The Impact of Information on an Individual's Support of the Death Penalty: A Partial Test of the Marshall Hypothesis among College Students

In Furman v. Georgia, Justice Marshall hypothesized that informed individuals would not support the death penalty. To test this hypothesis, survey results from 730 students at a Michigan university were used. Students read one of three essays; one focusing on death penalty deterrence research, another on the chances of sentencing an innocent person to death, and the third on the general reasons for punishing offenders (i.e., the control essay). The innocence essay resulted in a small but statistically significant reduction of support. There was no statistically significant reduction in support for the death penalty among the deterrence and control essay groups. The findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.