DPIC Podcasts
Items: 51 — 60
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://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/study-the-death-penalty-in-tennessee-is-a-cruel-lottery), 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://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/books-courting-death-the-supreme-court-and-capital-punishment), 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…
Discussions With DPIC
Missouri Attorney Discusses Winning Life Sentence in Federal Prison-Killing Case
Published: Jan 17, 2018
Lawyer Thomas Carver joins Robin Konrad, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, to discuss the case of his client, Ulysses Jones, a terminally ill federal prisoner who was charged with capital murder in Springfield, Missouri. Carver, who has been practicing law in Missouri for over forty years, explains what happened in his client’s case, how he and his team avoided a death sentence for their client, and what this case says about broader death-penalty issues in Missouri and the federal court system.