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Join us for the book launch of Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection with author Corinna Lain in conversation with Nicholas Kahn-Fogel.
Lethal injection is not what people think, and most Americans still have no idea what the government is doing in their name. It’s time they found out.
In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a “humane” death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true.
Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the suffering that we see, there is also suffering that we don’t see. Indeed, the story told here is even bigger than the executions themselves, for behind the scenes is where it unfolds. Fake science, torturous drugs, inept executioners, prison problems, and decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways.
Corinna Barrett Lain is S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at University of Richmond School of Law.
Nicholas Kahn-Fogel is a professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law, where he joined the faculty in 2023. From 2008 to 2023, he taught at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law, where he was the Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law. Prior to Bowen, he taught at the University of Zambia School of Law.