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 provides a “humane” death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true. Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (NYU Press, 2025) presents the view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. The story told here is bigger than the executions themselves. 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.
The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state. These are the secrets of the killing state—all that we know from litigation files, scientific studies, investigative journalism, autopsy reports, interviews, and scholarship across a number of fields. Death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain uses this groundbreaking journey into the dark reality of lethal injection to shine a light on the American death penalty more broadly and show that the state at its most powerful moment is also the state at its worst.

Our guest is: Professor Corinna Barrett Lain, who is S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at University of Richmond School of Law.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

The Journal of Higher Education in Prison

Hands Up, Don't Shoot

Freemans Challenge

Carceral Apartheid

Stitching Freedom

Education Behind The Wall

A Conversation About The Emerson Prison Initiative

Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom

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