Inside the Secret Machinery of Lethal Injection with Corinna Lain

Since 1977, lethal injection has been portrayed as the most humane way to execute someone—but what if that’s a myth? In this episode, legal scholar and death penalty expert Corinna Lain joins host Will Wright to expose what really happens inside America’s execution chambers. From botched executions and hidden medical procedures to falsified prescriptions and black market drugs, Lain’s new book, Secrets of the Killing State, reveals a justice system cloaked in secrecy. She recounts the chilling story of Clayton Lockett’s 2014 execution, explains why so many lethal injections go wrong, and explores the hidden psychological toll on prison staff. We also examine the racial disparities in capital punishment and ask: does the state truly deserve the power to kill?

👤 Guest Bio:
Corinna Barrett Lain is a law professor and legal historian who has spent over 15 years researching the death penalty. Her latest book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection, investigates how executions are carried out in the U.S.—and the secrecy surrounding them. Lain’s work has been cited in top legal journals, and she’s a frequent speaker on issues related to criminal justice, ethics, and constitutional law.

🔗 Resources & Links:
📘 Secrets of the Killing State by Corinna Lain: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781479832965
🖥️ Corinna Lain’s website & tour dates: corinnalain.com
Related Episode: [Coming Soon – Beyond the Echo Chamber: “The Hidden Truths of Lethal Injection”] https://youtube.com/live/_dNOs1E2i4U?feature=share

Transcript

0:17

Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you are watching us on our YouTube channel, I am Will Wright, your political host, your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. Unfortunately, can't be here, but we have with us, returning from the depths of her writing cave, Professor Karina Lane, who is here to talk about her book that is finally here, Secrets of the Killing State. And I'm not going to really do a very elaborate bio like I normally do. Instead, I'd rather you, Trina, just to talk about why you're so qualified to write this book. then we'll get into what the book is all about. Why you're so qualified. Well, first of all, it's so great to see you Will. It's really good to be back on the show. I've been writing about the death penalty for over 15 years. And this book is the culmination of, I mean, at this point, it's seven years of deep research into lethal injection. So, and I'm a legal historian and there's some legal history in there and all kinds of things. so like what like walk us through your, you know, your personal, your professional journey. I mean, I know that that you you said, you know, you've been in this business for a while and you are really qualified to write this. Maybe the question is like, why? Like, why? Why write this book? Okay, so I'll tell you how this book came to be and there's different pieces of it, but I was writing a death penalty article and the article I was writing, which I'm excited to get back to at some point, was called Disowning Death and it was really about how the law and legal structures separate us from what the death penalty really is. and helps us to disown it. like, yeah, nobody really owns it and then somebody's dead at the end. And so it was sort of an A to Z piece and the Z, the last bit of it was executions. And so that's lethal injection. And I thought, well, of course lethal injection is about disowning. It's so obvious. It doesn't even look like the state is killing. It just looks like you're sort of drifting off to sleep. But who had... Who had shown that? The states say, well, no, this is all about humane. And maybe it was or maybe it wasn't. I didn't know when I first started. But how are you going to show that a lot of this is disowning? So there's legal history in that, some other things. But I decided to start exploring it. And I kept coming to the question of why can't they, why are they so bad at this? Yeah. Right? Like we know how to put pets down. We know how physician assisted suicide work. Why are they so breathtakingly bad at lethal injection? And so, you know, that question was in there and I started really researching it and started writing. I think I got to the end of part one and I had 300 footnotes and said, it's a buck. And I didn't want to write a book. I really, really didn't want to write a book. In fact, I had a legal history piece that I had put down. That piece is still down because people said, well, it really is more of a book. And I didn't want to write a book. So I mean, I legitimately did not want to write a book. And I was at a conference in January 2018. And it's a law professor conference. So everybody's like, what are you working on? What are you working on? And it really stressed me out. because I was stuck and didn't want to put another project down. And so at one point I went back up to my room, skipped whatever the one o'clock session was and just got on my knees and was like, Lord, and I share this because it's faithful politics. So, you know, there's a full testimony, but you know, this is how it started is I was like, Lord, you know, I don't want to a book on lethal injection, but if it's from you. then that would change everything. And there was a moment that followed that. so, well, I'll just tell you, I reached over to see if maybe there was like a Gideon's Bible or something like that in the hotel room. I didn't have one. And there was, and