Lincoln – The University of Nebraska Board of Regents made history last Thursday by naming Susan M. Fritz, a 30-year veteran of the university who has served as executive vice president and pro­vost since 2012, as interim presi­dent-elect.

Fritz will become the first woman to lead the university since the system of­fice was created 51 years ago. However, by mutual agreement with the Board of Regents, Fritz won’t be a candidate for the per­manent job.

A national initiative to address the growing number of people incarcerated with serious mental illness is recognizing efforts by Douglas County Corrections to collect better data on the problem.

Douglas County Corrections is the 12th county nationally to earn an Innovator County status from the Stepping Up Initiative, a joint program of the National Association of Counties, American Psychiatric Association Foundation and the Council of State Governments Justice Center that aims to reduce the number of people with mental illness in jails nationally.

A career-long murder prosecutor has written a book calling for the aboli­tion of the death penalty.

Rick Unklesbay, who began in the Pima County, Arizona, prosecutor’s office in 1981 and tried more than 100 first-degree murder cases, pub­lished “Arbitrary Death” two weeks ago. In it he tells why prosecutors, trial courts, juries and the entire appellate system turn death penalty cases into a “roll of the dice.”

Unklesbay himself sought and won the death pen­alty in some 16 cases in his decades-long career as a prosecutor.