12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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’…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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…

12:01 The Death Penalty in Context

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’…