I just opened it up. And it opened to Psalm 45, which I have like on in a little private place on my bulletin. So I'll read it. It said, My heart is overflowing with a good theme. I recite my composition concerning the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. And that was the top left. And I was really praying saying, you know, if this is from you, just speak clearly because that would change everything. And so when I opened it, I was like, all right. You know, this could have been a series of articles. I could have put it down entirely. I'm going to write a book on lethal injection. And so I did. so wild. So how many different ways are there to actually like, I don't know, kill a person within the system? And, know, what is it about lethal injection that really kind of separates itself from the rest of the flock? Yeah. I mean, there are a number of ways and lethal injection is unique in that, you know, we don't have to see the sight of blood. We don't have to smell burning flesh. That's the electric chair. Sight of blood is the firing squad. We don't have to see people retching and at least when it when it's not botched but you know it's a matter of course and gasping for breath and all of that sort of thing which is the gas chamber. So we don't have to deal with any of the outward signs of violence because there around. There was one state, I think, that allowed hanging, but there's some sense that, mean, states, no, nobody's hanging anyone anymore. But I'm trying to think of, don't think a court ever said, that's unconstitutional. What has happened is that as these methods have become obviously torturous, they have also become obviously unacceptable. So there's some sort of almost unwritten proviso that in order to have the death penalty, states can't offend the sensibilities of the people in whose name those executions are conducted. And so once the brutality becomes clear, states move on to a new method. I mean, that is just the story that repeats over time. And so the thing about lethal injection is that violence is internalized. And I think it's important to understand that executions are necessarily violent. Like it takes force, it takes physical force, it takes violence to stop the heart from beating before it's ready to go on its own, you know, to end life before the body is ready to give it up on its own. And that's just, you know, that's just a state of nature. It could be a car accident, right? It could be a murder. It could be an execution, but you, it takes violence. takes physical force to end life. And so the thing that's special about lethal injection is all of that violence is hidden. It's all internalized to the body under a chemical veneer. So it's not that the violence isn't happening. It's that we don't see it. It looks humane. It looks like you're just falling asleep. Wow, that's crazy. Okay, so your book is called Seekers of the Killing State, The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. And it starts off with a bit of a page turner story. And I'd love for you to maybe talk to us about it. Was it Clayton Lockett? that the... Okay, so tell us the story of Clayton Lockett. How much time have you got? Three minutes. Yeah, three minutes. yeah, no, Clayton Lockett is chapter one. And I start with that story. It's the only chapter that is like just the story of a botched execution. And I did that for two reasons. One was Clayton Lockett's botched execution. this was Oklahoma. It was in 2014. And that was a long time ago, right? That was a decade ago, so people may not remember, but in 2014, it was one of the top 10 news stories at the end of the year, where they rank the news stories of the year. This was one of the top 10. It was a huge deal. And so the pressure was really on. And the governor at the time said, you know, we're going to put executions on hold. We're going to have an independent investigation into what happened here. And she appointed. her department, the head of her Department of Public Safety. So she appointed a member of her own cabinet to lead this independent investigation. And not only was he a member of her own cabinet, but it was the cabinet that was in charge of the Department of Corrections. And not only was that the case, but the person that was the cabinet member came out of the DOC, of the Department of Corrections. He rose up from the ranks and he was there the night of the execution. you know, in no way does a material witness in the execution that you're investigating, you know, that make this an independent investigation. But the upside of having an insider do the investigation is that he talked to all of these people and they were downright chatty. And so we had, and, you know, thanks to people who were collecting, these and who got the files through litigation. And then I was able to get these, the transcripts, but I had over 3000 pages of transcripts of interviews. And so I tell that story through the mouths of the very people that were a part of it. And it's completely different than what we get in the litigation setting where very tight-lipped. you know, I chose it for that reason. And then also it just tells it shows you this is what a lethal injection looks like. And so now moving to your question, you know, it starts with, you know, the drugs, how did they find the drugs? Well, it was the lawyer for the Department of Corrections who is Googling it. And he later says, well, I went past the WikiLeaks or whatever it was. And, you know, so it's like just mishap after mishap after mishap. The equipment