Diann Rust Tierney Scholarship, Lectures, and Media Appearances

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Race and Capital Sentences, Catherine M. Grosso, Barbara O’Brien and Diann Rust-Tierney. In COMPANION ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY (Ben Fleury-Steiner and Austin Sarat eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd forthcoming 2023)

Race, the Death Penalty, and the Foundations of American Democracy, Perspectives on Human Rights (Number 9, June 2022)

How Can We End Capital Punishment? Legal Change: Lessons from America’s Social Movements, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law (2015). To persuade the Supreme Court to outlaw the death penalty, advocates must work state by state to change public attitudes and public policy. The Court’s view of “evolving standards of decency is not static. However, the Supreme Court will not lead this inquiry. It will assess and then follow.”

 The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context, (McKinney & Associates, April 2012). The Death Penalty Failed Experiment is the second publication in McKinney & Associates’ Voice Matters: An eBook Series on Public Relations with a Conscience. 

Human Rights Violations In The United States: A Report on U.S. Compliance with The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (December 1993), authored chapter on the death penalty.

Capital Cases: The Beginning of the End For Capital Punishment, The Champion (NACDL, April 2011)

The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished, (LUSH Cosmetics Company Ethical Campaign Against the Death Penalty, 2017).

SELECTED LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS

• Launch Event: Death Penalty Information Center Webinar Series On Human Rights & the U.S. Death Penalty at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany (November 4, 2022)
• Panelist, Book Celebration (November 3, 2022) commenting on John Bessler, The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights, in The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm i-i (2022)
• “Race, the Death Penalty, and the Foundations of American Democracy. Panel on Race and the Criminal Justice System. ClassCrits XIII Conference (October 21, 2022)
• “The Imperative of Ending Capital Punishment to Achieve Racial Equality: Deconstructing the American Caste System Requires the Elimination of This Central Pillar.”  Guest lecture. Criminal Legal System Seminar, American University School of Public Affairs (April 18, 2022).
• Race, the Death Penalty, and the Foundations of American Democracy, Georgetown Law Center Annual Drinan Lecture (March 2022)
• The Imperative of Ending Capital Punishment to Achieve Racial Equality: Deconstructing the American Caste System Requires the Elimination of this Central Pillar, Saint Mary’s College (October 2020)
• Presentation and Training at LUSH Cosmetics Company Annual Meeting (May 2017)
• Author Meets Critics: Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty at 2017 Annual meeting of the American Society of Criminologists. Commenting on new research and book by Frank R. Baumgartner, Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Closing Remarks at The Twelfth National Seminar on the Development and Integration of Mitigation Evidence in Capital Cases (April 2015)
• Testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 99^th Congress First Session on S.239 A Bill to Establish Constitutional Procedures for the Imposition of the Sentence of Death, and for Other Purposes (September 1985)
• Testimony before the Judiciary Committee, the United States Senate, 98^th Congress First Session on Confirmation of Civil Rights Commissioners (July 13, 1983)

SELECTED MEDIA APPEARANCES, MENTIONS, AND PODCASTS

• Discussions with DPIC: Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights (January 6, 2023)
• Brief Encounters: A Discussion of the Death Penalty as a Human Rights Issue (Published October 12, 2022)
• WMC Live #45: Susan Dworkin, Shaherose Charania, Diann Rust-Tierney, Natalia Oberti Noguera. (Published June 29, 2013)
• KCUR All Things Considered: Botched Ariz. Execution Renews Unease Over Lethal Injections (Published July 24, 2014)
• The Feminist Case for Ending the Death Penalty, MS Magazine (July 13, 2021)
• Support for death penalty drops to 40-year low in new poll: A new Gallup poll shows 60% of Americans back capital punishment for convicted murderers–the lowest rate in nearly 41 years, MSNBC (October 30, 2013)
• State Used Secret Cocktail in Execution, MSNBC (July 24, 2014)
• Justices Reverse Texas Court Rulings, Chicago Tribune (February 26, 2003)