"We're closer than we have ever been," said state Sen. Doug Carl (R-Mount Clemens), a sponsor of one of the five resolutions before the Legislature that would allow voters to decide the question next year.
But while Carl said he is close to getting the two-third majority he would need in the Senate to get the question on a statewide ballot, he admits the question could face a more difficult battle in the House.
Similar proposals in previous years have died before reaching the ballot.
A growing number of Senate Democrats - including Minority Leader John Cherry (D-Clio) - are warming to the death penalty, already legal in 38 states.
"While I think there is some value in Michigan's tradition of not having it, I'd say I'm leaning towards supporting the death penalty," Cherry said.
In a statewide poll in 1995, Lansing polling firm EPIC/MRA found 72 percent support among voters, a percentage consistent with other polling in recent years, The Detroit News reported in a story published yesterday.
"There are some crimes so heinous in nature that justice on more than one level requires this to be a potential penalty," said Sen. Michael Bouchard, a Birmingham Republican who has reintroduced a death-penalty resolution.
But others argue that the death penalty is barbaric and that innocent people could be put to death.
"States that have the death penalty are saying individuals can't kill, but society can. That sends the wrong message - or at least a conflicting one," said Dan Manville, an Ann Arbor attorney who specializes in prisoner-rights cases and served three years in prison in the mid-1970s.
Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit agency in Washington, D.C., that opposes capital punishment, argues that it's more costly for taxpayers to execute an inmate than to keep him behind bars for life.
That's because the state pays the legal costs for appeals, which average about eight years, said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director. He also said death-row inmates cost more to house because of the higher security.
"The extra cost for an inmate on death row is roughly $2 million more than what a state spends on prisoners it sentences to life," Dieter said. He estimated that taxpayers spend, on average, about $700,000 during the lifetime of a felon locked up for life.
In 1846, Michigan became the first English-speaking jurisdiction in the world to outlaw capital punishment. Since it became a state in 1837, Michigan has not executed a prisoner.