A screening of the Oscar-nominated short documentary “I Am Ready, Warden" will be followed by a panel exploring the death penalty and related issues in the U.S. The panel will feature the film's co-producer Keri Blakinger ’14, a College of Arts & Sciences Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist this spring. Joining her on the panel will be Benjamin Yost, adjunct professor of philosophy (A&S) and Jessica Eaglin, professor of law (Law School.) Peter John Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, will moderate the panel.

An English major at Cornell, Blakinger was a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice: as part of a Houston Chronicle team covering Hurricane Harvey and when she worked with the Marshall Project in 2024, for her feature story, “The Dungeons & Dragons players of Texas Death Row,” which also ran in the New York Times. As an investigative reporter for ProPublica, Blakinger covers criminal justice, with a focus on prisons and the death penalty. She previously worked for the Los Angeles Times, covering the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. She is the author of “Corrections in Ink,” a memoir of her life before, during and after prison.

Yost specializes in the philosophy of punishment, with a focus on capital punishment and the punishment of the disadvantaged, he also has substantial interest in Kant’s practical philosophy. Yost's book, Against Capital Punishment, was published with Oxford University Press in 2019. He also coedited The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford, 2021). Other published work appears in journals such as Utilitas, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Kantian Review, and Continental Philosophy Review. 

Eaglin's research examines the expansion of technical legal practices in criminal administration as response to the economic and social pressures of mass incarceration. She is a leading expert on algorithms in criminal sentencing. Her articles and essays have been published with the Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, and Washington University Law Review, among other journals.

Previously, Professor Eaglin was counsel in the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she assisted in a national campaign aimed at addressing mass incarceration in the United States.