An offer for (and encouragement of) "field research"

I am getting very excited about the white papers upon seeing the diverse and interesting selections of officials to whom you all (tentatively) plan to write.  I hope you are as excited about this part of the class as I am.  Though I will discuss the particulars of the papers more next week, it is never to early to start your research.

Wonderfully, some more friends in the field are providing offers of assistance.  Specifically, while digging out from snow yesterday, I got this kind e-mail from Ward Campbell, the Supervising Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice:

One of your students may be interested in contacting Dane Gillette, who was recently promoted to chief assistant of the criminal division of the Calif AG's office.  He was our statewide coordinator and lead attorney in Morales [the case concerning California's lethal injection protocol being litigated in federal district court].  Here is a recent news article about him.

Please post this offer -- dane's e mail address is dane.gillette @ doj.ca.gov if someone contacts him, they may they say they were referred by Ward Campbell.

This kind California offer (along with the similar offer we've gotten from a friend in Arizona) reminds me that I want to actively encourage real "field-research" in conjunction with both the blog and white paper parts of this class.  As these offers spotlight, people working in the death penalty field are very eager to speak with bright, motivated and open-minded research and policy advocates.  And people in the field often have a lot more insights about the day-to-day realities of the death penalty than do most politicians, appellate judges or academics.