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Just a few weeks ago, the Governor of Arkansas scheduled eight executions within a 10-day period.

They're supposed to start next week on Monday, April 17th, the day after Easter Sunday.

And they've got two executions scheduled each day on four separate days.

And the reason for that is that their drug for the lethal injection is about to expire.

So they have exactly eight doses of medazolam and they need to use all eight before the end of April.

Hello and welcome to Real Crime Profile. This is Jim Clementi.

And today we have a special edition. I'm interviewing James Clark from Amdesty International. How you doing, James?

Good, how are you? Can you tell us what your title is with Amdesty?

Sure. I'm the Senior Campaigner for Death Penalty Abolition at Amdesty USA.

Okay. And I understand Amdesty International is coming out with a policy paper? Is that what it is?

No, it's an annual report. We put out a global report each year that documents, death sentences, and executions around the world.

Really? And do you have to go out there personally and do any of this research?

No, not me. We have a team that coordinates the research based in London.

And then the way that we collect the statistics varies country to country.

So most countries around the world are pretty transparent about their use of the death penalty and publish official statistics that are more or less reliable.

And we can verify those in a variety of ways. In some countries, we have to dig a little bit deeper countries like China, Malaysia, Vietnam, for example, are countries that classify the death penalty as a state secret.

So we do that through looking through public media reports, sometimes interviewing individuals, families of people, or representatives of people who are on death row.

So this report, I have looked at the summary of it. It's pretty interesting. The results that came out this year.

And I was particularly interested in what's been going on in the US. Can we talk about the US and then maybe globally and then maybe drill down a little deeper into death penalty in general?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, the first thing I want to tell you is, here at Real Crime Profile, we talk about very violent crimes and we do it from a victim-centric perspective.

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