Professor Frank Baumgartner on Death-Penalty Data, Public Opinion, and Capital Punishment as a “Failed Experiment”

In the September 2021 episode of Discussions With DPIC, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill political scientist Frank Baumgartner (pictured), one of the nation’s leading academic authorities on the death penalty, joins Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham to discuss what research has shown about the impact of race, gender, and geography in capital cases and the current historically low level of public support for capital punishment. Asked what 50 years of data tell us about the possibility of death-penalty policy reform, Baumgartner says, “At this stage, what we really need to do is admit that [capital punishment] is a failed experiment.”