“I realized that this is such a protracted injustice with so many twists and turns over a quarter of a century. So many people have been exploited in the process that it really is a case that's emblematic of many terrible issues in our criminal justice system, and I felt like in order to capture all of that in its totality, I wanted to slow down and really unpack this case in a meaningful way,” explains Ms. Shelburne on why she decided to create the Earwitness podcast. She shares the challenges she and her team faced, including the “fading memories of people … [who] just couldn't remember the finite details that we felt were so crucial ... to pin down. Luckily, we were able to get our hands on quite a bit of source material through.”

Ms. Blakinger’s personal experience with prison has given her a unique perspective. In her book, Corrections in Ink: A Memoir (2022), she powerfully tells the story of her personal journey beginning as a young competitive figure skater with an eating disorder, through addiction and incarceration, and ultimately to her transformation into journalist and advocate.

“The most critical recommendation that we made,” Governor Henry said, “was that unless and until significant reforms occur in the entire death penalty process, we should not be executing people in Oklahoma. … [I]f we're going to have the death penalty in Oklahoma, my goodness, it ought to be done right.” Lester strongly agrees. “The system, if we don't take up the bulk of these recommendations, is broken,” he says. “And we need to fix the system before moving forward.”

The research wasn’t “just a survey of what jurors think matters,” Rountree explains. It also asked and answers important questions on “how does this fit in to their moral decision making?”

Read Meredith Rountree and Mary Rose, The Complexities of Conscience: Reconciling Death Penalty Law with Capital Jurors’ Concerns, 69 Buffalo Law Review 1237 (Dec. 2021).

Becton is the first woman and first African American to serve as District Attorney in Contra Costa. Prior to becoming District Attorney in 2017, she served for twenty-two years as a judge in the county, where she was elected as the Contra County court’s Presiding Judge. She discusses with Dunham how her lived experiences shape how she sees her role as a District Attorney, the pushback against reform prosecutors who are women of color by those interested in maintaining the status quo, and the larger national movement to change America’s approach to criminal justice.

Chen describes the Becket Fund’s involvement in Ramirez and other cases involving the free exercise of religion in the execution chamber, and traces the history of audible prayer and clergy touch during executions. Texas’ policy is out of step with historical practices, including its own pre-2019 regulations, Chen explains. Chen and Dunham conclude their discussion exploring the Becket Fund’s belief that the fundamental human right to religious liberty must be protected, even “for people who might be different from us, who might have different life circumstances,” including those on death row.

Krinsky and Ndulue explore a range of issues during the podcast, including the injustice of the death penalty, the power of prosecutors to create change, the evolving relationship between prosecutors and law enforcement, the importance of transparency and public accountability, and myths about public safety. “In my mind,” Krinsky says, “eliminating capital punishment improves public safety.”

Bookman and Dunham explore a wide range of systemic death-penalty problems addressed in the book, which was released in May 2021. The topics include mental illness, racial injustice, judicial and juror bias, ineffective representation, and prosecutorial misconduct.

Williams, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explains how 2020 has been a landmark year on the question of tribal sovereignty and the death penalty. He and Dunham discuss the impact of McGirt’s affirmance of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s sovereignty over lands within the historical borders of the Creek Reservation, including the voiding of the death sentence imposed in Oklahoma’s state courts on Creek citizen Patrick Dwayne Murphy. Williams then discusses the federal government’s “very troubling” disregard of native sovereignty less than a month later in scheduling and carrying out the execution of Navajo citizen Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row, over the opposition of the Navajo government and tribal leaders across the country.

Hill and Dunham discuss the recent North Carolina Supreme Court rulings in two Racial Justice Act cases that have the potential to change the entire landscape of North Carolina’s death penalty. Hill describes North Carolina’s history of blatant race discrimination in capital cases, how the same types of racial bias that have been found in the North Carolina cases are present in death penalty cases across the country, and the broader meaning the Racial Justice Act cases have at this transformative moment in America’s response to racial injustice.

Henry describes the critical, in-person work that must take place to investigate innocence claims, determine a prisoner’s competency to be executed, and tell a prisoner’s story in a clemency petition, and why it is impossible to adequately perform that work while complying with efforts to protect the public health. She also discusses the danger of performing executions during the pandemic, and the reasons why states should put executions on hold to ensure the health of prisoners, witnesses, and corrections staff.

Read the transcript here.

Read CCATDP's 2017 report, The Right Way, describing the growth in conservative sponsorship of death-penalty repeal legislation.

Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as death-row prison warden Bernadine Williams and Aldis Hodge as death-row prisoner Anthony Woods. The film focuses on Bernadine, Chukwu explains, and “navigates her emotional and psychological down spiral as she prepares to execute … Woods.” Clemency won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the Sundance Film Festival in February 2019, the first time the award has been given to a movie directed by an African-American woman.

Williams and a team of researchers from Arizona State University, where she earned her Ph.D., examined the relationship between the actual and perceived scarcity of resources and support for capital punishment. She describes the team’s findings that countries with greater resource scarcity and income inequality were more likely to have a death penalty, as were U.S. states with lower per capita income and shorter life expectancy. She also discusses two experimental studies the team conducted to assess the effects of resource scarcity on individuals’ views of capital punishment. That research found that study participants who had been shown information and images of economic hardship tended to be more supportive of the death penalty than those of the same political ideology and socioeconomic status who had been given information and images about economic prosperity. She explains the results, saying, “If your resources are limited, then you have to be more choosey in how you invest them. So, in the context of punishment decisions, we think this means you become less willing to risk repeated offending, and more favorable towards punishments that eliminate the threat.”