12:01 The Death Penalty in Context: Elizabeth Vartkessian on Mitigation and ​“The Deserving”

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 juries. Ms. Vartkessian is a mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ist who has spent decades inves­ti­gat­ing the lives and back­grounds of indi­vid­u­als fac­ing the death penal­ty in order to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence to juries. Her new book, The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal about American Justice, explores her expe­ri­ence in cap­i­tal defense and her deep pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Wesley Purkey, a fed­er­al pris­on­er exe­cut­ed in 2020.

The con­ver­sa­tion dives into the impor­tant role that mit­i­ga­tion plays in cap­i­tal cas­es, and it explores how mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ists illu­mi­nate the human being accused of com­mit­ting the crime. Ms. Vartkessian explains that mit­i­ga­tion is not just a legal strat­e­gy but a neces­si­ty for pro­vid­ing courts and the jury with the full con­text of a person’s life, which often involves pro­found trau­ma. She describes the inves­tiga­tive process as a thor­ough effort to ​“exca­vate the life his­to­ry,” look­ing at par­ents, grand­par­ents, and the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty to under­stand fam­i­ly pat­terns and social sys­tems like hous­ing and edu­ca­tion which could have shaped the client’s life. Ms. Vartkessian notes about mit­i­ga­tion, ​“it’s real­ly impor­tant to under­stand it’s not an excuse, It’s real­ly all about giv­ing con­text to people.”

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the dis­cus­sion focus­es on Ms. Vartkessian’s book and her time work­ing with fed­er­al death row pris­on­er Wesley Purkey. She reflects on how Mr. Purkey’s case refined her per­son­al under­stand­ing of jus­tice and how peo­ple can tru­ly change. She says, ​“every day he was try­ing to do bet­ter and atone for the harms that he had caused” through a jour­ney of self-improve­ment that includ­ed lov­ing to read and teach­ing him­self Spanish. Beyond Mr. Purkey’s case, Ms. Vartkessian shares that work­ing in mit­i­ga­tion has taught her about the incred­i­ble ​“depth of resilien­cy of the human spir­it”. While a person’s life is often shaped by their ear­ly child­hood expe­ri­ences, human beings main­tain a capac­i­ty for ​“great love, pro­found change, and end­less for­give­ness” if they are sim­ply giv­en the opportunity.