Discussions With DPIC

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 of 38th year anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Professor Semel discusses the implications of the Court’s ruling and recent efforts in California to eliminate racial discrimination in capital punishment and jury selection.

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 recommendations for criminal legal reforms.

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 has given her a unique perspective. In her book, Corrections in Ink: A Memoir (2022), she powerfully tells the story of her personal journey beginning as a young competitive figure skater with an eating disorder, through addiction and incarceration, and ultimately to her transformation into journalist and advocate.

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 Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul.

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 classified as torture, which would prohibit its use under international law and treaties. The reality of capital punishment, he explains, is that it is "really just a series of credible death threats." The capital charge is a death threat, the death sentence is a more credible death threat, and the execution itself is a very imminent death threat. International law already prohibits mock executions as a "classic form of psychological torture," and Professor Bessler argues that the death penalty, with its repeated threats to execute, should be viewed the same way. "[T]here's really no way to eliminate the psychological torment that is associated with scheduling someone's death and then subjecting them to that continuous threat of death during the entire process."

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 representation for individuals facing sentences of death. The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide also produces research highlighting the intersection of gender and the death penalty, as well as international legal issues and capital punishment. Ms. Babcock explains how the Center’s research has uncovered widespread, yet overlooked issues that women and other gender minorities face in the criminal legal system.

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 the organization trains and supports British lawyers and law firms to work with US defense counsel, and how their efforts help ensure that every person on death row has adequate counsel and fair proceedings.

In the September 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Pastor Rich Nathan, founding pastor of Vineyard Columbus, an evangelical Christian church based in Ohio. Mr. Nathan shares his pro-life perspective and explains how religious teachings inform his position on the death penalty.

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 community’s response to this event and the protests that followed.

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, the author, provides an overview of the report, explores key findings, explains its relationship to DPIC’s earlier work, and identifies similar and unique trends in Tennessee.

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 late-adolescent defendants of color are disproportionately sentenced to death.

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 created “an additional group of victims” among the prison staff. Seeing the stress it caused him and his colleagues eventually led Thompson to oppose the death penalty.

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 keep various races in their place.” Rust-Tierney says that racial disparities in the application of the death penalty are not “unfortunate byproducts” of the punishment’s legacy of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation. “I've come to understand that the death penalty is actually operating exactly as it was intended,” she says. “It is intended to teach us whose lives are worth valuing and whose lives are not.”

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 Oklahoma’s experience that are applicable nationwide.

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. “The most critical recommendation that we made,” Governor Henry said, “was that unless and until significant reforms occur in the entire death penalty process, we should not be executing people in Oklahoma. … [I]f we're going to have the death penalty in Oklahoma, my goodness, it ought to be done right.” Lester strongly agrees. “The system, if we don't take up the bulk of these recommendations, is broken,” he says. “And we need to fix the system before moving forward.”

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. The data, Dunham says, reveal “a system that is rife with error, filled with discrimination, [and] very, very difficult to fairly administer.”

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 and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”), describes the decision as “critically important to our understanding of the death penalty and the inherent anti-Black racism that runs throughout it.”