Race, Innocence, and the End of the Death Penalty - POLI 203 Spring 2022

POLI 203, POLI 203, Race, Innocence, and the End of the Race, Innocence, and the End of the Death Death Penalty Penalty Prof. Prof. Frank R. Baumgartner Frank R. Baumgartner January 10, 2022 January 10, 2022 Plan for the day Review syllabus, highlights, logistics, speakers Do an anonymous survey Prepare for the Best Class You Ever Had! Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 1

Syllabus Get used to these web sites: http://fbaum.unc.edu/teaching.htm http://fbaum.unc.edu/books/DeadlyJustice/index.html http://fbaum.unc.edu/ The class sakai page for confidential information, assignments, and recorded videos Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 2

Speakers http://fbaum.unc.edu/teaching/POLI203_Sp22/poli203-sp22- speakers.html Monday evenings, 5:30 to 7:00pm, 8 events starting Jan 24, ending April 25; write these dates down in your calendar. This is, by far, where the most learning will occur. I m going to stuff your brains with facts and figures, and we all know how well that sometimes works. These speakers will make you understand it. They ll describe their own experiences in some of the worst situations imaginable, from Angola Prison in Louisiana, to having the police arrest and convict the wrong person when a family member is killed. Attendance is mandatory. See the syllabus for the grade penalties. Missing 3 events = one entire letter grade in this class. Don t do it. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 3

Pandemic adjustments this semester Many of us are going to get exposed to the virus, most likely, unfortunately. Please protect everyone else by not attending class if you have any reason to be concerned. These lectures will be on zoom, and recorded to Panopto, available on the main lecture Sakai site after a short delay. For remote students, there will be no interactive options through zoom. Visit my office hours for questions, or email me. For your recitation sections, similar adjustments will be made; please confer with your TA about those. There is no need to email me about your attendance in main lecture. If you need to go remote for a short period, just do it, and come back when you are healthy. The zoom experience will not be as good as in person, but is available as a back-up. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 4

Pandemic adjustments (cont) For the 8 evening lectures, the same rules apply. I ll distribute a different zoom link and password for these. Please attend in person if you are safe. Here, there is a complication, since we ll be taking attendance at those events. If you are in person, we ll have a cell-phone app for recording your attendance (more details later). If you are remote, we ll have a very short quiz or ask you to write a very short essay that shows you watched the event. Your attendance will then be recorded when you submit that assignment in the week following the event. I m going to be uncharacteristically hard with regard to your attendance and engagement with the evening speakers. See the syllabus. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 5

The puzzle: General support, but low and declining use of the death penalty Innocence, cost, lethal injection controversies have caused a crisis for the death penalty. On the other hand, many people support it, and historically a majority generally have supported it. Many politicians are jittery about expressing opposition to it. Many forcefully support killing the worst of the worst. It s also an interesting question to contemplate: What SHOULD be the penalty for a particular crime? Eye-for-an-eye seems pretty intuitive! We ll explore all these trends with a focus on facts. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 6

Difficult subject matter The entire class is one big trigger: horrific crimes, terrible injustices, personal stories of torture, the list goes on. So we need to be careful with the content and the material. Take a break sometimes. General warning: Newspaper stories almost always have a description / reminder of the horrific crime. Legal appeals and court opinions / rulings almost always start with a short section laying out the facts of the case, generally right at the start. If these were not horrific and upsetting, the person would not be appealing their death sentence The crimes are bad, then then again so is the official misconduct. The entire class is about death and killing. Either the government is laying out a massive bureaucratic system to kill the defendant, or the original crime may be discussed. One big downer good description of this class. So take a break. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 7

Respect and anger The class also deals with a controversial subject matter where people disagree at very basic levels, often based on religious tradition. So we need to practice our skills of respectful engagement. That means listening, first. Second, expressing oneself clearly. Third, engaging with ideas, not the people stating them. Some of these topics can generate anger. Please don t speak out of anger. It s ok to be angry! But let s not turn this class into an anger- fest. Process the anger, then speak when you ve processed it. These are important lessons for other areas as well. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 8

Our own opinions The class is NOT about whether we support or oppose the death penalty and why. We can talk about those things, particularly the most common and effective arguments for one side or the other, but we are not going to focus, at all, on whether one of us supports or opposes the death penalty. That s none of my business. It is about learning the facts about how the death penalty works, really, in practice, as compared to how one might like to assume it should work. That s a generalizable skill that I highly recommend. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 9

Patriotism and faith in the system There s a lot of discussion these days about Critical Race Theory and the allegation that it s unpatriotic. This class is not about CRT (POLI 248 is!), but it definitely concentrates on the warts, not the beauty, of our country. The distressing elements of this class can be overwhelming, and they can make you frustrated or angry at our country. My attitude, and I hope one you can accept for this semester: We cannot make the system better by focusing on rainbows, unicorns, and toxic positivity. We can only improve the system by looking at its worst flaws, and correcting those. Then the next worst ones, and correct those, and so on. It s hard work, can be depressing, but we struggle on in an attitude of continual improvement. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 10

Political science We ll definitely address some important concepts in political science: Federalism: why do states get to decide? Why not have one nation under law ? Public opinion and representative democracy: Should the punishment for murder depend on the public mood? Race, poverty, gender, other identities, and discrimination: How much proof is needed / should be needed to make something unconstitutional because of its disparate impact on different groups? And more: No end to the theoretical questions we will pose. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 11

Assignments Two fantastic books for everyone to read: Baumgartner, Frank R., Marty Davidson, Kaneesha R. Johnson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Colin P. Wilson. 2018. Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty. New York: Oxford University Press. Please review the book website in some detail and especially the links. This books was written specifically from this class, for this class. Harris, Lynden, ed. 2021. Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America s Death Row. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Don t try to read this all at once! Just a few stories at a time. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 12

Assignments (more details on the syllabus) Attendance and participation in your recitation section 4 short essays (300 words) responding to the essays in Right Here, Right Now 1800 word paper on an element of the death penalty from Deadly Justice that you choose to explore in greater detail, with approval by your TA Quizzes Attendance at evening lectures Final exam Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 13

Please review the syllabus for more details Grading policy, disabilities, plagiarism / honesty. Ask me questions or talk with your TA to make sure you understand. Section locations, TA s, TA emails, all that is in the syllabus. Each TA will lay out their office hours and policies and establish a Sakai site for their sections. Also see the class website for the university attendance policies, particularly the Covid-related issues. Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 14

Now, an anonymous survey 11 questions about the death penalty taken from the Gallup Poll. Your answers are of interest so we can compare them to national polls. 20 (or so) questions about factual knowledge. Please don t stress over these. Certainly don t google anything! Just give a quick response and move to the next one. You have not taken the course yet so you don t need to know these things. I just want to assess the state of the field before we start. Note: Completely anonymous; we cannot track responses If you have no idea, skip the question. But feel free to guess. Please take enough time to finish, but don t over-think the answers. When you are done, you may leave. https://unc.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9MGZ0MNkFyUXvwO Baumgartner, POLI 203, Spring 2022 15