Entries tagged with “Podcasts”
Issues
Jul 25, 2023
New DPIC Podcast: Kirk Bloodsworth, Thirty Years After His Exoneration
In the July 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Kirk Bloodsworth (pictured), the first person exonerated from death row by DNA evidence. Mr. Bloodsworth reflects on the thirty years since his exoneration and discusses the experience of being wrongfully convicted. He also describes the work he and other exonerees have done, and how the issue of innocence has affected legislation on the death penalty. Though DNA testing has become more…
Issues
Jun 26, 2023
New DPIC Podcast: DPIC’s New Report on the Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty
In the June 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger and Data Storyteller Tiana Herring discuss the latest Racial Justice Storytelling Report, Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty. The report examines the history of Tennessee’s capital punishment system, documenting the continued impact of racial discrimination and racial violence on the administration of the death penalty. Ms. Herring, the…
Issues
Executions Overview
,May 31, 2023
New Podcast: American Enterprise Institute’s Dr. Sally Satel Explains Why People with Severe Mental Illness Should Not Be Eligible for the Death Penalty
In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, interviews Dr. Sally Satel (pictured), a psychiatrist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She shares her insights on the role of severe mental illness in death penalty cases. Dr. Satel discusses the reasons that permit death sentences and executions for individuals with severe mental illness, which she wrote about in an op-ed for the National Review. “I don’t think it’s civilized to…
Executions
Methods of Execution
,Apr 27, 2023
New Podcast: Discussion with Ron McAndrew, Former Florida Warden Who Presided Over Executions
In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, interviews Ron McAndrew (pictured), a former Florida Prison Warden who witnessed executions using electrocution and lethal injection in Florida and Texas. He offers reflections on the negative impact that executions have on the families of both the victim and the condemned, the correctional officers, and on himself. Mr. McAndrew discusses his responsibilities as a warden and his involvement in carrying…
Issues
Mar 23, 2023
New Podcast: Protecting Especially Vulnerable Defendants from the Death Penalty — A Discussion with Karen Steele
In the latest episode of “Discussions with DPIC,” Robert Dunham, former Executive Director of DPIC, interviews Karen Steele (pictured), a researcher and defense attorney in Oregon, regarding the special characteristics of late adolescent defendants facing the death penalty. Research by Steele and others points to the incomplete brain development in those aged 18 – 21 and how that can be exacerbated in those suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The research has also found that…
Issues
Jan 06, 2023
DPIC Podcast: Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights
Longtime civil and human rights lawyer, Diann Rust-Tierney, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute, joins Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham in the first DPIC podcast of 2023 for a discussion of race, human rights, and the U.S. death penalty. Prof. Rust-Tierney, who served as the Robert F. Drinan visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center Human Rights Institute in 2020 – 2021 after sixteen years as executive…
Issues
Nov 01, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: DPIC’s New Report on the Racial History of Oklahoma’s Death Penalty
In the October 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue and Data Storyteller Tiana Herring discuss DPIC’s 2022 report Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty. The report looks at the racial history, present, and future of Oklahoma’s death penalty. Ndulue and Herring explore Oklahoma’s unique history, the key findings of the report, its relationship to DPIC’s earlier work, and lessons from Oklahoma’s…
Issues
Executions Overview
,Aug 24, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: Former Governor Brad Henry and Former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, co-Chairs of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, Call for Halt to Executions
In the August 2022 Discussions With DPIC podcast, former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester (pictured), two of the co-chairs of the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, call on state officials not to rush forward with the state’s planned execution of 25 prisoners. Speaking with DPIC executive director Robert Dunham, Governor Henry, a Democrat, and Judge Lester, a Republican, discuss the commission’s findings of a broken system that risks…
Issues
Jul 20, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: The Death Penalty Census
Data from fifty years of the modern U.S. death penalty reveal “a system that is rife with error, filled with discrimination, [and] very, very difficult to fairly administer,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says in the July episode the Discussions with DPIC podcast. The episode, a discussion between Dunham and 2021 – 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux about the launch of DPIC’s groundbreaking Death Penalty Census database, was released July 20, 2022. The Death…
Issues
May 11, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: 35 Years After Controversial Supreme Court Decision, Prof. Alexis Hoag Discusses McCleskey v. Kemp’s Legacy
