In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Executive Director Robin Maher speaks with Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor and expert on the Supreme Court. Professor Vladeck is the author of The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, released in 2023, as well as the weekly newsletter One First, which breaks down the Court’s rulings and history. Professor Vladeck explains why the Court’s treatment of death penalty cases...

Rereleased for September 2024: 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:...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Leah Roemer, DPIC’s Legal Fellow and a primary author of our recent report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty. Leah graduated from Berkeley Law in 2023, where she participated in the Death Penalty Clinic and earned a certificate in Public Interest and Social Justice. Leah discusses how some judges, prosecutors, and politicians alter...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Jessica Sutton, principal attorney with Phillips Black, a nonprofit public interest law firm focused capital defense. Ms. Sutton has represented clients facing the death penalty in more than a dozen jurisdictions across the U.S. and at all stages of proceedings. In recognition of Pride month, Ms. Sutton discusses the unique challenges LGBTQ+ people face in the capital punishment system and...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Lamont Hunter, a former Ohio death-sentenced prisoner who was wrongfully convicted of causing the death of his three-year-old son. After nearly 18 years of incarceration, Mr. Hunter was released from Ohio’s death row on June 15, 2023, after pleading guilty to lesser charges in exchange for his freedom. Since his release, Mr. Hunter has spoken widely about his experience with the criminal legal...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first director of the school’s death penalty clinic and remains the clinic’s co-director, where students have represented individuals facing capital punishment and written amicus briefs in death penalty cases before the United States Supreme Court. In recognition...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Judge Elsa Alcala, who served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 2011 to 2018. In addition to serving as a judge at the appeals and trial level, she worked as a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and most recently as a justice-reform lobbyist during her three-decade career in criminal law. She shares how these experiences have informed her perspective on the death penalty and identifies...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Keri Blakinger, a journalist at the Los Angeles Times and former reporter for the Marshall Project—a nonprofit news organization focused on the U.S. criminal justice system. At the Marshall Project, Ms. Blakinger wrote stories about the human beings in the criminal justice system—a focus that is still a priority in her reporting with Los Angeles Times.Ms. Blakinger’s personal experience with prison...

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with former death-sentenced prisoner Anthony Graves. Exonerated from Texas’ death row in 2010, Mr. Graves has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform, creating the Anthony Graves Foundation, working with the ACLU and Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and testifying before the U.S. Senate on prison conditions. Mr. Graves has also authored an autobiography titled Infinite Hope: How...

In this month's episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with John Bessler (pictured), of Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Professor Bessler is the author of several books on the death penalty, including his 2023 book The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm. In his most recent book, Professor Bessler argues that the death penalty should be...

In this month’s Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sandra Babcock (pictured), Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School, Faculty Director, and founder of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. Ms. Babcock’s clinic currently represents death sentenced women in the United States, Malawi, and Tanzania and is focused on providing defense teams in retentionist countries with training and consultation in order to provide the best possible legal...

In this month’s Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Margot Ravenscroft, the Executive Director of AMICUS UK, a British charity that works to support the capital defense effort in the United States.  Ms. Ravenscroft describes how AMICUS was founded by a British woman who became a pen friend with a Louisiana death row prisoner and returned to the UK after his execution, determined to provide assistance for those still on death row.  Ms. Ravenscroft describes why...

In the August 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Dr. Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. A specialist in Iran’s post-World War 2 history, Dr. Boroumand provides historical context for ongoing events and discusses the current increase in executions. With the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s death approaching, Dr. Boroumand alsohighlights the international...

In the July 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Kirk Bloodsworth, 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.

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,...

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.

In the latest episode of “Discussions with DPIC,” Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, interviews Ron McAndrew, 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.

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...

In the February 2023 edition of Discussions with DPIC, former Oregon Superintendent of Prisons Frank Thompson speaks with DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger about how his experiences as a corrections officer—as well as being a murder victim’s family member—have affected his views on capital punishment. Thompson oversaw the only two executions performed in Oregon in the past 50 years and was responsible for developing the execution protocol. He said the process of performing executions...

Longtime civil and human rights lawyer, Diann Rust-Tierney, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute, joins DPIC executive director Robert Dunham for a discussion of race, human rights, and the U.S. death penalty. Prof. Rust-Tierney argues that the death penalty has long been misperceived as a normal public safety tool. The reality, she says, is that “from its very beginning in history, [the death penalty] was part of a legal and social system designed to...

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 recently released 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...

Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, who co-chaired the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, join DPIC executive director Robert Dunham in the August 2022 Discussions With DPIC podcast. Governor Henry, a Democrat, and Judge Lester, a Republican, discuss the findings of the commission’s review that led them to call for a halt to the state’s planned executions of 25 prisoners, at least until significant reforms have been adopted....

In the July 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham and 2021-2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux discuss the making of DPIC’s groundbreaking Death Penalty Census database and some of its key findings. The project, the culmination of nearly five years of work, tracks the demographics and status of more than 9,700 death sentences imposed across the U.S. since the Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes in 1972....