Replication data for: The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence

Since 2003 Frank Baumgartner and colleagues have been involved in a project tracing the changing politics and issue-definitions associated with the death penalty. The question is to determine the degree to which the new \"innocence\" frame is displacing the traditional \"morality\" frame relating to this issue. Important substantive issues about the future of the death penalty in America can be addressed as well as difficult methodological issues concerning how to study the links among issue-definition, public opinion, the media, and public policy. With Suzanna De Boef, graduate student Amber Boydstun, and occasional other collaborators on different parts of the project, Baumgartner and others have addressed a number of questions relating to these issues. The research has focused on substantive issues relating to how the media has covered the death penalty (with particular reference to the use of various frames), public opinion (in particular the cognitive process by which individuals react to the \"moral\" and the \"innocence \" frame, based on experiments), and the history of the issue since 1960.