In the May 2022 episode of Discussions With DPIC, Professor Alexis Hoag (pictured) of Brooklyn Law School joined DPIC Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue for a wide-ranging conversation marking the 35th anniversary of McCleskey v. Kemp, a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected a constitutional challenge to the death penalty that showed strong statistical evidence of racial disparities in capital prosecutions and death sentences. Professor Hoag, formerly an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Apr 04, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: Prof. Meredith Rountree on What Influences Death Penalty Jurors’ Moral Decision Making
In the March 2022 episode of Discussions With DPIC, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Senior Lecturer Meredith Rountree speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about her study of the types of evidence that influence juror decision-making at the sentencing stage of capital cases. Rountree and her co-author Dr. Mary Rose of the University of Texas, reviewed and analyzed 176 verdict forms completed by juries in federal death penalty cases, focusing on three…
Issues
Feb 25, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: Julius Jones’ Long Road On and Off Oklahoma’s Death Row, and What Comes Next in His Case
In the February 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, federal public defender, Amanda Bass (pictured, right), and Justice for Julius advocate Cece Jones-Davis (pictured, left) speak with Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger about the questionable conviction and near execution of former Oklahoma death-row prisoner, Julius Jones. They discuss how incompetent representation and prosecutorial misconduct sent Jones to death row in Oklahoma County, how advocacy on his…
Issues
New Voices
,Jan 12, 2022
DPIC Podcast: Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton on Bringing Fairness and Equity to Criminal Legal Reform and Ending the Death Penalty
In the January 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Contra Costa County, California District Attorney Diana Becton (pictured), speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the rise in reform prosecutors across the country, the inherent flaws in capital punishment that led her to work alongside other reform prosecutors to end the death penalty, and her efforts as district attorney to bring fairness and equity to the criminal legal system. Becton is the…
Research
New Voices
,Dec 02, 2021
New Podcast: Republican State Representative Jean Schmidt on Her Efforts to Abolish the Death Penalty in Ohio
In the December 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue interviews State Representative Jean Schmidt (pictured) about her work as a primary sponsor of a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would abolish capital punishment in the state. A long-time Republican elected official, Rep. Schmidt also served in the U.S. House of Representatives for ten years. She avidly supported the death penalty early in her career but now is an…
Issues
Aug 31, 2021
New Podcast: Rethinking Public Safety, A Conversation with Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution, Miriam Krinsky
In the third episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Miriam Krinsky (pictured) speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about her experiences as a former federal prosecutor and the Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), a network of elected prosecutors devoted to promoting fairness, equity, compassion, and fiscal responsibility in the criminal legal system. Krinsky and Ndulue explore a range of issues…
Issues
Jul 27, 2021
New Podcast: Capital Defense Lawyer Marc Bookman Discusses His New Book and the Systemic Defects that Have Sent the Death Penalty into ‘A Descending Spiral’
In the July 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Marc Bookman, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation (ACCR), about his critically acclaimed new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. In their discussion, Bookman and Dunham explore a wide range of systemic death-penalty problems addressed in the book, which was released by The New Press in May 2021. The topics…
Jul 19, 2021
DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham Appears on Sharon (Pennsylvania) Herald “New Generation” Podcast
DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham appeared on the July 16, 2021 episode of New Generation, a podcast produced by the Sharon (Pennsylvania) Herald, in connection with the newspaper’s Crime of Punishment editorial series. Dunham spoke with hosts Tanner Mondok and Janeé Avery in a broad-ranging discussion about systemic problems in the administration of the U.S. death penalty. Herald editor Jeff Gerritt, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, previewed the paper’s editorial…
Jun 03, 2021
New Podcast: Rethinking Public Safety, A Conversation with Former Nevada Prison Doctor, Dr. Karen Gedney
In 1989, Nevada prison doctor, Dr. Karen Gedney (pictured) refused a request by state officials to write a prescription for execution drugs, believing that doing so violated her medical oath to do no harm and her duty to provide medical care to prisoners. In the second episode of the Discussions With DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Dr. Gedney speaks with DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger about this and other issues she encountered in her three decades as a doctor in the…
Issues
Apr 29, 2021
DPIC’s New Podcast Series, Rethinking Public Safety, Debuts with a Discussion with Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro
As a state legislator in 1981, Jim Petro (pictured) supported a bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s previous capital punishment statute. Later, as Ohio Attorney General, he supervised 19 executions in the state. Since then, his views have changed and he recently co-authored an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch urging the legislature to repeal the state’s death penalty. In the April 2021 episode of the Death Penalty Information Center podcast…
