In the lat­est pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, mem­bers of the DPIC staff dis­cuss key themes from the 2018 Year End Report. Robert Dunham, Ngozi Ndulue, and Anne Holsinger delve into the major death-penal­ty trends and news items of the year, includ­ing the ​“extend­ed trend” of gen­er­a­tional lows in death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions, elec­tion results that indi­cate the decline will like­ly con­tin­ue, and the pos­si­ble impact of Pope Francis’s change to Catholic teach­ing on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. They explore the rea­sons for reduced death-penal­ty usage, high­light­ing the sto­ries of peo­ple who were exon­er­at­ed in 2018, the theme of exe­cut­ing peo­ple with char­ac­ter­is­tics that make them vul­ner­a­ble to unfair legal pro­ceed­ings, and the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing execution methods.

DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham not­ed the impor­tance of the shrink­ing death-row pop­u­la­tion, say­ing, ​“Death row is declin­ing in size even as the num­ber of exe­cu­tions is declin­ing, which sug­gests that the decline is a result of the ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as opposed to it actu­al­ly being car­ried out.” He explains the lack of death sen­tences in sev­er­al tra­di­tion­al death-penal­ty states, includ­ing Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. ​“The biggest change is the avail­abil­i­ty of qual­i­ty indi­gent defense,” Dunham said, adding that the adop­tion of life with­out parole as a sen­tenc­ing option has also been a major contributing factor.

Dunham address­es the theme of inad­e­quate legal process, say­ing that the cur­rent sys­tem fails to ensure that pris­on­ers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are ful­ly upheld. ​“If we want the death penal­ty in the United States, … it’s imper­a­tive that it be able to accu­rate­ly assess whether some­body was fair­ly tried, whether some­body was fair­ly sen­tenced, and whether the indi­vid­ual deserves to live or die,” he said. Those pro­ce­dur­al fail­ures, and the secre­cy that sur­rounds exe­cu­tions, have cre­at­ed a ​“dis­trust” among the pub­lic that Dunham pre­dicts with have a ​“pro­longed and lin­ger­ing effect.” ​“In 2018, death sen­tences were down, exe­cu­tions were down for a vari­ety of rea­sons, but I think one of the rea­sons that’s going to last and con­tribute to a con­tin­ued reduc­tion in the future is that more and more peo­ple think that we can’t trust the states to car­ry it out,” Dunham concluded.

(Discussions with DPIC, 2018 Year End Report, December 21, 2018.) Listen to the pod­cast here. Read The Death Penalty in 2018: Year End Report. See Podcasts and Reports.

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