Richard Dieter to speak September 20

Mr. Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in Washington DC, will speak at Notre Dame on Septmeber 20. His lecture, The Death Penalty in America--Present and Future, will be at 7pm in the Hesburgh Center Auditorium on Notre Dame's campus.

Mr. Dieter, himself a graduate of ND, is an attorney and an Adjunct Professor at Catholic University's School of Law. He has been the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC since 1992. The Center is a non-profit organization serving the public and the media with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. The Center prepares in-depth reports, issues press releases, and conducts briefings for journalists and others working on this issue.

Mr. Dieter has worked for many years on issues related to human rights and the death penalty, including work as the director of the Community for Creative Non-violence’s pre-trial release program, the founder of the Alderson Hospitality House for visitors to the women’s federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia, and the founder of the Quixote Center’s death penalty project. He has given numerous speeches at universities and is frequently quoted in the major newspapers around the country. He has appeared on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, The Today Show, PBS News Hour, Fox News, CNN, C-Span, Court-TV, and many other programs.

He has testified about the death penalty before numerous state legislatures and has prepared reports for the U. S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. He has authored articles on the death penalty for both magazines and scholarly journals. His most recent publications are: A Crisis of Confidence: Americans' Doubts About the Death Penalty; Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death Penalty; and The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides. He has been an invited speaker at international events in Taiwan, Tokyo, Paris, and London, and recently testified before the European Parliament in Brussels.

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Update from ND ASK Director

Dear ND ASK members and readers,

In the past six weeks, we’ve been silent on this blog, due to the end of the school year at ND. The months of May and June brought transitions out of South Bend and travel to homes and jobs across the country and world for many of ND ASK’s members.

ND ASK co-founder and co-director, Will McAuliffe, graduated with the class of 2007. While he has left Notre Dame, his work on the death penalty in Indiana is just beginning. He will continue his contributions to this blog, and to our organization’s objectives and actions.

I will continue to run ND ASK on campus and across Indiana, putting together a central committee of students to lead the campaign and expand our efforts state-wide.

The past six weeks, both in Indiana and abroad, have included many events to note—some are hopeful to those who share our goals, while others must be viewed as further motivation to continue working against the death penalty.

On June 8, the parliament of Rwanda voted to abolish the death penalty.
One week later, on June 15, the state of Indiana executed Michael Lambert.

The contrast between these two events—the commutation of death sentences of hundreds of prisoners indicted in the Rwanda genocide and the failure of the Indiana justice system to grant life without parole, a sentence with a possibility of rehabilitation, to the second inmate killed in our state this year—indicates the need for a different dialogue on violence and the dignity of persons in Indiana.

With this post, ND ASK will again provide frequent coverage of capital punishment-related developments in Indiana and elsewhere. We will share campaign updates throughout the summer as we build our calendar and plan of action for the coming academic year. We will continue to address both sides of violence in our work for a moratorium on executions in the state of Indiana, working towards the prevention of violence before it occurs and an entrenched attitude of rehabilitation following tragedy.

Thank you for your continued support,
Andrea Laidman
Director, ND ASK
alaidman@nd.edu

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