It's today explained, I'm Noel King with a quick note.

Today's show is about a death row inmate and there are some descriptions of violence

throughout it, so take heed please.

In the criminal justice system, a death sentence is not always final.

There's a little known job called mitigation specialist.

And this is a person hired to look into the past of a death row inmate and see if there's

some trauma that might convince a jury to be lenient, something in childhood maybe.

I mean, she found a beat cop, like an older Italian guy who described the constant violence

and the way he would sort of pity the kids who were growing up there.

In Florida, a woman was assigned to dig into the past of such an inmate.

He said, my cousin, he's a model tragedy in black American life.

This is what those neighborhoods did to people.

This is what Rikers and sending people to prison to young does to them and it's a tragedy.

The head of her story could what she found in this guilty man's past get him off of death

row.

I'm Arcadia Strowski and the host of a new podcast from the economist called next year in Moscow.

For many Russians, Vladimir Putin's full scale innovation of Ukraine also felt like an attack

on their own country's future.

Hundreds of thousands fled.

I've been talking to this new exiles because their stories helped bring to life the mystery

of why this senseless war began and how it might end.

Next year in Moscow from the economist is out now on your podcast app.

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