Liz Bruenig on the return of the death penalty

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

The federal death penalty returned with a vengeance at the end of Donald Trump's term, with 13 of the 17 executions of the last 60 years taking place in 2020. The New York Times opinion writer Liz Bruenig has been reporting and reflecting on this shift in policy. Here she shares her experience of witnessing the execution of Alfred Bourgeois in December 2020. We also talk about the politics and policy of the death penalty, the moral and theological arguments against it (St Augustine and Pope Francis feature here), and what the future holds for the death penalty in the U.S. Liz also describes how a murder of a close family member influenced her work in this area.

Elizabeth Bruenig:

Twitter @ebruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is an opinion writer for the New York Times, with previous positions at the Washington Post and the New Republic. She writes at the intersection of theology, ethics, and politics and in 2019, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her piece “What Do We Owe Her Now.” Bruenig co-hosts a podcast with her husband, Matt, called The Bruenigs, where they discuss family, politics, and current events.

Check out her opinion columns at the New York Times, including her emotional compelling piece “The Man I Saw Them Kill” discussed in this episode.

Also mentioned:

Liz quoted this famous monologue from Hamlet: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.”

Here’s the St. Augustine’s Sermon on the Mount (paragraph 64): “But great and holy men… punished some sins with death, both because the living were struck with a salutary fear, and because it was not death itself that would injure those who were being punished with death, but sin, which might be increased if they continued to live.”

Pope Francis’ statement against LWOP

The Reuters piece uncovering the identities of the pharmaceutical companies that produced pentobarbital for the federal government.

We also made references to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996)

The National Registry of Exonerations keeps track of exonerations on the basis of false confessions; showing that 70% of those with a reported mental illness or intellectual disability falsely confessed.

Liz also referred to some prior litigation which focuses on the change in procedure from the use of the three-drug cocktail to the use of a single drug (pentobarbital) in lethal injections.

And I mentioned the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece: “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Research: Ashleigh Maciolek

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)