Matter of life or death

Gary Gauger had gotten up late the morning his parents were killed. It wasn't until the next morning, going into the garage to get a motorcycle part for a family friend who had come by, that he discovered his father lying on the floor, his throat slit. Later than morning, after he called 911, his mother was found slain too.

Police in McHenry County, Ill. arrested Gauger. A judge later gave him a death sentence — for murders it turns out were committed by members of a local motorcycle gang.

Gauger's case is one more cautionary tale, say opponents of the death penalty. As for Gauger himself, released from prison in 1996 after serving 3 1/2 years, wrongful convictions like his are only one reason to abolish capital punishment.

"It's a barbaric practice," he says about killing people who have killed people. "It reduces us to the killer's level. We're nothing but a gang looking for retribution."

Gauger will be in Utah next week to speak at a death penalty symposium at Utah Valley State College. The event, which runs Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 19 and 20, will explore shifting public opinion about the death penalty, and to detail reforms that could reduce the number of wrongful convictions.

Nationally, support for the death penalty has fallen in the past decade — from 80 percent in 1994 to 74 percent in 2005, according to Gallup polls. Other polls have put the number even lower, in the two-thirds range.

In Utah, where the firing squad execution of Gary Gilmore in 1977 marked the national reinstatement of the death penalty, we're more likely to want an eye-for-an-eye: A 2003 Deseret Morning News-KSL poll found that 78 percent of Utahns favor the death penalty.

But nationally, when poll respondents are given a choice — the death penalty or life in prison without parole (an alternative now available in all 32 states that permit executions) — support for the death penalty drops considerably: to 39 percent according to a 2005 CBS poll; 56 percent according to Gallup.

Although the numbers indicate a public in flux, it's clear that many Americans still can't imagine life without the death penalty despite the fact that every major religion but two has taken a stand against putting killers to death, says Michael Radelet, chair of the department of sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.