wasn't right. They couldn't access the vein. They end up sticking him over 14 times to try to get the vein. They bring a doctor in and they do a femoral, but it's not stable. And so they tried to tape it down. And then they covered the spot so that the person who was monitoring the execution is the warden. And the warden's not a medical person. The warden can only see when something goes obviously wrong, but even here, at which point is too late, but even here they covered the spot. So even when it was obviously wrong, nobody knew until Clayton Lockett woke up on the gurney and tried to get up off the gurney. in the midst of his execution and he's talking and witnesses are gasping and so I who's lawyer I'm sure he was I'm or she he or she I'm not sure but certainly that lawyer would have been there. I mean, how do we get to a point where people have executed others with lethal injections prior to this, think? So how do we get from a successful lethal injection execution on one person, but then a botched one on this one? Was this more administrative or is this really just the ugliness of the killing people business in our justice system? before I studied it, I thought kind of the same thing. Well, we've been doing lethal injection since 1977, so why was it okay? And now it's like seemingly blown up. And part of the answer is no, it was always bad. The very first execution by lethal injection, totally botched. And so if you go through time and... Austin Serrett's work has actually documented the botches and has shown, well, the botch rate for lethal injection is and has been somewhere over 7%. So it's twice as much as any other method. So this is something that's been happening, but other things have come in and made those botched executions more salient. And so now we're starting to pay attention. So it's not like it was all going right and now it's not, it was always going wrong. I think of botched executions as the spillover effect of a system that's deeply, deeply broken. And... the lagging indicator essentially of. Yeah, those are the things that go wrong that we see. But there is also suffering that we don't see. So we now know from national studies that approximately 84 % of the people, this is shown by autopsies, approximately 84 % of the autopsies of condemned inmates that are executed by a lethal injection. show that they suffered from acute pulmonary edema as they died. So a lot of those, everyone looks and is like, no, that wasn't a botched execution. That one went smoothly. No, actually they were drowning in their own fluids. You just didn't see it. Is there a standard for, you know, or a measurement for success? Because I think I've heard you say a few times, you know, they considered it a, you know, a successful execution, which I suppose if the end state is the person is no longer alive, then you could say 100 % of the executions we've had have been successful. like, like, is there some sort of standard? Well, it depends on who you ask. But I do document again and again prison officials, executioners who say, well, you know, that wasn't a botched execution because the person died. They died, didn't they? Well, that was the point was to kill them. So that wasn't that wasn't botched. And so and they're saying this, for example, after a two hour execution. You know, and there's one case that I talk about in Arizona where it was, you know, an hour and 57 minutes and a media person asked a question and was like, how is a two hour execution not botched? the DOC official walked away from the mic as he started asking the question. Just not going to answer that. So you and I might think of a botched execution as, no, no, they're telling us it's this, they're telling us it's humane, and when the person is obviously suffering, that's a botched execution. But, you know, so much of this is happening that they are reframing what a botched execution is. A botched execution is, you know, I guess when they don't... when they don't die at the end. And now for lethal injection, we have some of those too, where people are surviving their own executions and the state is going at it again. this sounds like one of those, you know, are they war plans or attack plans kind of scenarios where, you know, like, and in your book, you do make an argument to try to say that lethal injections, you know, make it look humane. And you shared, you know, an example of kind of what it's really doing is that are there other sort of ways that a person is suffering after they've had the stuff put in them that you think the public would really benefit from knowing. knowing? I mean, they're suffering in lots of ways. And, you know, I think that starts with just having to access the veins. That is a problem that is a recurring problem. And so we've seen numerous executions at this point where the executioners are trying to access the veins and mean Clayton Lockett is one over 14 times. We see 18 times. You know that they are repeatedly sticking this person. They are going back to sites. Can I stop you just right there? Because something came to my mind as you were talking about playing luck and mean stab 14 times. I can't remember Phil's his situation, but didn't they do a neck thing? Like try to access to... Can you talk about that? Yeah, so they did they try to access hit the veins in his neck they didn't have the right needle didn't stop them from trying but they didn't have the right needle and you know later doctors came in and said that would have been a that's a really bad place to do a massive injection