Research
New Voices
,Conditions on Death Row
,Mar 31, 2021
DPIC Podcast: Ethical-Design Advocate Raphael Sperry on Why the American Institute of Architects Banned Members From Designing Death Chambers
In the March 31, 2021 podcast episode of Discussions with DPIC, managing director of DPIC, Anne Holsinger, and Raphael Sperry, president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), discuss the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) new ethics policy prohibiting members from designing execution chambers and death-row solitary confinement cells. “Architects have been complicit in human rights abuse by designing execution chambers in the United States and spaces for…
Issues
Mar 09, 2021
New Podcast: Carine Williams of the Innocence Project Discusses the Death Penalty, Innocence, and ‘the Function of Freedom’
In the March 2021 edition of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue is joined by Carine Williams — the Chief Program Strategy Officer at the Innocence Project — for a conversation about innocence, the death penalty, and “the function of freedom.” Reflecting on the gross miscarriage of justice exhibited in wrongful convictions and exonerations, Williams stresses two critical themes: death is irrevocable and ending the…
Issues
Jan 21, 2021
New Podcast: ‘Martinsville 7’ Advocates Seek Posthumous Pardon for 7 Black Men Executed by Virginia After All-White Jury Convicted Them of Raping a White Woman
In February 1951, Virginia executed seven Black men on charges they had raped a white woman two years earlier. The “Martinsville 7” — Francis DeSales Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr., Howard Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker T. Millner, and John Clabon Taylor — were interrogated by police without the appointment of legal counsel and, under threats that they would be released to a lynch mob, confessed to involvement in the rape. After a succession of perfunctory trials before…
Executions
Dec 09, 2020
New DPIC Podcast Discusses the Consequences and Cruelty of Lethal Injection
In the December 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot from Emory University Hospital speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about his discoveries from the autopsies of more than 200 executed prisoners. Those autopsies revealed the gruesome effects of execution by lethal injection and shattered the popular myth that lethal injection is a humane and painless execution process. Zivot and Dunham also discuss the ethical…
Issues
Nov 25, 2020
New DPIC Podcast Discusses ‘Racist Roots’ and ‘Enduring Injustice’ of U.S. Death Penalty
In the November 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Gretchen Engel (pictured, left), Executive Director of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL), joins Ngozi Ndulue (pictured, below), Senior Director of Research and Special Projects at DPIC, for a discussion of their organizations’ recent reports on race and the death penalty. This fall, DPIC released Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty. Less than a month later, CDPL…
Issues
Oct 20, 2020
‘Keep Your Head Up and Don’t Give Up’ — Exoneree Curtis Flowers Gives an Illuminating First Interview to the In the Dark Podcast
In his first interview since his September 24, 2020 exoneration, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured) spoke with In the Dark podcast host and lead reporter Madeleine Baran about his 24-year journey to freedom after having being framed, tried six times, sent to death row and finally freed for a murder everyone involved knew full well he had never committed. In an interview that aired October 14, 2020, Flowers said he survived the ordeal with the unbending support of…
Research
Oct 15, 2020
New DPIC Podcast: Former Illinois Governor George Ryan on Commuting Death Row and His Journey from Death-Penalty Supporter to Abolitionist
In the October 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, former Illinois Governor George Ryan speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the events that persuaded him to commute the death sentences of all 167 death-row prisoners in Illinois in 2003. Ryan and Dunham delve into the Governor’s journey from death-penalty supporter as an Illinois state legislator to death-penalty opponent as Illinois governor, and discuss his new book, co-authored with…
Research
Native Americans
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 01, 2020
New Podcast: Native American Rights Fund Lawyer Joel Williams on Tribal Sovereignty and the U.S. Death Penalty
In the September 30, 2020 episode of the Discussions With DPIC podcast, Native American Rights Fund senior staff attorney Joel Williams joins Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham for a conversation about tribal sovereignty, the death penalty, and the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma. Williams, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explains how 2020 has been a landmark year on the question of tribal sovereignty and the death penalty. He and…
Death Row
Conditions on Death Row
,Jul 20, 2020
New Podcast: ACLU National Prison Project Director David Fathi Discusses Death-Row Conditions, the Move Away from Solitary Confinement, and COVID-19 in U.S. Prisons
In the latest episode of Discussions With DPIC, David Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, speaks with DPIC’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger about death-row conditions across the country. Fathi speaks about the “shattering” effects of long-term death-row solitary confinement, the movement away from automatic solitary confinement for death row prisoners, and the impact of COVID-19 in congregate-living circumstances, such as death-row. Fathi and Holsinger discuss the…
Issues
Jun 30, 2020
New Podcast: Henderson Hill and North Carolina’s Historic Racial Justice Act Rulings
