Discussions With DPIC

Items: 51 — 60


Discussions With DPIC

Behind the Curtain

Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States

Published: Feb 08, 2019

Robin Konrad, for­mer DPIC Director of Research and Special Projects, joins Executive Director Robert Dunham and cur­rent Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue to dis­cuss DPIC’s November 2018 report, Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States. Konrad, the lead author of the report, gives an overview of the recent expan­sion of secre­cy in the use of the death penal­ty. She explains the ubiq­ui­ty of secre­cy poli­cies, say­ing every­body has some type of secre­cy pro­vi­sion” relat­ed to the sources of exe­cu­tion drugs or the…

Discussions With DPIC

Year End Report 2018

Published: Dec 21, 2018

Members of the DPIC staff dis­cuss key themes from the 2018 Year End Report in the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC. 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…

Discussions With DPIC

The New Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty and Human Dignity

A Conversation with Cardinal Blase Cupich

Published: Dec 01, 2018

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ninth Bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the impli­ca­tions of the new Catholic Catechism pro­mul­gat­ed by Pope Francis, which deemed the death penal­ty inad­mis­si­ble” in all cas­es and com­mit­ted the Church to work­ing to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States and world­wide. Saying human dig­ni­ty is at cen­ter of all we say and do,” Cardinal Cupich explains how the Church’s com­mit­ment to action on the death penal­ty fits into its broad­er teach­ings about social jus­tice and the…

Discussions With DPIC

Professor Bharat Malkani Explores the Relationship Between Slavery and Slavery-Abolition Strategies and the Modern U.S. Death Penalty

Published: Oct 25, 2018

Bharat Malkani, senior lec­tur­er in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and author of the 2018 book Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition, speaks with DPIC’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham and Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, about the his­tor­i­cal links between slav­ery, lynch­ing, Jim Crow and the death penal­ty and the lessons mod­ern oppo­nents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can learn from the strate­gies employed by slav­ery abo­li­tion­ists. Malkani explores the par­al­lels between the insti­tu­tion­al approach­es of conservative…

Discussions With DPIC

Professor Keelah Williams Explains Research Linking Resource Scarcity” to Support for the Death Penalty

Published: Sep 07, 2018

Keelah Williams, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Hamilton College in New York, speaks with DPIC exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham about her research on the death penal­ty and resource scarci­ty — a con­cept from evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy that stud­ies how peo­ple react to social con­di­tions in an envi­ron­ment with lim­it­ed resources.

Discussions With DPIC

Authors of Death-Penalty Study Discuss Tennessee’s Death Penalty Lottery”

Published: Aug 01, 2018

H.E. Miller, Jr. and Bradley MacLean, authors of a recent study on the appli­ca­tion of Tennessee’s death penal­ty (https://​death​penal​ty​in​fo​.org/​n​e​w​s​/​s​t​u​d​y​-​t​h​e​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​p​e​n​a​l​t​y​-​i​n​-​t​e​n​n​e​s​s​e​e​-​i​s​-​a​-​c​r​u​e​l​-​l​o​ttery), join DPIC’s Anne Holsinger to dis­cuss the find­ings from their arti­cle, Tennessee’s Death Penalty Lottery. Miller and MacLean exam­ined whether death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions in Tennessee are influ­enced by arbi­trary fac­tors like geog­ra­phy, race, and qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The appli­ca­tion of Tennessee’s death penal­ty, they find, is still as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly arbi­trary as any of the sys­tems that were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia in 1972.

Discussions With DPIC

Professor Carol Steiker, Author of Courting Death, Offers an Inside Look at the Supreme Court and the History and Future of America’s Death Penalty

Published: Jun 18, 2018

Harvard Law Professor Carol Steiker, co-author of the high­ly acclaimed book, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (https://​death​penal​ty​in​fo​.org/​n​e​w​s​/​b​o​o​k​s​-​c​o​u​r​t​i​n​g​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​t​h​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​a​n​d​-​c​a​p​i​t​a​l​-​p​u​n​i​s​hment), joins DPIC’s Robin Konrad for a provoca­tive dis­cus­sion of the past and future of America’s death penal­ty. Professor Steiker, who served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, takes us inside the walls of the court for insights on the jus­tices’ approach­es to cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment jurispru­dence and the impact of Justice Marshall’s lega­cy on the Court today. She explains the rela­tion­ship between lynch­ing and the rise of the modern…

Discussions With DPIC

Columnist Nicholas Kristof on The Framing of Kevin Cooper

Published: May 29, 2018

New York Times Pulitzer Prize win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof used the pow­er of his pen to focus nation­al atten­tion on the trou­bling case of California death-row pris­on­er, Kevin Cooper and to urge Governor Jerry Brown to autho­rize DNA test­ing that could resolve out­stand­ing issues of Cooper’s guilt or inno­cence. Kristof’s May 20 col­umn in the Sunday Times asked: Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder? Mr. Kristof joins DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham to answer that ques­tion and to dis­cuss how the Cooper case is the embod­i­ment of some of the…

Discussions With DPIC

Culture of Conviction

A Discussion with Attorney Brian Stolarz on How Houston Prosecutors Sent His Innocent Client, Alfred Dewayne Brown, to Death Row and How Hidden Evidence Set Brown Free

Published: Apr 30, 2018

Alfred Dewayne Brown was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005 in Harris County, Texas, for the mur­der of a police offi­cer. Brian Stolarz, attor­ney and author of the recent nov­el Grace and Justice on Death Row, rep­re­sent­ed Brown in his post-con­vic­tion appeals and, in 2015, won his free­dom. In this pod­cast, Mr. Stolarz speaks with DPIC’s Robin Konrad about the legal issues in Brown’s case, dis­cussing the cul­ture of con­vic­tion and the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct that led to Brown’s wrong­ful con­vic­tion. Stolarz offers sug­ges­tions that he believes can help…

Discussions With DPIC

Racial Discrimination in Death-Penalty Jury Selection

A Conversation with Steve Bright

Published: Mar 30, 2018

Stephen B. Bright, the for­mer President of the Southern Center for Human Rights, dis­cuss­es the ongo­ing prob­lem of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion in death-penal­ty cas­es — an issue he has argued three times in the U.S. Supreme Court. He speaks with DPIC’s Anne Holsinger about the most recent of those cas­es, Foster v. Chatman, in which the Court grant­ed Mr. Foster a new tri­al as a result of inten­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion by Columbus, Georgia pros­e­cu­tors. He explains how the pros­e­cu­tors’ notes, a piece of evi­dence that is rarely avail­able, were crit­i­cal in…