Lethal Injection
Additional Resources
DPIC Resources:
- Methods of Execution by State (includes alternative methods inmates may choose)
- Botched Executions - including descriptions of the flawed lethal injections in 2014 in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Arizona
- DPIC Report Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States
- DPIC Podcast: Discussions With DPIC — Behind the Curtain
- DPIC Podcast: Discussions With DPIC — Anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot on What Prisoner Autopsies Tell Us About Lethal Injection
- Baze v. Rees - Excerpts from the Supreme Court Opinion in Baze v. Rees
Archival DPIC Content:
- Lethal Injection News (updated through March 19, 2019)
- 2010 and before lethal injection news
- Lethal Injection: Official Actions and Court Cases
Non-DPIC Resource Websites:
- Lethal Injection Information Center (Initiative of Reprieve)
- Lethal Injection Project (Component of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law)
- Glossip v. Gross website (Discussion of 2015 Supreme Court case)
- “Lethal injection scramble” map from ACLU of Northern California shows which states have obtained sodium thiopental from foreign sources, and includes information on price and quantity of drugs and DEA seizures
Articles and Other Publications:
- Sarat, Austin, Theo Dassin, and Aidan Orr, A Dark Shadow: The Intensification and Expansion of Lethal Injection Drug Secrecy, British Journal of American Legal Studies 12.1 (2023): 1-26.
- Zivot, Joel B., Mark A. Edgar, and David A. Lubarsky, Execution by lethal injection: Autopsy fidings of pulmonary edema, medRxiv (2022): 2022-08
- Kim, Elizabeth, and Richard J. Levy, The Role of Anaesthesiologists in Lethal Injection: A Call to Action, The Lancet 395, no. 10225 (2020): 749-54.
- Mears, Call M., Risk of Choking to Death on One’s Own Blood Is Not Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Mo. L. Rev. 85 (2020): 609.
- Harmon, Talia Roitberg, Michael Cassidy, and Richelle Kloch, Examination of decision making and botches lethal injection executions in Texas, American behavioral scientist 64.12 (2020): 1715-1732
- Comity, Finality, and Oklahoma’s Lethal Injection Protocol, Jon Yorke, Oklahoma Law Review (2017)
- Legally Indefensible: Requiring Death Row Prisoners to Prove Available Execution Alternatives, Megan McCracken, The Champion (January/February 2017).
- Through the Glass Darkly: What Oklahoma’s Lethal Injection Regime Tells Us about Secrecy, Incompetence, Disregard and Experimentation Nationwide, Megan McCracken and Jennifer Moreno, ABA Human Rights Magazine (2016-2017 Vol. 42).
- American Bar Association Resolution 108B calling for all death penalty jurisdictions “to promulgate execution protocols in an open and transparent manner and require public review and comment prior to final adoption of any execution protocol, and require disclosure to the public by all relevant agencies of all relevant information regarding execution procedures.” (February 9, 2015).
- If Oregon Can Give Death With Dignity, Why Can’t Death Row?, Tamara Tabo, Above the Law (November 24, 2014)
- What 13 States Aren’t Telling You About How They Execute Prisoners, Tasneem Nashrulla, Buzzfeed (June 16, 2014)
- Glance: Execution Drug Secrecy in 5 States, Associated Press (April 5, 2014)
- Oklahoma halts double execution after one is botched, Matt Pearce, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, and Paresh Dave, Los Angeles Times (April 29, 2014)
- Executions Stall as States Seek Different Drugs, Manny Fernandez, New York Times (November 8, 2013)
- Europe Pushes to Keep Lethal Injection Drugs From U.S. Prisons, Makiko Kitamura and Adi Narayan, Bloomberg Businessweek (February 7, 2013)
- Lethal injection drug access could put executions on hold, Kimberley Leonard, iWatch News (April 4, 2012)
- Cost of executions skyrocketing in Texas, other states, Mike Ward, Austin American-Statesman (February 23, 2012)
- Ohio faces snags in execution system, Andrew Welsh-Huggins (AP), covering Ohio’s newly-suggested backup execution protocol, which would use two drugs previously untested in lethal injections (August 31, 2011)
- Cruel and Usual?: Is Capital Punishment by Lethal Injection Quick and Painless?, Larry Greenmeier, Scientific American (October 27, 2010)
- Death-row drug dilemma, Emma Marris, Nature (January 27, 2011)
- Execution by Lethal Injection: A Quarter Century of State Killing, Amnesty International (October 2007)
- But Can it Be Fixed? A Look at Constitutional Challenges to Lethal Injection Executions, Ellen Kreizberg and David Richter, Santa Clara University School of Law, Legal Studies Research Papers Series, Working Paper No. 07-28 (June 2007); 47 Santa Clara L. Rev. 445 (2007).
- The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty, Deborah Denno, Fordham Legal Studies Research Paper No. 983732 (May 1, 2007); 76 Fordham L. Rev. 49 (2007).
- The Chaos Behind California Executions, Henry Weinstein and Maura Dolan, L.A. Times, Oct. 2, 2006 (hearings in California on lethal injections).
- Lethal Incompetence, Ty Alper (Boalt School of Law), The Champion, Sept.-Oct. 2006.
- Finding Bickel Gold in a Hill of Beans, Douglas Berman, Cato Supreme Court Review, 2006 (on the legal ramifications of Hill v. Crosby).
- When Legislatures Delegate Death: The Troubling Paradox Behind State Uses of Electrocution and Lethal Injection and What It Says About Us, Deborah Denno, 63 Ohio State Law Journal 63 (2002)
- Human Rights Watch Report on Lethal Injection