Charles Lanier

Charles S. Lanier is a full time Lecturer at the School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York at Albany. He also has conducted mitigation investigations in death penalty cases for almost three decades, as well as worked as a reentry and sentencing consultant. 

He has written numerous articles on the death penalty as well as on incarcerated fathers. He has built on that effort by conceptualizing and developing parenting programs for prisoners.  His research interests include death penalty, corrections/reentry, the contributions of former prisoners, and terrorism. He is co-editor/co-author of America's Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction (Third Edition) (2014) (with James R. Acker & Robert M. Bohm) and The Future of America's Death Penalty: An Agenda for the Next Generation of Capital Punishment Research (2009) (with William J. Bowers & James R. Acker).   

He was instrumental in establishing the National Death Penalty Archive (NDPA) which is housed in the M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives at the University at Albany in New York State. The (NDPA) has been called “The Greatest Body of Evidence Ever Collected about the Death Penalty in the United States.” For additional information on the Archive, including available collections, see archives.albany.edu.