12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ninth Bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the implications of the new Catholic Catechism promulgated by Pope Francis, which deemed the death penalty “inadmissible” in all cases and committed the Church to working to abolish capital punishment in the United States and worldwide. Saying “human dignity is at center o...

Bharat Malkani, senior lecturer in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and author of the 2018 book Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition, speaks with DPIC’s executive director Robert Dunham and Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, about the historical links between slavery, lynching, Jim Crow and the death penalty and...

Keelah Williams, assistant professor of psychology at Hamilton College in New York, speaks with DPIC executive director Robert Dunham about her research on the death penalty and resource scarcity — a concept from evolutionary psychology that studies how people react to social conditions in an environment with limited resources. Williams and a team of researchers from Arizona State University, wher...

H.E. Miller, Jr. and Bradley MacLean, authors of a recent study on the application of Tennessee's death penalty (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/study-the-death-penalty-in-tennessee-is-a-cruel-lottery), join DPIC's Anne Holsinger to discuss the findings from their article, Tennessee's Death Penalty Lottery. Miller and MacLean examined whether death sentences and executions in Tennessee are influ...

Harvard Law Professor Carol Steiker, co-author of the highly acclaimed book, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/books-courting-death-the-supreme-court-and-capital-punishment), joins DPIC’s Robin Konrad for a provocative discussion of the past and future of America’s death penalty. Professor Steiker, who served as a clerk for Supreme Court Ju...

New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof used the power of his pen to focus national attention on the troubling case of California death-row prisoner, Kevin Cooper and to urge Governor Jerry Brown to authorize DNA testing that could resolve outstanding issues of Cooper’s guilt or innocence. Kristof’s May 20 column in the Sunday Times asked: Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murde...

Alfred Dewayne Brown was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 in Harris County, Texas, for the murder of a police officer. Brian Stolarz, attorney and author of the recent novel Grace and Justice on Death Row, represented Brown in his post-conviction appeals and, in 2015, won his freedom. In this podcast, Mr. Stolarz speaks with DPIC’s Robin Konrad about the legal issues in Brown’s cas...

Stephen B. Bright, the former President of the Southern Center for Human Rights, discusses the ongoing problem of racial discrimination in jury selection in death-penalty cases—an issue he has argued three times in the U.S. Supreme Court. He speaks with DPIC’s Anne Holsinger about the most recent of those cases, Foster v. Chatman, in which the Court granted Mr. Foster a new trial as a result of in...

Lawyer Thomas Carver joins Robin Konrad, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, to discuss the case of his client, Ulysses Jones, a terminally ill federal prisoner who was charged with capital murder in Springfield, Missouri. Carver, who has been practicing law in Missouri for over forty years, explains what happened in his client’s case, how he and his team avoided a death sentence for...

In 2016, both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death-sentencing statute. Since then, the Florida courts and legislature have been figuring out how to apply those decisions to the nearly 400 condemned prisoners on the state’s death row. Executive Director Robert Dunham interviews Karen Gottlieb, the Co-Director of the Florida Center for Capital Representati...

Robin Konrad, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, interviews University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett about his new book End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice. Professor Garrett researched and analyzed all the death sentences imposed in the U.S. during the past 25 years to determine what factors have led to the precipitous decline in t...

Death penalty proponents have long asserted that capital punishment advances public safety by deterring murders, and this, they say, is especially true when it comes to protecting police officers. The Death Penalty Information Center recently conducted an analysis of murder data from 1987-2015 to determine whether the numbers support that claim. DPIC Fellow Seth Rose speaks with Executive Director...

Ohio has not carried out an execution since the botched execution of Dennis McGuire in January 2014, but is scheduled to resume executions on July 26, 2017. In the past several years, the State has revised its lethal-injection protocol and has created a task force that studied Ohio’s death-penalty system. DPIC’s Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Michael Benza, Senior Instructor in Law at...

Christina Swarns, litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the case of Texas death-row prisoner Duane Buck and the impact of racial bias on determinations of future dangerousness in death penalty cases. Ms. Swarns represented Mr. Buck in the U.S. Supreme Court in overturning his death sentence after his own lawyer pr...

In April 2017, Arkansas scheduled a record eight executions in eleven days. Four ultimately were stayed, and four were carried out. DPIC staff members Robin Konrad and Anne Holsinger interview Scott Braden and Julie Vandiver, two of the lawyers who represented the condemned Arkansas prisoners. Scott and Julie discuss the legal issues in the cases, describe the controversial executions, and explain...

DPIC staff members Robert Dunham, Robin Konrad, and Anne Holsinger explain Arkansas' plan to execute seven prisoners over an 11-day period beginning April 17. They discuss the state's reasons for the condensed execution schedule, current litigation related to lethal injection drugs, and the risks of this unprecedented rate of executions. Additional background information on the Arkansas' execution...

In observance of Women's History Month, DPIC staff members Anne Holsinger and Robin Konrad interview Mary Atwell, Ph. D., one of the nation’s foremost experts on women on death row. Dr. Atwell is Professor Emerita of Criminal Justice at Radford University and author of three books on capital punishment, most recently Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender and Capital Punishment. The podcast discusses...

Robin Konrad, Director of Research and Special Projects, interviews Isaiah McCoy, the nation's 157th death-row exoneree, and his lawyers, Michael Wiseman and Herbert Mondros. McCoy was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Delaware in 2012. After winning a new trial in 2015, he was acquitted of all charges in January 2017. McCoy's case featured several systemic problems that plague the death...

DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham and Director of Research and Special Projects Robin Konrad discuss the findings and themes of the 2016 DPIC Year End Report. This year marked historic lows in death sentences, executions, and public support for the death penalty. They explore the reasons for the declines, look at what this year's election results say about the death penalty, and describe the c...

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral argument in Moore v. Texas and consider the constitutionality of the state’s approach to deciding whether a defendant is intellectually disabled, Cornell Law School Professor John Blume joins us to share his expertise on intellectual disability and the death penalty. He provides context on the Supreme Court's 2002 decision, Atkins v. Virginia, which...

Law professor and author John Bessler joins DPIC executive director Robert Dunham to discuss "Against the Death Penalty," a book version of Justice Stephen Breyer's historic dissent in *Glossip v. Gross* in which he questions the constitutionality of the death penalty. Professor Bessler edited the book and wrote an extensive introduction explaining the significance of the opinion. In a wide-rangin...

Today, DPIC launches a new podcast series, "Discussions With DPIC," which will feature monthly, unscripted conversations with death penalty experts on a wide variety of topics. The inaugural episode features a conversation between Texas Defender Services staff attorney Kate Black and DPIC host Anne Holsinger, who discuss the case of Jeffrey Wood and Texas' unusual legal doctrine known as the "law...