News & Updates

Philip Hansten is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he still teaches a philosophy of science class.Philip Hansten is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he still teaches a philosophy of science class. He is also involved in drug interaction research with colleagues at other universities. He became involved in the death penalty after consulting on lethal injection issues with abolition groups. After realizing there were no rational arguments to support the death penalty, he wrote the book, “Death Penalty Bullshit. Fifteen Absurd Claims of Death Penalty Proponents.” Hansten tries to use reason and rational thought in his scientific and death penalty work, but he had a lapse in rationality when he did a sprint triathlon to celebrate his 80th birthday. 

Alex  Ketley is an independent choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. Formerly a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, he left the company The Foundry as a platform to explore his interests in alternative methods of devising  performance.

Mark Kimber is the past-President of the Salinas Steinbeck Rotary Club, the founder of a travel agency in Salinas, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center, and a certified skydiving instructor.

Takehiko (Take) Kawame is one of Japan’s leading death penalty attorneys and represents a client on Japan’s death row pro bono. He is a member of the Death Penalty Abolition Committee and the Legal Counseling Committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Association. Take is very active in organizing symposia, writing op-eds, and researching the capital punishment systems in Japan and the United States. Take also founded an educational organization to hold public meetings, converse with correctional officers about regulations, and arrange international conventions for volunteers who help prisoners with information and visitations. He studied at Sophia University in Japan and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2016.

Dr. Luskin continues to serve as Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects, an ongoing series of workshops and research projects that investigate the effectiveness of his forgiveness methods on a variety of populations. He currently serves as a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University and is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He presents lectures, workshops, seminars and trainings on the importance, health benefits and training of forgiveness, stress management and emotional competence throughout the United States. He offers presentations and classes that range from one hour to ongoing weekly trainings.

Stacy L. Mallicoat is a Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Fullerton. Her research focuses on issues of public opinion and the death penalty.

Fr. Chris Ponnet is a pastor at the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He also serves as the director of the Department of Spiritual Care at the LAC+USC Medical Center. As Host Pastor, he leads the grassroots abolition group Catholics Against the Death Penalty Southern California.

Ed Redlich is currently a television writer/producer working for Paramount Television. He was an Executive Producer on “Without a Trace,” “Felicity” and as a Producer on “The Practice.”

As Vice President, Development, for Public Counsel, Tracy Rice continues her long history of passionate work for civil rights and social justice. Prior to joining Public Counsel, Tracy served as Los Angeles Bureau Chief of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and before that was a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California for six years. There, she worked on a variety of civil rights cases, with a particular emphasis on criminal justice issues, including prison and jail conditions of confinement cases, police misconduct, and death penalty appeals.