Most Americans, and notably men, whites and Republicans, continue to support the death penalty, according to a Gallup poll published.
According to the survey carried out in October among 1,025 people, some 64 per cent of Americans say they are in favour of capital punishment compared to some 29 per cent against.
However, asked about the alternative of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, the public split with 49 per cent saying the death penalty remained the best option, compared to 46 per cent who opted for life in jail.
The survey was unveiled on the same day that a jury in Connecticut sentenced to death a paroled burglar convicted of the notoriously gruesome home invasion murders of a mother and two daughters in 2007.
The jury recommended a death sentence for each of the six capital charges against 47-year-old Steven Hayes, in a rare move in the northeastern state which has only carried out one execution in 35 years.
Half of those asked (49 per cent) in the Gallup survey said the death penalty is not imposed often enough, while 18 per cent said it is used too often.
Similarly 58 per cent said the death penalty was fairly applied compared with 36 per cent who said it was applied unfairly, saying for example that some minority groups were more likely to be sentenced to death than others.
Some 71 per cent of men overwhelmingly said they were in favour of the death penalty, with 69 per cent of white people saying they approved of capital punishment and 78 per cent of Republican voters.
Some 58 per cent of women said they agreed with executing offenders, as did 55 per cent of non-whites and 55 per cent of those who identified themselves as Democratic supporters.
Americans have been mostly overwhelmingly in favour of the death penalty since 1936 when Gallup began to carry out its surveys on the issue.
In 1936, 59 per cent of Americans declared they supported capital punishment. The figures dipped in the late 1950s through to the 1970s and reached an all-time low of 42 per cent support in 1966.
But by 1994, 80 per cent of Americans said they were in favour of the death penalty.
The poll was carried out between October 7 and 10 by telephone among 1,025 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
