I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome

to We The People, the weekly show of constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

Today we focus on the death penalty and the Supreme Court.

The court has heard several important death penalty cases this term

and it recently issued a decision in Madison v Alabama and will soon decide a case called Bucklew.

Here to tell us about these cases and to discuss the future of capital punishment at the Supreme Court are two of America's leading

scholars on this important question. John Bessler is associate professor of

law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he teaches capital punishment, civil procedure,

international human rights law, and lawyering skills.

He's of counsel at the law firm Barons and Miller.

He also teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center and has written six books on capital punishment, including most recently the death penalty as torture from the Dark Ages to abolition.

John, it's great to have you with us.

Yeah, thank you for having me on.

And Richard Broden is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs,

an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.

He teaches constitutional law, capital punishment, and criminal law and procedure.

He previously served in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, where he advised

senior justice department leaders and federal prosecutors on

federal death penalty matters he also served as assistant attorney general of

Texas for capital and post-conviction litigation.

Richard thank you so much for joining.

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