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Washington • Even as President Barack Obama tries to make a hard case for overhauling sentences, rehabilitating prisoners and confronting racial bias in policing, he has been less clear about the death penalty.

Obama has hinted that his support for capital punishment is eroding, but he has refused to discuss what he might call for.

A Justice Department review has dragged on for 18 months with little mention or momentum. The president recently repeated he is "deeply concerned" about the death penalty's implementation, though he also acknowledges the issue has not been a top priority.

"I have not traditionally been opposed to the death penalty in theory, but in practice it's deeply troubling," Obama told the Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism group, citing racial bias, wrongful convictions and questions about "gruesome and clumsy" executions. His delay in proposing solutions, he said, was because "I got a whole lot of other things to do as well."

Obama said he plans to weigh in, and considers the issue part of his larger, legacy-minded push for an overhaul of the criminal justice system.

White House officials say the president is looking for an appropriate response and wading through the legal ramifications.

Capital prosecutions are down across the United States. A shortage of lethal injection drugs has meant de facto freezes in several states and at the federal level. Spurred in part by encouragement from Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, advocates are debating whether the time is right to push the court to take a fresh look at whether the death penalty is constitutional.

A solid majority — 61 percent — of the public supports the death penalty in murder cases, but that share has crept downward while opposition has inched up, according to a Gallup poll last month.

Obama isn't alone in struggling with the issue.

"We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied and, very unfortunately, often times in a discriminatory way," Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said. "So I think we have to take a hard look at it." She also said she does "not favor abolishing" it in all cases.

For Clinton's Democratic presidential rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the issue is settled. "I just don't think the state itself, whether it's the state government or federal government, should be in the business of killing people," he said.

On the Republican side, candidate Jeb Bush says he's swayed by his Catholic faith and is "conflicted."

"We should reform it," he told NBC's "Meet the Press." ''If it's to be used as a deterrent, it has to be reformed. It can't take 25 years. That does no one any good. Neither the victims nor the state is solving this problem with that kind of tangled judicial process."

In September, Pope Francis stood before Congress and urged that the death penalty be abolished. Obama specifically noted the comment when talking about the speech to aides. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was "influenced" by what the pope said.

Such hints have death penalty opponents likening Obama's deliberations to his gradual shift toward supporting gay marriage.