Discussions With DPI

Discussions With DPI

Published: Sep 12, 2017

Death penal­ty pro­po­nents have long assert­ed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment advances pub­lic safe­ty by deter­ring mur­ders, and this, they say, is espe­cial­ly true when it comes to pro­tect­ing police offi­cers. The Death Penalty Information Center recent­ly con­duct­ed an analy­sis of mur­der data from 1987 – 2015 to deter­mine whether the num­bers sup­port that claim. DPIC Fellow Seth Rose speaks with Executive Director Robert Dunham about the DPIC study and what it tells us about the rela­tion­ship between murder…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Jul 24, 2017

Ohio has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since the botched exe­cu­tion of Dennis McGuire in January 2014, but is sched­uled to resume exe­cu­tions on July 26, 2017. In the past sev­er­al years, the State has revised its lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col and has cre­at­ed a task force that stud­ied Ohio’s death-penal­ty sys­tem. DPIC’s Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Michael Benza, Senior Instructor in Law at Case Western Reserve University and vet­er­an cap­i­tal defense attor­ney, about the results of the…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Jun 28, 2017

Christina Swarns, lit­i­ga­tion direc­tor of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the case of Texas death-row pris­on­er Duane Buck and the impact of racial bias on deter­mi­na­tions of future dan­ger­ous­ness in death penal­ty cas­es. Ms. Swarns rep­re­sent­ed Mr. Buck in the U.S. Supreme Court in over­turn­ing his death sen­tence after his own lawyer pre­sent­ed an expert wit­ness who gave racial­ly biased tes­ti­mo­ny that Mr. Buck posed an increased…

Discussions With DPI

Published: May 30, 2017

In April 2017, Arkansas sched­uled a record eight exe­cu­tions in eleven days. Four ulti­mate­ly were stayed, and four were car­ried out. DPIC staff mem­bers Robin Konrad and Anne Holsinger inter­view Scott Braden and Julie Vandiver, two of the lawyers who rep­re­sent­ed the con­demned Arkansas pris­on­ers. Scott and Julie dis­cuss the legal issues in the cas­es, describe the con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tions, and explain what comes next for the pris­on­ers whose exe­cu­tions were stayed. CONTENT NOTE: This episode…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Apr 13, 2017

DPIC staff mem­bers Robert Dunham, Robin Konrad, and Anne Holsinger explain Arkansas’ plan to exe­cute sev­en pris­on­ers over an 11-day peri­od begin­ning April 17. They dis­cuss the state’s rea­sons for the con­densed exe­cu­tion sched­ule, cur­rent lit­i­ga­tion relat­ed to lethal injec­tion drugs, and the risks of this unprece­dent­ed rate of exe­cu­tions. Additional back­ground infor­ma­tion on the Arkansas’ exe­cu­tions is available…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Mar 24, 2017

In obser­vance of Women’s History Month, DPIC staff mem­bers Anne Holsinger and Robin Konrad inter­view Mary Atwell, Ph.D., one of the nation’s fore­most experts on women on death row. Dr. Atwell is Professor Emerita of Criminal Justice at Radford University and author of three books on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, most recent­ly Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender and Capital Punishment. The pod­cast dis­cuss­es Dr. Atwell’s research and high­lights the themes and pat­terns present in cap­i­tal mur­der cases in…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Feb 16, 2017

Robin Konrad, Director of Research and Special Projects, inter­views Isaiah McCoy, the nation’s 157^th death-row exoneree, and his lawyers, Michael Wiseman and Herbert Mondros. McCoy was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Delaware in 2012. After win­ning a new tri­al in 2015, he was acquit­ted of all charges in January 2017. McCoy’s case fea­tured sev­er­al sys­temic prob­lems that plague the death penal­ty sys­tem: a lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence, eye­wit­ness­es who received deals from the prosecutor…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Dec 22, 2016

DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham and Director of Research and Special Projects Robin Konrad dis­cuss the find­ings and themes of the 2016 DPIC Year End Report. This year marked his­toric lows in death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty. They explore the rea­sons for the declines, look at what this year’s elec­tion results say about the death penal­ty, and describe the cas­es that result­ed in executions this…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Nov 28, 2016

As the U.S. Supreme Court pre­pares to hear oral argu­ment in Moore v. Texas and con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s approach to decid­ing whether a defen­dant is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, Cornell Law School Professor John Blume joins us to share his exper­tise on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and the death penal­ty. He pro­vides con­text on the Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion, Atkins v. Virginia, which banned the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, and describes the clinical…

Discussions With DPI

Published: Oct 21, 2016

Law pro­fes­sor and author John Bessler joins DPIC exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham to dis­cuss ​“Against the Death Penalty,” a book ver­sion of Justice Stephen Breyer’s his­toric dis­sent in *Glossip v. Gross* in which he ques­tions the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Professor Bessler edit­ed the book and wrote an exten­sive intro­duc­tion explain­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the opin­ion. In a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Bessler and Dunham dis­cuss the dis­sent itself, the nation­al con­text of the…