Lethal injection is nothing like you think.
This is its untold story.
“Disturbing, devastating
and an urgent must read.”
—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative
COMING APRIL 22, 2025
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 is the most “humane” form of capital punishment. In reality, not one of these statements is true.
Photo by Megan Garrison Photography
About Corinna Lain
CORINNA BARRETT LAIN is the S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. She is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the death penalty, presenting her work at national and international conferences and publishing in the top law journals in the country. She is also one of the leading voices on criminal justice in Virginia more broadly, lecturing at annual conferences for the bench and bar and serving as the principle co-author of Thompson-West’s Virginia Practice Series on criminal law, a four-volume treatise that serves as the authoritative guide for Virginia criminal law and procedure. Lain is a former prosecutor, former sergeant in the Army, and recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award, the highest award that the University bestows.
About Secrets of the Killing State
Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain of secrecy, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. The story of lethal injection is a story of state law-breaking and cover-ups, fake science and torturous drugs, gross incompetence by woefully inept executioners, and a stunning state indifference to the plight of the prisoners who are executed.
Praise for Secrets of the Killing State
“Lain has written an indictment of the death penalty that will stand on history’s bookshelf right up there with the enduring works of Koestler and Camus.”
—Anthony G. Amsterdam, death penalty litigator and Emeritus Professor, NYU
"This meticulously researched and brilliant exposé of the gruesome failure of lethal injection as a humane mode of execution teaches a broader and more basic lesson. The ostensible quest for a painless way to implement capital punishment is in reality a doomed search for a placebo to stifle government officials’ and the public’s qualms of conscience that might otherwise rebel at killing helpless prisoners. Lain has written an indictment of the death penalty that will stand on history’s bookshelf right up there with the enduring works of Koestler and Camus."
―Anthony G. Amsterdam, New York University
“This is the book I have been waiting for—the book that lays bare for all to see the atrocities of what states are doing in our name.”
—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
This is the book I have been waiting for―the book that lays bare for all to see the atrocities of what states are doing in our name. Secrets of the Killing State is an incredibly important book that will change hearts and minds. People think lethal injection is humane. This book proves beyond any doubt that it is not, and convincingly shows that the state should not be trusted with the awesome power over life and death. That belongs to God alone."
―Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
“This is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand the administration of the American death penalty.”
—Carol S. Steiker, co-author of Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment
"Lain is the nation's preeminent expert on lethal injection as a mode of execution. Her encyclopedic and horrifying account of lethal injection's secret history and tortuous effects should be hard to read, but it is actually hard to put down. Lain's indignation and disbelief at the depths of official misfeasance and indifference to human suffering leap from the pages. This is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand the administration of the American death penalty."
―Carol S. Steiker, co-author of Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment
“Secrets of the Killing State is in the great tradition of The Jungle — unmasking utter systemic incompetence, mendacity, secrecy, and indifference to cruelty by those with the power to do right.”
—Michael Meltsner, author of Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment
"Secrets of the Killing State is in the great tradition of The Jungle―unmasking utter systemic incompetence, mendacity, secrecy, and indifference to cruelty by those with the power to do right. A must-read to know what the state is doing in our name."
―Michael Meltsner, Northeastern University
“This will be one of the best books written about the death penalty in a very long time. In truth, I couldn't put it down.”
—Austin Sarat, author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Human Execution
"This brilliant and important book will be nothing short of a death penalty classic. Lain has used the story of lethal injection to tell a larger story about the contemporary death penalty. This will be one of the best books written about the death penalty in a very long time. In truth, I couldn't put it down."
―Austin Sarat, author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Human Execution
“This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the death penalty’s future and purpose.”
——Deborah M. Denno, author of Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood
"Pulling back the rug shrouding lethal injection’s dirty secrets, Corinna Barrett Lain, a preeminent legal scholar, offers a compelling and accessible account of this country’s purportedly “humane” method of execution and the disturbing lengths officials undertake to preserve it. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the death penalty’s future and purpose."
―Deborah M. Denno, author of Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood
Costs of the Killing State
by the numbers
What Arizona spent for lethal injection drugs in 2020 and used in 3 executions, all 3 of which it botched.
One state’s estimate of the going price for lethal injection drugs for a single execution in 2024.
What Arizona's executioner is paid per execution.
In 2022, what Oklahoma’s executioner stood to make for executions scheduled over the next two years
Featured Interviews
ABC Phoenix
NBC News
UN slams new controversial method of execution in US: The UN says the untested method of nitrogen gas suffocation could amount to torture
BBC, January 25, 2024
Louisiana is locked in a legal battle over its planned execution of a death row inmate: Louisiana has hit a roadblock in its plan to resume executions after a 15-year pause.
NPR All Things Considered, March 12, 2025
Featured Articles
Distorting Death (essay accompanying Xavier Cortada’s depiction of Proffitt v. Florida (1976)
Painting Constitutional Law: Xavier Cortada's Images of Constitutional Rights
Disrupting Death: How Specialized Capital Defenders Ground Virginia’s Machinery of Death to a Halt
University of Richmond Law Review
Death Penalty Drugs and the International Moral Marketplace
Georgetown Law Journal
Furman Fundamentals
Washington Law Review
Q&A with Corinna Lain
Substack
Corinna Lain
- Goodbye to Aaron GunchesTomorrow, Arizona will execute Aaron Gunches, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend’s ex-husband in 2002. I’m the law professor that tried to stop it.