Death Penalty

Why Do Americans Support the Death Penalty, Despite Wrongful Convictions?

Reformers need to take into account people’s fear of crime and human predators.

J.D. Tuccille | 8.12.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustation: Pinal County Sherif's Office/Phartisan/Dreamstime)

Amidst arguments over the morality of the death penalty and mistakes made in deciding who deserves punishment, some situations remind us why capital punishment retains support. Case in point: murder charges against Pete Van Winkle and Tracy Hampton for killing fellow prison inmate Kenneth Thompson, all three of whom were already on death row, in Pinal County, Arizona. Despite repeated revelations of mistaken convictions of the innocent and other perversions of justice, capital punishment remains popular because people want such psychopaths to never again pose a threat to life and safety.

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Arguments For and Against Capital Punishment

According to news reports, Van Winkle originally landed on death row because in 2008 he beat and strangled a fellow inmate in the Maricopa County jail. "After the attack, Van Winkle was seen dragging Cotton's body out of the cell and attempting to throw it over a second-floor railing," writes Mitchell Koch of WREG. "Hampton was serving a death sentence for the May 17, 2001, murders of Charles Findley and Tanya Ramsdell, as well as Ramsdell's unborn child." Hampton supposedly killed Findley because he told the police "where Hampton could be found to serve a traffic ticket," while Ramsdell was killed because she might have been pregnant with a mixed-race child. The inmate they recently allegedly killed, Thompson, was in prison for the........

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