DPI’s Podcast 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context: Author Corinna Barrett Lain on the ​“Untold Story” of Lethal Injection

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Corinna Barrett Lain, the S.D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the recent­ly pub­lished book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. Ms. Lain’s new book chal­lenges a wide­ly held assump­tion that lethal injec­tion is a pain­less, reg­u­lat­ed, and medically-sound process.

Drawing on research and evi­dence large­ly unavail­able to the pub­lic, Ms. Lain’s book expos­es the gaps between the public’s per­cep­tion of lethal injec­tion and doc­u­ment­ed real­i­ty. ​“I think most peo­ple think of lethal injec­tion — I cer­tain­ly did — as some sort of human form of putting down our beloved pets,” Ms. Lain explains. ​“Lethal injec­tion is just noth­ing like that.” Her research found that the three-drug pro­to­col often used in lethal injec­tions was the result of guess­work, not sci­en­tif­ic facts or medical knowledge.

Ms. Lain describes how many lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions are not con­duct­ed by qual­i­fied med­ical per­son­nel, but rather by prison guards with­out med­ical train­ing; that the pro­ce­dure is not a sim­ple three-drug pro­to­col but involves using 12 – 15 syringes; and that what appears to be a peace­ful death is often internally torturous.

Secrets of the Killing State explains how states have gone to great lengths to shield exe­cu­tion prac­tices from pub­lic scruti­ny, employ­ing what she calls ​“the state secre­cy two-step.” First, ​“doing every­thing pos­si­ble to cov­er up botched exe­cu­tions and oth­er embar­rass­ing finds,” and sec­ond, ​“doing every­thing pos­si­ble to ensure that there are no embar­rass­ing finds in the future.” Ms. Lain pro­vides exam­ples of states low­er­ing blinds dur­ing prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions, turn­ing off sound after a prisoner’s last words, and elim­i­nat­ing autop­sies as exam­ples of secrecy tools.

Ms. Lain also explores the recent move to nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions. Alabama con­duct­ed the first such exe­cu­tion in 2024 and Louisiana fol­lowed in 2025. Much like lethal injec­tion, Ms. Lain says ​“there’s no sci­ence behind” the use of nitro­gen gas. Oklahoma’s adop­tion of the method was based on a hasti­ly assem­bled 14-page report from com­mu­ni­ty col­lege pro­fes­sors with no med­ical exper­tise. Alabama’s exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Smith in January 2025 shows the gap between the state promise of a quick death and what actu­al­ly hap­pens: ​“Kenny Smith’s exe­cu­tion was twen­ty-two min­utes long. He gasped and writhed, and accord­ing to some accounts, was spit­ting up at least sali­va as he was gasp­ing for breath. All of them, wit­ness accounts said he shook so vio­lent­ly the gur­ney itself shook.” Despite this, Alabama offi­cials claimed the exe­cu­tions were ​“text­book” per­fect and invit­ed oth­er states to fol­low its lead.

What began as an inves­ti­ga­tion into lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures evolved into a deep­er explo­ration of who death row pris­on­ers become over time. ​“Studying exe­cu­tions made me study who these peo­ple are at the end. Not who they were at their worst moment, not who they were at their crime, not who they were at tri­al for their crime, but who they are at the end,” Ms. Lain says. ​“We tend to freeze these peo­ple in a moment of time. I myself have done so, but time does work changes.” For Ms. Lain, this real­iza­tion shift­ed her think­ing about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“Cases like Brian Dorsey’s and oth­ers that I stud­ied made me see this not just as the law and bro­ken promis­es, but it made me see human­i­ty in full flower. And I can­not unsee it.”