BIOGRAPHY FOR RICHARD C. DIETER
Richard C. Dieter is an attorney and native of New York City. He received his
undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a
masters degree from the Ohio State University. He graduated cum laude from the
Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. At Georgetown, he was one of
the University's first Public Interest Law Scholars and served as an editor of the
Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. He is a member of the Maryland Bar, the Bar of the
District of Columbia, and the Bar of the U. S. Supreme Court, and serves as an Adjunct
Professor at the Catholic University School of Law, where he teaches a seminar on the
death penalty.
Mr. Dieter has been the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information
Center in Washington, DC since 1992. The Center is a non-profit organization serving
the public and the media with analysis and information on issues concerning capital
punishment. The Center prepares in-depth reports, issues press releases, and conducts
briefings for journalists and others working on this issue.
Mr. Dieter has worked for many years on issues related to human rights and the
death penalty, including work as the director of the Community for Creative Non-
violence’s pre-trial release program, the founder of the Alderson Hospitality House for
visitors to the women’s federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia, and the founder of
the Quixote Center’s death penalty project. He has given numerous speeches at
universities and is frequently quoted in the major newspapers around the country. He
has appeared on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, The Today
Show, PBS News Hour, Fox News, CNN, C-Span, Court-TV, and many other programs.
He has testified about the death penalty before numerous state legislatures and
has prepared reports for the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights. He has authored articles on the death penalty for both
magazines and scholarly journals. His most recent publications are: ¢ Smart on Crime:
Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis « A Crisis of Confidence:
Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty; ¢ and The Death Penalty in Black and White:
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides. He has been an invited speaker at international events
in Taiwan, Tokyo, Paris, London, and Beijing and recently testified at the European
Parliament in Brussels. Mr. Dieter serves as vice-president of the board of directors of
Human Rights USA.