of drugs because if it infiltrates that is to say if the needle pops out of the vein or if it goes all the way through if you end up injecting the drugs you know into the tissue which is exactly what happened with Clayton Lockett but you know if something goes wrong and you've got a catheter in the neck you can choke to death. And so, yes, that was Clayton Lockett. They just weren't successful in doing that, in doing that particular insertion. But we saw it in a, it's the vignette that I use at the beginning of chapter nine on secrecy two. That's the one where they did an autopsy and they found tan colored makeup covering a number of insertion marks. into the veins into the neck. So yeah, all secrets. I should at least just present some bit of a disclaimer for the show. If you see either me or Karina sort of smirk or laugh, like none of what we're talking about is funny. It's just like, it's more appalling. And I think our sort of subtle laughs are just sort of a representation of just how... appalled we are. So like if you're watching this and you're like, you two guys, you know, they're just laughing at all the deaths. It's like, no, no, no, no. Like what you're talking about, Karina, is just like absolutely ridiculous. So let's peel back that banana for a second regarding the makeup. tell us more. more. Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad that you paused and had a little note for our listeners. Because I've had a number of people say, oh, know, I think this is going to be depressing. And then they read it and then they say, actually, it was infuriating. That's what it is. It's shocking and infuriating. And so that's the reaction of like, wait a minute, somebody put makeup over, tried to hide the number of insertions. Yes, that is true. You know, there's secrecy in all sorts of ways. So I talk about what I call the state secrecy two-step. Step one, and I'm like, this is a dance around the facts. Here's the state secrecy two-step. And, you know, step one is if something goes wrong, hide it, deny it. You know, it's clean up on aisle five. But step two is and then do all you can to prevent, you know, further spills from being noticed in the first place. So some of this is reactive. That's step one. And some of this is proactive, that's step two. And states use both. So, you know, when something goes wrong, what we've seen is states will lower the blinds. We saw that in Clayton Lockett, but we've seen it in some others. Nebraska had one execution trying to use fentanyl. It was the only execution in the country. No one's repeated that. The guys started turning purple. and they just lowered the blinds. It was the world's only fentanyl, it was a four drug protocol trying fentanyl. And another state has toyed with that, only Nebraska has actually tried to carry it out. And after Nebraska's disaster, nobody has tried, no state has tried to go back to it. And so even as Nebraska, In that particular case, the prisoner started turning purple and media witnesses said the prison official who was in the execution chamber sees what's happening, says something into a mic of some sort, and the curtain comes down. At first, Nebraska officials, they don't say anything about the fact that the curtain has gone down. Media witnesses are pushing, wait a minute. And I think it opens, can't remember, maybe 14 minutes later and he's dead. Like that's it, that's all you get. And later Nebraska said, no, that was planned. It was planned at that time all along. Nothing happened here. You know, but do we know what happened behind the curtain? No, to this day we do not know what happened behind the curtain. or something to get somebody's testimony? Like how does that work? Well, on the front side, prisoners can sue under section 1983. And a lot of the material that I have is from those suits and from the discovery that has come from those suits. In those lawsuits, you know, they're not contesting their death sentence. So that's all separate litigation of whether or not their conviction is solid, whether or not a death sentence, there's any irregularities there. By the time you get to the end, They're saying, yep, I'm not fighting that the state can execute me. What I'm saying is you're not allowed to torture me to death. And so there's those suits. We also have seen suits after the fact, after botched executions, where the family members of the prisoner has sued. Most of those are, I mean, those are all civil suits for damages for torturing the person that you know and even those are like I'm not saying you you didn't have the legal authority to kill them I'm saying you violated the Constitution you tortured someone to death and so we do sometimes see those suits How did those suits generally end? You know, it's a good question because it's all like individual. I'm thinking of one in Alabama that I talk about in the book where this person survived his execution, was punctured numerous times. They punctured his bladder. He ends up in really bad shape, but he survives as they give up. They can't get a vein, so they give up. And he ends up suing, and they settled that. Alabama settled that suit agreeing not to re-execute him in exchange for ending the suit and not disclosing anything that they found as a result. So, you know, the line I have in the book is, the state that loves its pound of flesh loves secrecy even more. Oh my gosh, Karina. The liquid, and I'm assuming it's a liquid for most of these lethal injections. What's the story behind that? mean, you mentioned one gentleman tried to