Legal Fellow Leah Roemer on the Politicization of the Death Penalty

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Leah Roemer, DPIC’s Legal Fellow and a primary author of our recent report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty. Leah graduated from Berkeley Law in 2023, where she participated in the Death Penalty Clinic and earned a certificate in Public Interest and Social Justice. Leah discusses how some judges, prosecutors, and politicians alter their behavior in capital cases while running for office, creating unpredictability and inconsistent outcomes for people facing death sentences. However, she explains that the “accepted political wisdom” about the death penalty—that an official must take a pro-death stance to win an election—no longer appears to be true based on DPIC’s research, as many voters now favor candidates willing to criticize or even oppose capital punishment.