ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In light of Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike, who tortured and murdered a classmate when she was 18 years old, there will be a court battle over whether the state should be permitted to try again. Which makes this Wavemaker Conversation. It was conducted in 2015, during the penalty phase of the trial of the Boston Marathon bomber. My guest, Mark Osler, is a law professor and former prosecutor and author of "Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment." He is joined by Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender whose pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered in a Chicago suburb in 1995, which led to a powerful personal journey that she shares in her book, "Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy and Making Peace with My Sister's Killer." Their views are shaped by their deeply held Christian beliefs and, in Bishop’s case, by her experience as a family member of a victim.
