DPIC Podcasts

Discussions With DPIC

Published: Nov 30, 2017

In 2016, both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death-sen­tenc­ing statute. Since then, the Florida courts and leg­is­la­ture have been fig­ur­ing out how to apply those deci­sions to the near­ly 400 con­demned pris­on­ers on the state’s death row. Executive Director Robert Dunham inter­views Karen Gottlieb, the Co-Director of the Florida Center for Capital Representation at Florida International University, who dis­cuss­es the court cas­es and what has hap­pened in Florida as a result, includ­ing explain­ing how the deci­sion has been inter­pret­ed to apply to only…

Discussions With DPIC

Published: Nov 07, 2017

Robin Konrad, DPIC’s Director of Research and Special Projects, inter­views University of Virginia law pro­fes­sor Brandon Garrett about his new book End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice. Professor Garrett researched and ana­lyzed all the death sen­tences imposed in the U.S. dur­ing the past 25 years to deter­mine what fac­tors have led to the pre­cip­i­tous decline in the num­ber of peo­ple who are being sen­tenced to death. In this pod­cast, Professor Garrett dis­cuss­es these fac­tors, which include a decrease in mur­der rates, the creation…

Discussions With DPIC

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 rates, killings of police offi­cers, and the death penalty.

Discussions With DPIC

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 task force’s study, the con­cerns about going for­ward with exe­cu­tions, and the…

Discussions With DPIC

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 risk of future dan­ger­ous­ness to soci­ety because he is black. Ms. Swarns discusses…

Discussions With DPIC

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 con­tains detailed descrip­tions of exe­cu­tions, which some lis­ten­ers may find disturbing.

Discussions With DPIC

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 here.

Discussions With DPIC

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 which women were the defendants.

Discussions With DPIC

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 and told mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the sto­ry about the crime, a non-unan­i­mous jury recommendation…

Discussions With DPIC

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 year.