We are at the precipice of a massive historical moment for execution methods. For the last 45 years, lethal injection has been the ascendant, and then primary, way that states execute. In the last year, that has begun to change as the problems with lethal injection have finally turned states to other execution methods—some old, some new. The public does not yet have a full understanding of those problems or their implications for the question of whether states should be killing people at all. This book aims to change that.  

In addition, Donald Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his administration aiming to “restore” the death penalty, instructing his attorney general to get states the drugs they need for lethal injection and encouraging states to seek the death penalty at every turn. Understanding why this is misguided has never been more urgent.

It took an entire book to answer this question, so the list is long. Some reasons are obvious. For example, states can’t get the drugs, and they have recurring problems accessing a prisoner’s vein. But what is driving those problems is not so obvious, and other reasons why lethal injection is problematic—the pharmacology of the drugs, for example, and the inherent limitations of performing medical tasks in the prison setting—are not obvious at all.

The short answer is that lethal injection is nothing like what people think. People think it’s like putting down a beloved pet. In fact, it is nothing like that. For the first 30 years of lethal injection, it didn’t use the same drugs as animal euthanasia (in many states, that is still true today). It’s not regulated like animal euthanasia. It doesn’t have the science behind it, or the trained professionals doing it, as in the animal euthanasia context. And the physiology is completely different. Our pets are generally gone in a minute or less. Lethal injection takes 15-20 minutes to induce death, and that’s if everything goes according to plan.

I’m a researcher, and this book is based on research—copious amounts of it. But initially, I was reluctant to write a book about lethal injection. When it became clear that my research was becoming a book, I had to decide whether to go forward with a book project that would take years, or instead walk away from the research I had already completed. I am a person of faith so I prayed on it, asking the Lord to speak clearly if this was something I was called to do. The answer came explicitly in the first paragraph of Psalm 45. And it came again, three times, in Habakkuk 2:2-3—write the vision and make it plain, that he may run that reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but that the end it shall speak, and not lie. This I have endeavored to do, and the appointed time would appear to be now.

That’s hard to say. On first glance, his executive order suggests that the country is about to take a sharply punitive turn, bringing a surge of death sentences and executions. But the death penalty is dying in this country for reasons that an executive order cannot fix, and the rash of Trump executions in 2020 created a backlash that, as just one example, helped propel Virginia to end the death penalty entirely. Trump is bold and brash. But that can either push people in a direction they’re already inclined to go, or inspire the sort of resistance that sets back the very cause he is trying to promote. Perhaps the most that can be said is that his presidency will be a mirror revealing where the American people stand on the death penalty. I look forward to being part of the conversation that helps them figure that out.

I have been writing about the death penalty for almost two decades, and before this project, I saw a long list of broken promises of fairness and procedural protections. I initially viewed this project as just another broken promise to add to that long list. Before I saw the law. Now I see humanity in full flower, and I cannot unsee it. This is what studying executions does—it forces us to pay attention to who these people are at the end. Not who they were in their worst moment, but who they have become, and thus who others are capable of becoming. In our mind’s eye, we tend to freeze these people in a single moment in time. I myself have done so. But time works changes, and studying executions has been a potent reminder that humans have the greatest capacity to change of all.