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.

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