Prior studies have revealed that wrongful conviction may affect people’s view of the death penalty. But few of them explained why people who believed innocent people were executed still supported the death penalty. This study proposes that what matters may not be whether respondents believed that wrongful convictions existed or not, but rather their beliefs about the frequency of it. It examines how different estimates of the rate of wrongful conviction, rather than general concerns of innocence, affect views about capital punishment. Using Gallup data in three years, I found that people’s perceived wrongful conviction rates were negatively associated with support for the death penalty. The mediation analyses show that perceived wrongful conviction rate fully mediated the effect of being Black on death penalty support in all three years of observation. This research indicates quantifying the risk of wrongful convictions plays an important role in understanding people’s death penalty support.

此前的研究表明，错误定罪可能会影响人们对死刑的看法。但很少有人解释为什么相信无辜者会被处决的人仍然支持死刑。这项研究提出，重要的可能不是受访者是否相信错误定罪的存在，而是他们对错误发生频率的看法。它研究了对错误定罪率的不同估计，而不是对无罪的普遍关注，如何影响对死刑的看法。使用三年来的盖洛普数据，我发现人们感知的误判率与支持死刑呈负相关。中介分析表明，在所有三年的观察中，感知错误定罪率完全中介了黑人对死刑支持的影响。这项研究表明，量化错误定罪的风险在理解人们对死刑的支持方面起着重要作用。