Google what the product is, but if I was a, I don't even know the name of that, somebody who works at the Department of Corrections whose job it was to execute people and I had a prep for it. an upcoming execution? Like how would I go about finding the chemicals that I want? I mean, it's a great question because it highlights just, it's like, who is the villain in this story? Who is the victim in this story? Because, you know, the state legislatures pass these statutes that just say lethal injection, or they might use more words and say, you know, death by a chemical substance or combination until death, something like that. But basically, most of these statutes just say lethal injection. Okay, so now it goes to the Departments of Correction. And these Departments of Correction, they're like, we don't know how to do this stuff. Like, that's not what we do. We're not doctors. So how are they going to figure it out? And so, you one of the things I document is, well, what would you do if you got some task and you didn't know what to do? You would either Google it. Well, we see that. Or you would give it to somebody else that presumably knows. And so we've seen both of those things. We've seen lawyers Googling it. And we've seen departments of correction trying to give it to someone else. So Missouri. found a doctor and said, you figure this out. And the doctor that they found had more than 20 malpractice suits filed against him. He was mixing and measuring the drugs and it turns out, well, in litigation, they looked at the pharmacy logs for the last execution and it was like, wait a minute, you are... the state of Missouri is injecting half of the amount that's in the protocol. And the state initially came back and said, no, no, no, that's a mistake in the logs. The protocol says this amount and that's what we've injected. But we're checking to see why there was a mistake in the log. So we'll be back to you. And then they come back the next day and say, we've just learned that that actually is what happened. they were injecting half of the amount, we're going to get to the bottom of it as to why. We've gone completely rogue here. We're violating our own protocol. And the judge in that case says, I'm going to give the prisoners, the lawyers for the prisoners, a limited deposition to, you know, it's going to be behind a fail. You're not going to know. We're not going to reveal the executioner, but we're going to allow you this is your suit and you've uncovered something important. So we're gonna allow this limited deposition. So they're talking to this doctor. They don't know who he is, but they're talking to him. And they're like, you know, what is this all about? And he said, well, I'm dyslexic. So sometimes I mix up the numbers. He later said, I'm not dyslexic. I just have trouble keeping my numbers straight. But the bottom line was, The court in that case said, state of Missouri, may no longer use someone, know, lethal injection is all about mixing and measuring correctly. And you may not use somebody who has problems mixing and measuring. And it's interesting because the state of Missouri in that litigation were sticking like glue. They were like, no, we have plenty of confidence with them. We're going to stick with them. We're going to fight this out. And They later withdrew that and said, yeah, okay. Yeah, our bad, but by that time, investigative journalists and hats off to them. I use a lot of their work in my book, but investigative journalists had found, wait a minute, he had over 20, you know, who is this person who might be, you know, who is dyslexic? and found that he had over 20 malpractice suits and had his hospital privileges provoked at two hospitals. Like when I hear stories like that, think of when I was in college, I worked as a vet tech for a short period of time and I seen more than my fair share of animals be euthanized. If I recall, I think they use something called sodium pentothal to put somebody down. So like, why couldn't we just use the same drugs that we use for animals, like for humans? I mean, some states do that today. That was not the traditional three drug protocol. And it was a question I had too. You know, when I figured out what those drugs were, I'm like, wait a minute, not a single one of these drugs is the single shot of pentobarbital that we use to put down pets. What's that all about? Like, why did they, why did they choose these three drugs? And the answer was a guy made it up off the top of his head. And that was itself a shocking moment for me because I assumed, A, I assumed we were using the same drugs that we use for animal euthanasia for the first 30 years of lethal injection. We didn't. And B, I thought, well, surely there's some science. behind lethal injection. Surely some guy didn't just make it up off the top of his head. But alas, that is exactly what happened. And, you know, he was asked about how did you come up with the drugs? And he said, I didn't do any research. I just thought about what was needed from being under anesthesia myself. This was Dr. Jay Chapman. He was a doctor. He was the state's medical examiner. for the state of Oklahoma. And he referred to himself as an expert in dead bodies, but not in how to get them that way. but he made it up. I talk in the book about like, why didn't, I mean, we don't know, I don't know, and I don't purport to know, but I do talk about like, why didn't he just use the same, like, why didn't he do that? And either nobody asked him or I couldn't find his answer to that, but. The facts