In the June 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Henderson Hill (pictured), Senior Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project, speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. Hill, who has spent decades as a public defender, capital defense attorney, and civil rights advocate, is currently representing North Carolina death-row prisoners in the Racial Justice Act litigation challenging their…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,May 11, 2020
New Podcast: Capital Defense Lawyer Kelley Henry on Death Penalty Litigation During a Pandemic
In the May 2020 edition of Discussions with DPIC, veteran capital defense lawyer Kelley Henry (pictured), who is representing several Tennessee death-row prisoners facing execution dates in 2020, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the unprecedented challenges of litigating death-penalty cases during the coronavirus pandemic. Henry, a Supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender in Nashville, provides an inside view of how the extended public health emergency has affected…
Research
New Voices
,Apr 14, 2020
New Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Denver District Attorney Beth McCann on Criminal Justice Reform and Colorado’s Death-Penalty Repeal
In the April 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann (pictured) speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about Colorado’s repeal of capital punishment. McCann was elected DA in 2016, as part of a nationwide wave of reform-oriented prosecutors. Both as prosecutor and in her eight years in the Colorado legislature, McCann has advocated for broad criminal justice reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty. In her…
Research
New Voices
,Mar 04, 2020
New Discussions With DPIC Podcast: Hannah Cox on Conservative Opposition to the Death Penalty
In the March 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Hannah Cox (pictured), National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the continuing movement by social and political conservatives away from capital punishment, how the death penalty is out of step with core conservative values, and the key role that conservative legislators are playing in abolition efforts across the U.S.
Issues
Feb 13, 2020
NEW PODCAST: He May Be Innocent and Intellectually Disabled, But Rocky Myers Faces Execution in Alabama
Rocky Myers (pictured) may be innocent and intellectually disabled, and his jury voted to sentence him to life. So why is he facing execution in Alabama? In the February 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, members of Myers’ legal team tell the story of how racial bias, poor representation, and judicial override led to the possible wrongful conviction of an intellectually disabled man. Assistant Federal Defender Kacey Keeton and Investigator Sara Romano speak with DPIC Managing Director Anne…
Issues
Nov 12, 2019
New Podcast: “Unrequited Innocence” with Rob Warden and John Seasly
At least 166 wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners have been exonerated since the death penalty was reinstituted in the United States in 1973. That number, however, may only scratch the surface in assessing the degree to which innocent men and women are being sent to U.S. death rows. In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Rob Warden (pictured, left) and John Seasly (pictured, right) speak with DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger about a body of death-penalty cases in which…
Issues
Oct 10, 2019
New Podcast: Texas Lawyer James Rytting on Junk Science and the Execution of Larry Swearingen
In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Texas capital defense lawyer James Rytting (pictured) discusses the case of his client, Larry Swearingen, and the junk science that led to the execution of a man legitimate science strongly suggests was innocent. Rytting describes the false forensic analysis presented under the guise of science in Swearingen’s case, the appellate process that makes it “almost impossible” to obtain review of new evidence, and the persistent problem of wrongful…
Issues
Aug 02, 2018
New Podcast: Authors of Tennessee Death-Penalty Study Discuss Arbitrariness
The latest edition of Discussions with DPIC features H.E. Miller, Jr. and Bradley MacLean, co-authors of a recent study on the application of Tennessee’s death penalty. Miller and MacLean describe the findings from their article, Tennessee’s Death Penalty Lottery, in which they examined the factors that influence death-penalty decisions in the state. Based on their survey of thirty years of homicide cases, they found that whether a death sentence is imposed is influenced far less by the…
Issues
Murder Rates
,Sep 12, 2017
NEW PODCAST: DPIC Study Finds No Evidence that Death Penalty Deters Murder or Protects Police
A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of U.S. murder data from 1987 through 2015 has found no evidence that the death penalty deters murder or protects police. Instead, the evidence shows that murder rates, including murders of police officers, are consistently higher in death-penalty states than in states that have abolished the death penalty. And far from experiencing increases in murder rates or open season on law enforcement, the data show that states that have abolished the death…
Death Row
Women
,Mar 27, 2017
New Podcast: Women and the Death Penalty, With Expert Guest Mary Atwell
“We live in a gendered society,” says Dr. Mary Atwell (pictured), one of the nation’s foremost experts on women and capital punishment, and the men and women who go to death row are different. In the latest podcast episode of “Discussions with DPIC,” commemorating Women’s History Month, Dr. Atwell says why that is so. Dr. Atwell chose to write about women on death row because she “wanted to do something about capital punishment that was not just numbers, that was a human take on capital…