2026-10-02T20:40:43.067Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
1995年，克里斯塔·派克折磨并杀害了同学科琳·斯莱默，当时美国支持死刑的民意接近顶峰。
根据盖洛普当时的民调数据，超过四分之三的美国人（77%）支持死刑。
在派克周三晚间因注射死刑执行失败后，她在死囚牢房度过的数十年间，情况发生了变化。
盖洛普2025年的最新民调数据显示，目前约有半数美国人（52%）支持死刑。不过需要指出的是，如今绝大多数死刑执行都集中在以佛罗里达州、德克萨斯州和俄克拉荷马州为首的南部少数几个州。
在派克犯下罪行前的数年里，死刑一直是美国政坛的重大议题，支持死刑也成了政客们彰显自身立场的一种标志。
1992年，时任阿肯色州州长比尔·克林顿离开总统竞选活动，亲自监督里基·雷·雷克托的死刑执行。雷克托因1981年杀害一名警官被判有罪。克林顿此行并非必须，但观察人士指出，此举契合了这位候选人希望展现出“对犯罪强硬”的形象。
克林顿此前曾为没有对雷克托行使赦免权而得意。他在启程前往阿肯色州前一天的新罕布什尔州辩论舞台上表示：“作为民主党人，我们不应再为保护无辜者而感到愧疚。”
后续最高法院的相关判例禁止对智力障碍者执行死刑，这在今天大概率会阻止雷克托被处决——雷克托曾因枪伤造成脑损伤。最高法院还禁止对非杀人罪和青少年犯罪者判处死刑。
相关报道：他曾处决死囚。后来他们成了他的政治包袱。
两党都曾借死刑标榜“对犯罪强硬”
数年后，克林顿以总统身份签署了1994年《联邦死刑法案》，进一步证明了其对犯罪的强硬立场。该法案是时任参议员乔·拜登推动的更大规模犯罪法案的一部分，“国会为13项现有联邦死刑法规和28项新设立的联邦死刑法规下的60项罪名建立了判处死刑的合宪程序”。
对比之下，2016年克林顿妻子希拉里的总统竞选期间，死刑并未成为辩论中的主要议题，但废除死刑已成为民主党官方党纲的一部分。
这种态度转变可能源于多个因素。
自1973年以来，至少有200名曾在死囚牢房的囚犯被洗清罪名，这引发了人们对司法系统能否公正执行终极刑罚的质疑。
2000年，时任伊利诺伊州州长、共和党人乔治·瑞安成为首位暂停死刑执行的州长。此前数十年间，该州已有十余名死囚被证实无罪。其他一些州也纷纷效仿，伊利诺伊州则在2011年彻底废除了死刑。
死刑适用中的种族不平等问题引发了人们对死刑执行方式的质疑，一些州的法院因此废除了死刑。
拜登是上世纪90年代强化联邦死刑制度的犯罪法案的设计者，他在2020年的总统竞选活动中提出废除联邦死刑的主张，但民主党并未兑现这一竞选承诺。
不过，拜登还是颇具争议地将当时联邦死囚牢房里40名囚犯中的37人的死刑判决减为其他刑罚。
目前仍在联邦死囚牢房的囚犯包括：因2013年波士顿马拉松爆炸案被判有罪的焦哈尔·察尔纳耶夫；因2015年在南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿一座历史悠久的黑人教堂杀害9人被判有罪的迪伦·鲁夫；以及2018年在匹兹堡生命之树犹太会堂杀害11名礼拜者的罗伯特·鲍尔斯。
这次大规模减刑可能是唐纳德·特朗普总统任期内联邦死刑执行数量没有上升的唯一原因。特朗普在首个总统任期内重振了联邦层面的死刑政策，在任期最后七个月里执行了13例死刑。
特朗普经常呼吁对毒贩等人判处死刑。
“我就职后将立即指示司法部全力追究死刑，以保护美国家庭和儿童免受暴力强奸犯、杀人犯和怪物的伤害。我们将再次成为一个法治和秩序的国家！”特朗普在一篇典型的社交媒体帖子中写道。
特朗普重返政坛后签署了一项行政命令，承诺在可能的情况下判处死刑，特别是针对杀害执法人员或由无证移民实施的杀人案件。
几十年来，特朗普一直公开支持死刑。上世纪90年代，当五名黑人和拉丁裔青少年被控在中央公园强奸一名女子时，他在《纽约时报》刊登整版广告，呼吁纽约州恢复死刑。这些青少年后来被洗清罪名，并从该市获得了赔偿。网飞最近的一部纪录片让这起案件重新进入公众视野，也引发了人们对当时负责该案的检察官的批评。
“中央公园五人组”曾在2024年民主党全国代表大会上亮相。
根据追踪死刑执行情况的非营利组织死刑信息中心的数据，目前美国死囚牢房总人数约为2000人。其中超过500人在加利福尼亚州，该州州长加文·纽瑟姆于2019年实施了死刑暂停令。
根据该中心的数据，全美有27个州保留死刑，但其中四个州——加利福尼亚州、俄勒冈州、俄亥俄州和宾夕法尼亚州——已暂停死刑执行。
2015年，内布拉斯加州州议会态度坚决，推翻了时任州长皮特·里基茨关于废除死刑法案的否决。但里基茨这位共和党人态度同样坚定。次年，他资助了一项公民倡议，以推翻州议会的决定。该倡议获得成功，内布拉斯加州于2016年恢复了死刑。里基茨如今是美国参议员，正在寻求连任。
同年，加利福尼亚州选民否决了一项废除死刑的公投提案，尽管纽瑟姆后来签署的暂停令实际停止了死刑执行。美国民众对死刑的支持率有所下降，但当选民有机会直接表决时，红蓝州的多数选民都保留了死刑制度。
Attitudes on the death penalty have changed since Christa Pike was convicted. Using the issue for politics hasn’t
2026-10-02T20:40:43.067Z / CNN
When Christa Pike tortured and killed her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995, support for the death penalty was near its peak in the United States.
