen. This paper presents experimental evidence on the effectiveness of three different frames relating to the death penalty: the "innocence" frame as well as the traditional pro- and anti- "morality" frames. The paper was submitted for review to a professional journal in August 2005.
  
  • Read the Experimental Booklet that we distributed to the participants in our experiment. This explains all the questions they were asked, the stories each group read, and further details relating to our experiment.
    
    

• An Evolutionary Factor Analysis Approach to the Study of Issue-Definition. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 15-18, 2004. (with Suzanna De Boef and Amber E. Boydstun) [updated May 11, 2004]
  
  
  • This paper focuses on a methodology to study framing based on evolutionary factor analysis: factor analysis conducted repeatedly over short windows of time, so that we can trace the rise of new issue-definitions dynamically.
    
  • (Click here to see the original version.) The updated version simply has the formatting and graphs improved. We recommend the corrected version but there are no substantive or textual differences between the two.
    

Much of the work makes use of a comprehensive coding of New York Times coverage of the death penalty from 1960 to present.

• Click here to read the codebook that explains in detail the arguments coded and other technical information about this aspect of the project.

Some Power Point presentations have given overviews of some findings:

• From "Justice" to Mistake: Changing Public Understandings of the Death Penalty in the United States, presentation to the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence, November 22, 2004.

• Justice, Retribution, or Mistake? The Changing Tones of Media Coverage of Capital Punishment in the US. Presentation to 24th Annual NAACP-LDF Capital Punishment Training Conference, Airlie Conference Center, Warrenton, VA, July 17-20, 2003 (with Cheryl Feeley and Amber Boydstun)
  
  
• Justice, Retribution, or Mistake? Discussing the Death Penalty in America. Powerpoint presentation to The Justice Project, Washington, DC May 15, 2003 (with Cheryl Feeley and Amber Boydstun)