State- and Individual-Level Predictors of Mexican Death Penalty Support

Abstract

Mexico exerts a unique influence on Texas through immigration. As immigrants bring perspectives from their country of origin when they immigrate, studying attitudes toward capital punishment in Mexico may provide insight into ways Mexican immigrants could affect its future practice in Texas. Multilevel modeling is used to examine individual- and state-level predictors of death penalty support among a nationally representative sample of Mexicans. Results indicate age and Catholic affiliation are associated with death penalty support, although not in the expected directions, whereas states bordering the United States are less likely to support capital punishment, despite experiencing less overall peace and a higher average homicide rate. Findings suggest the need for researchers to use culture-specific factors to predict death penalty support.

Pre-Arrest Perceptions of George Zimmerman’s Guilt in the Fatal Trayvon Martin Shooting: Examining Racial Differences in the Presumption of Guilt

“…This variable was then recoded (1 = perceived Zimmerman as guilty of a crime , 0 = perceived Zimmerman as not guilty of a crime or unclear from available information ). Precedent exists for this coding scheme as studies examining death penalty support routinely transform a Likert scale measurement of the dependent variable into a dichotomous measure (e.g., Updegrove & Orrick, 2018). Moreover, Baumer et al (2003) combined don’t know responses with death penalty opposition when dichotomously measuring support for capital punishment.…”

Acculturation and Capital Punishment: The Effect of Mexico Versus United States Cultural Orientations on Public Support for the Death Penalty

“…Responses consisted of strongly oppose, somewhat oppose, don’t know, somewhat support , and strongly support . Following Updegrove and Orrick’s (2018) example, don’t know responses were removed from the sample, while strongly oppose and somewhat oppose responses were coded as 0, and somewhat support and strongly support responses were coded as 1. 5 Almost three quarters (71%) of the sample expressed death penalty support (see Table 1).…”

“…Research on public attitudes toward the death penalty has largely focused on samples from the United States (Stack, 2004). Nevertheless, scholars have studied predictors of death penalty support in countries such as Australia (Kelley & Braithwaite, 1990), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Muftic, Maljevic, Mandic, & Buljubasic, 2015), China (Cao & Cullen, 2001; Jiang, Hu, & Lambert, 2018), India (Lambert, Pasupuleti, Jiang, Jaishankar, & Bhimarasetty, 2008), Japan (Jiang, Pilot, & Saito, 2010; Sato, 2017), Mexico (Brown, Benedict, & Buckler, 2010; Updegrove & Orrick, 2018), Singapore (Chan, Tan, Lee, & Mathi, 2018), South Korea (Choi, Jiang, & Lambert, 2017), and the Netherlands (Hessing, de Keijser, & Elffers, 2003), among others. A related body of work has compared and contrasted predictors of death penalty support between international and U.S. samples (Elechi, Lambert, & Ventura, 2006; Jiang, Lambert, & Wang, 2007; Lambert et al, 2016).…”

“… 5. This is a common practice in research on public attitudes toward the death penalty. For example, Stack (2004) and Updegrove and Orrick (2018) both deleted observations from participants who did not know if they supported or opposed the death penalty. These authors then coded death penalty support dichotomously (1 = support , 0 = oppose ) and estimated logistic regression models.…”