12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

In the July 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Executive Director Robin M. Maher speaks with Samuel Spital, Associate Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). To mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Gregg v. Georgia, they explore the history of the landmark case, the pivotal role played by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the litigation...

In the May 2026 episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Dr. Naomi Yavneh Klos, Dean of the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, and a prominent scholar of the Holocaust. Dr. Yavneh Klos is a founding member of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, a New-Orleans area group formed to oppose the use of nitrogen gas as a method of execut...

In the April 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sherrerd Hartness, a writer and speaker who advocates for victims’ families and co-victims of murder. In 1977, Ms. Hartness’s sister, Carlotta, was killed—an experience that shaped her understanding of the long-term emotional impact of violent crime on families and communities. Her wo...

In the March 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elizabeth Vartkessian (pictured), the executive director of Advancing Real Change (ARC), a national non-profit that works to provide mitigation investigation services and training that ensure the full life histories of individuals facing extreme sentences are presented to judges and j...

Taylor Bonner and Furonda Brasfield speak with DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger about the racial history of the death penalty and how current data and narratives about racial justice play a role in advocacy on the death penalty. As the Death Penalty Information Center’s Racial Justice Storyteller, Ms. Bonner blends data and history to tell the story of the death penalty throughout the U.S. Ms....

In the January 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Aramis Ayala, Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution. Ms. Ayala made history in 2016 as Florida’s first Black state attorney and later became the first Black woman in Florida to be nominated for state attorney general by a major party. In the podcast, she discusses her deci...

In the November 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Captain Art Cody, Dr. Steven Xenakis, and DPI Staff Attorney Leah Roemer about DPI’s new report, Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty. Their conversation covers the legal and scientific reasons behind the overrepresentation of veterans on dea...

In October 2025’s episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI managing director Anne Holsinger interviews Maha Jweied. Ms. Jweied, the CEO of The Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ), is an internationally recognized expert on the role of the private sector in justice systems and an advocate for improved access to justice worldwide. During the podcast, Ms. Jweied describes RB...

In the September 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s managing director Anne Holsinger interviews Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) expert Katherine Judson. Ms. Judson is Executive Director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences and former Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma Litigation Coordinator for the Wisconsin Innocence Project. In the episode, Ms. Judson provide...

In the August 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Melanie Kalmanson, a Florida attorney and author of the Substack newsletter Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty. Ms. Kalmanson’s newsletter compiles data on legislation, capital trials, death sentences, and executions in Florida. In the podcast, she discusses how she started following t...

In this month’s podcast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sam Levin, a correspondent with The Guardian who covers criminal justice and the legal system, and Jimmy Jenkins, a criminal justice reporter for The Arizona Republic, about the challenges they encounter when reporting on the increasing secretive use of the death penalty.  Mr....

In this month’s podcast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Corinna Barrett Lain, the S.D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the recently published book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. Ms. Lain’s new book challenges a widely held ass...

In this month’s podcast episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Professors Craig Haney and Frank Baumgartner, and DPI’s Staff Attorney Leah Roemer about the legacy of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons and the legal and scientific landscape surrounding the use of the death penalty for young adults ages 18-20. Professors Ba...

In this month’s podcast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sabrina Butler-Smith (pictured), who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death at age 17 for causing the death of her nine-month-old son. After two years and nine months on death row, Ms. Butler-Smith’s conviction was overturned. At a second trial, it was determined that...

Here’s the description for today’s podcast: In the February 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with three experts on California’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). Natasha Minsker, an attorney and consultant, formerly of the ACLU, speaks on the history of the RJA and the impetus for its passage. Genevie Gold, research and writing fellow at the...

In this month’s episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with DPI Communications Associate Hayley Bedard, about The Death Penalty in 2024, which highlights trends and events related to the death penalty. 2024 marked the tenth consecutive year during which fewer than 30 people were executed (25) and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death (26), wh...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPI, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Beth Shelburne, a journalist who has reported on the criminal legal system for over 25 years and creator of the podcast Earwitness. Released in 2023 to critical acclaim, Earwitness tells the story of Toforest Johnson, a death-sentenced man who is facing execution in Alabama despite strong evidence of his...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Executive Director Robin Maher speaks with Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor and expert on the Supreme Court. Professor Vladeck is the author of The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, released in 2023, as well as the weekly newsletter One First, which breaks down the Court’s...

Rereleased for September 2024: In the March 2021 edition of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue is joined by Carine Williams — the Chief Program Strategy Officer at the Innocence Project — for a conversation about innocence, the death penalty, and “the function of freedom.” Reflecting on the gross miscarriage of just...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Leah Roemer, DPIC’s Legal Fellow and a primary author of our recent report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty. Leah graduated from Berkeley Law in 2023, where she participated in the Death Penalty Clinic and earned a certificate in Public Int...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Jessica Sutton, principal attorney with Phillips Black, a nonprofit public interest law firm focused capital defense. Ms. Sutton has represented clients facing the death penalty in more than a dozen jurisdictions across the U.S. and at all stages of proceedings. In recognition of Pride month, Ms. Sutton...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Lamont Hunter, a former Ohio death-sentenced prisoner who was wrongfully convicted of causing the death of his three-year-old son. After nearly 18 years of incarceration, Mr. Hunter was released from Ohio’s death row on June 15, 2023, after pleading guilty to lesser charges in exchange for his freedom. S...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first director of the school’s death penalty clinic and remains the clinic’s co-director, where students have represented individuals facing capital punishment and writ...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Judge Elsa Alcala, who served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 2011 to 2018. In addition to serving as a judge at the appeals and trial level, she worked as a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and most recently as a justice-reform lobbyist during her three-decade career in criminal law. S...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Keri Blakinger, a journalist at the Los Angeles Times and former reporter for the Marshall Project—a nonprofit news organization focused on the U.S. criminal justice system. At the Marshall Project, Ms. Blakinger wrote stories about the human beings in the criminal justice system—a focus that is still a...