Radiolab Presents: More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual

June 15, 2016 10:02 PM

On the inaugural episode of More Perfect, we explore three little words embedded in the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “cruel and unusual.” America has long wrestled with this concept in the context of our strongest punishment, the death penalty. A majority of “we the people” (61 percent, to be exact) are in favor of having it, but inside the Supreme Court, opinions have evolved over time in surprising ways.

And outside of the court, the debate drove one woman in the UK to take on the U.S. death penalty system from Europe. It also caused states to resuscitate old methods used for executing prisoners on death row. And perhaps more than anything, it forced a conversation on what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

After you listen to the episode:

The key links:

• The invoice that revealed the identity of Dream Pharma
• The email exchanges between Arizona and California officials regarding lethal injection drugs
• Handwritten lethal injection protocols from Arkansas
• An interview with Bill Wiseman, the Oklahoma state legislator who invented lethal injection in America, conducted by Scott Thompson of KOTV.

The key voices:

• Maya Foa, Director of Reprieve’s Death Penalty team
• Paul Ray, State Representative, House District 13, Utah
• Robert Blecker, Professor at New York Law School and author of The Death of Punishment

The key cases:

• 1879: Wilkerson v. Utah
• 1972: Furman v. Georgia
• 1976: Gregg v. Georgia
• 2008: Baze v. Rees
• 2014: Glossip v. Gross

posted by Going To Maine (1 comment total)

After listening to this episode (and the next), my only regret about this podcast is that it is a miniseries instead of a spinoff. It's so interesting! Amicus is wonderful but they don't often dig this deeply into the weeds.
posted by possibilityleft at 4:35 AM on June 18, 2016