are, know, he didn't, he either didn't know about how we put down pets. I mean, if one were trying to devise a humane execution by drugs, that would be the first question I would ask is like, okay, well, how do we put down pets? How does physician assisted suicide work? Those actually both use the same single drug of penpendo-barbitol. So like, I would have asked that question. Maybe he didn't, he just didn't ask. He didn't think to ask it. Or maybe he already knew the answer. Maybe he knew that's how we put it down and just decided not to follow it. But you know, either way, it was clear that we were not trying to. devise a protocol that was the same as what we put down pets because it was out there. It's not a secret and that's not what we did. Now, by the way, it's worth mentioning that some states do use that single shot of pentobarbital now, not all states, some do. And no state did that until the drugs, the original first drug and the protocol ran out, all of the states were saying, no, we could not possibly use this single drug. That's what we use on animals. it's like, do you not realize that that is actually better than what we're doing for humans? But once the first drug ran out, they moved very quickly. Some did to that. But even now, for anyone saying, phew, well, at least At least this is going to work itself out. No. Even when it's the same drug, it's a compounded version of that drug, not the manufactured version like what is used in animal euthanasia. And that's it. It's a totally different ballgame. You know, it might be too early to tell at this point, but I am curious just like, cause you, you, you pointed out or identify areas of procurement where people got really creative because like they couldn't find the thing that they needed, which was probably wrong anyways. like, like given the, you know, current political economic climate renown, with Paris and what have you, like, is there a risk of, you know, people who work in this sector not, you know, having even a harder time getting the products they need to, you know, out these executions. I don't, it's a great question, Will. I don't see tariffs playing into that because those drugs were coming from Western Europe and Western Europe put export controls on every single drug that could be used for lethal injection. So they shut off that spigot a long time ago back in 2010, 2011. So We're not, and then the other place that states have gone is to India. Well, those are black and gray market suppliers and they, states did try to smuggle those drugs across the border. So I tell those stories, but the drugs were confiscated by the FDA because they clearly and unequivocally did not comply with the law. So. So, you know, so I don't see tariffs being a part of the story, but I love the way you put it, Will, when you said, you know, states have really gotten creative with their drug procurement. That's a very polite way of saying it. But yeah, I document states have falsified prescriptions. They have taken bags and suitcases. full of 10 and $15,000 in cash, crossed state lines, bought drugs allegedly in a Walmart parking lot. it's all been very under the table. And so yes, they've been very creative. It must be weird to watch people's reactions when you tell these stories that you're just like, oh yeah, you know, like 10, $15,000 of cash in a Walmart parking lot to buy fentanyl to execute somebody or whatever. And I'm just like, what in the world? But this is like, this is your world, right? This is like the thing you've been researching for the past couple years. And I'm curious, like what about... the impact of the people that are involved. So like, you know, we talk about all the folks in the room where it happens. Like, number one, walk us through like the line or whatever that goes into the person that has the stuff in it that will kill them. Like, how was that activated? Is it like a switch or button, electronic, you know, or is it like random? And like, who gets to... Yeah, thought that the that the syringes be You know were being pushed by doctors. I thought it was doctors actually administering this or at least, you know, some sort of medical professional. As it turns out, the syringes, you know, who is pushing the drugs that are actually killing these people? It's non-medical prison guards. know, and I mean, you know, I have to qualify that by saying we don't know in every single case. I mean, there's great secrecy around this, but I piece together enough and you know, the only, so just by way of state protocols, the only place where there is any medical qualification at all is the people who are actually inserting the catheter into the veins. So, and that's one where it's like, yeah, you would need a medical person for that. Although, come to find out non-medical people have actually tried. But by and large now, that is the one place and the standards are incredibly low. So it is medical technicians actually doing that. You might have a paramedic or an EMT or in some cases a phlebotomist. Phlebotomists are very good. and experience at taking blood, but in most states they're not even licensed to insert a catheter. And so, you know, but as far as like who pushes the syringes, every place we know and every deposition I've seen and even doctors who are involved, they're like, oh wait, I don't push the drugs. That's done by the prison guards. So I'm, you know, I have to qualify it by saying, You know, some cases I definitely know. And wherever I have learned who was pushing the drugs, it's non-medical prison guards. But, you