Only 15 percent of Mass. residents support the death penalty for Tsarnaev

A new poll shows that support for the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has decreased in recent months among Massachusetts residents.

Only 15 percent of Boston residents believe that Tsarnaev should be executed, according to the poll. And while almost a third of Massachusetts residents reported support for the death penalty, just 18.9 percent thought Tsarnaev should receive it. That's a significant decrease from a Boston Globe poll in September 2013, which found that 33 percent of Massachusetts residents favored the death penalty for the bomber.

"It seems that voters have concluded that Tsarnaev does not deserve a quick death, but rather should spend the remainder of his days in a windowless cell contemplating the heinous acts that put him there," Frank Perullo, president of Sage Systems LLC, which conducted the poll, told The Boston Globe. “To voters, it would seem death is too easy an escape."

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A jury is in the midst of Tsarnaev's trial's penalty phase, in which they will decide whether to sentence him to the death penalty or life in prison.