Indeed they are. Subjects of the Peoples' Republik of Kalifornia like myself will be voting on Proposition 34 which seeks to abolish the DP here in Kalifornia. It has been voted on twice in the past (last time was 1978) and we voted to keep it by a margin of 71% to 29%. The political landscape has changed in the decades since so who knows how this one with turn out.
In CCW states, the possibility of being immediately sent to your afterlife by an armed victim does more to deter crime than the possibility of judicially-imposed death-penalty ever would.