More than three-quarters of Americans, 77%, were in favor of capital punishment, according to polling by Gallup at the time.
Things changed in the decades Pike spent on death row before attempts to execute her by lethal injection failed Wednesday night.
About half the country, 52%, support the death penalty in the most recent Gallup data from 2025, although it’s important to note that a handful of Southern states – led by Florida, Texas and Oklahoma – are responsible for the bulk of executions today.
In the years before Pike’s crime, the death penalty had been a major issue in US politics and support for it has been worn as a sort of badge by politicians.
In 1992, then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton left the presidential campaign trail to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, who was convicted in the 1981 killing of a police officer. Clinton’s presence in the state wasn’t required, but observers noted it fed into the candidate’s desire to appear tough on crime.
Clinton was proud not to grant clemency to Rector. “We should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent as Democrats,” he said from a debate stage in New Hampshire the day before his trip.
Subsequent Supreme Court cases outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities would likely have prevented that execution from happening today (Rector had brain damage from a gunshot wound). The court has also barred executions for non-homicide offenses and crimes committed by juveniles.
Related: He executed death row prisoners. Then they came back to haunt him.
Both Democrats and Republicans have leaned into capital punishment to look ‘tough on crime’
A few years later, Clinton further proved his toughness as president by signing the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, part of a larger crime bill engineered by then-Sen. Joe Biden, by which “Congress established constitutional procedures for imposition of the death penalty for 60 offenses under 13 existing and 28 newly-created Federal capital statutes.”
Compare that to the 2016 presidential campaign of Clinton’s wife Hillary, when the death penalty was not a major issue at debates, but abolishing it was part of Democrats’ official party platform.
A few factors likely contributed to the shift.
The exoneration of at least 200 people who had been on death row since 1973 raised questions about whether the justice system could be trusted to mete out the ultimate penalty.
In 2000, then-Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan became the first to impose a moratorium on the death penalty after more than a dozen death row inmates in that state were found to be innocent over the course of decades. Some other states have followed suit and Illinois abolished its death penalty in 2011.
Racial disparities in the application of the death penalty raised questions about how it was pursued and led courts in some states to outlaw it.
Biden, architect of the 1990s crime bill that supercharged the federal death penalty, campaigned for president on a platform of abolishing the death penalty at the federal level in 2020, but Democrats failed to follow up on the campaign promise.
However, Biden did, somewhat controversially, commute the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row.
Those remaining on federal death row are: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
That mass commutation is probably the only reason there has not been an uptick in federal executions since President Donald Trump took office. During his first term Trump re-invigorated the death penalty at the federal level, carrying out 13 executions in the final seven months of his term.
Trump has frequently called for the execution of drug dealers and others.
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!” Trump wrote in one illustrative social media post.
When he returned to office Trump signed an executive order promising to pursue the death penalty where possible, particularly for the killing of law enforcement officers or for killings perpetrated by undocumented immigrants.
Trump has been a public advocate of the death penalty for decades. He took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for New York to reinstate its death penalty when five black and Latino teenagers were charged with raping a woman in Central Park in the 1990s. The teens were later exonerated and received settlements from the city. A recent Netflix documentary has brought the case back into the spotlight and drawn criticism of the prosecutor who oversaw the case.
The Central Park 5 appeared at the Democratic National Convention in 2024.
The total US population of death row inmates is around 2,000, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks capital punishment. More than 500 of those are in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted a moratorium in 2019.
Twenty-seven states have the death penalty, although there are moratoriums in place in four of those – California, Oregon, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to DPI.
In 2015,Nebraska’s state legislature felt so strongly about the issue that it overrode then-Gov. Pete Ricketts veto of a bill to abolish capital punishment. But Ricketts, a Republican, felt strongly too. The following year, he helped bankroll a voter initiative to override the state legislature. It succeeded, and Nebraska reinstated the death penalty in 2016. Ricketts is now a US senator running for reelection.
That same year, Californians rejected a ballot initiative to repeal the death penalty, although the moratorium signed Newsom would later halt the practice. Support for the death penalty has flagged in the US, but when voters get the opportunity, majorities in both red and blue states have kept it in place.
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