New DPIC Podcast: DPIC’s New Report on the Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty

In the June 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger and Data Storyteller Tiana Herring discuss the latest Racial Justice Storytelling Report, Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty. The report examines the history of Tennessee’s capital punishment system, documenting the continued impact of racial discrimination and racial violence on the administration of the death penalty. Ms. Herring, the author, provides an overview of the report, explores key findings, explains its relationship to DPIC’s earlier work, and identifies similar and unique trends in Tennessee. 

This timely report comes after Tennessee suspended executions amidst serious flaws in their execution protocol and as recent legislative efforts seek to expand execution methods. A statement by Tennessee State Representative Paul Sherrell earlier this year to include hanging by a tree as an execution method “indicates that there’s a lack of understanding about the history of the death penalty in Tennessee, and the racial dynamics of capital punishment as well,” said Ms. Herring. 

Like Oklahoma, the report identified patterns of geographic arbitrariness and disproportionate death sentences for white-victim cases in Tennessee. Ms. Herring noted that “Preferential valuing of white victims in the death penalty is very reminiscent of the lynching days, where people who were accused of harming white victims in particular were more likely to be on the receiving end of some form of lethal punishment.” Tennessee has a long history of racial terror groups and vigilante justice, with groups like the KKK originating in the state. 

Ms. Herring hopes that legislators and policymakers will understand that “the past really isn’t the past… The legacies of racial terror will continue to inform the use of capital punishment if we don’t acknowledge where capital punishment comes from in this state…We can use history to inform how we’re going to move forward.” 

You can listen to the podcast here.