A warning before we get started, this episode includes descriptions of violence and mentions rape.

This is in conversation from Apple News.

I'm Shemeita Basso.

Today, murder, mercy, and the death penalty. Nearly 30 years ago, James Bernard Belcher, who goes by his middle name Bernard, was found guilty of

committing a devastating crime, raping, strangling, and drowning 29-year- old Jennifer Embry.

The jury took only 16 minutes to agree to sentence him to death.

As is off in the case, he spent years behind bars on death row. Now recently Bernard was given a second chance, a resentencing, an opportunity for a judge and jury to decide whether he should serve a life sentence instead.

This time with new evidence, not about the murder itself,

but evidence about Bernard, who he is as a person

and what may have led him to kill. This is not just. is a and entire upbringing and who then got out and did not have the resources to get past that.

Maurice has written about the death sentence and people affected by it for years and he recently wrote about Bernard's case.

He says, it shows how much our conversations around criminal justice and the death penalty

have shifted from the 90s until now.

And while Maurice would say we still have a long way to go,

the fact that we are finally starting to recognize

the humanity and trauma of the people who commit violent crimes could be a real turning

point in how we think about justice.

So we don't have a solid scientific explanation of how early childhood trauma leads people towards

violence later in their lives.

Certainly plenty of people experience trauma at a young age and do not go on to victimize

other people.

But what we do know is that PTSD, post-traumatic stress, can cause some changes in the

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