know, it's all under the hood. It's all in the secrecy. And to your point, they're pushing the drugs from another room. So there's the room, the execution room, the execution chamber. And then there's a little ante room that is next door. There's a hole between the two rooms where a tube goes and it's generally seven feet of tubing between the two. So you can imagine all of the complications that come from that. You know, clogs and kinks and all sorts of things. If you think about it, it's happened with lethal injection. diameter of like an IV line kind of thing? thing? Yeah, it would be a a super thin tube. And, you know, but you asked also about what is the effect on those people. And so I do spend a good amount of time reporting people who have been interviewed and the trauma that that imposes on them. And, you know, There's one fellow who says, you know, listen, every one of these autopsies says state homicide as the cause of death, homicide, you know, or judicial homicide. And he said, that's me. I'm I'm I when it says homicide, that's me. And you can't expect for people to be doing this. as a part of their job, to someone who's not done anything to them. And as they themselves explain, by the time we execute someone, they've been living with us for 10, 15, 20 years. We've come to know them as human beings. And so over and over again, they say, you can't expect for me to do this job. and not be affected by it. You can't expect for me to go home to my family and to be the same as if I didn't do this job. And so, this book, I don't make an argument in this book. This isn't the sort of book where I make an argument and try to convince you that I'm right. In this book, as you know, I just relentlessly document thing after thing after thing after thing, and I trust the reader to come to their own conclusion. But, you know, it's really hard to read that particularly that portion and think, wait a minute, we are creating a whole other class of people who are comfortable with killing. Or as I also document, now departments of corrections, for example, in Oklahoma have gone to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals and said, slow this down because we have to deal with the trauma on the backside. And I do quote one of the Court of Appeals judges who says, get over it, tough enough, buck up, let's go. And so I just lay it bare and let people come to their own conclusions about what we're doing and virtue ethics of what we're creating in the name of justice and in the people's name. Gosh, I want to switch to same topic. I don't even know if I can frame it as more lighthearted. So the DOJ recently announced that they are seeking the death penalty for Luigi Mangione. He's the gentleman that shot the United Health Care person. Can you just walk us through? like, federal executions and that process and, you know. I'm not necessarily asking you to take a side when we're another, but it's just like when I saw that announcement, it immediately made me think of you because I'm like, I can ask her about it. I can ask Karina, like, what does that really mean? Like, do we still kill people at the federal level? And like, what would that execution look like in today's, you know, like climate? think one thing that we should keep in mind is if there's a death sentence on the backside of that trial, we're not going to see it for a very long time, you know, a very long time. And so I think like, yes, I can talk to you about executions. The last set of executions were the Trump executions in 2020, which, you know, were fast tracked once he lost the election. and the Supreme Court green-lighted those. And so we saw, I think it was 13, like more, there were more federal executions in six months than there had been in, I think, the past 60 years. And so that's the last ones we saw. Of course, we know that Biden commuted almost all of the federal death row. But, you know, I think what's interesting about this particular case is there was a capital defendant that just pled out to life without parole in the El Paso shootings in Texas. More than 20 people shopping at Walmart get killed. so here we have the Trump administration saying, we're going to go for death in this case. And the first thing I thought as a death penalty researcher was actually not about the execution, which again is going to happen in a decade from now. It can be totally different if it happens at all. It was about the very fact that they're going for death in a single homicide case. There are thousands of first degree murders that happened every year. And so it's interesting to me that you're going for death here. Why? Why? Well, he's, you know, was a prominent person. And it reminds me of the fact that if you kill a white person, you are more than four times likely to get the death penalty than if you kill a black person. We think about the racial disparities. think most people think about racial disparities and they think about the race of the defendant. Well, some say show that more than others, it depends. But the greatest racial effect is really whose lives are we more interested in achieving retribution for? And it's high status victims. it's high status victims, it's white victims over black victims. And so I don't know how much of this is in the conversation. Maybe it will be because of our podcast, your podcast, but for anyone who supports the death penalty, wonder, but people could support the death penalty and say, yeah, but I don't think that people who... are more prominent, have more worth to their life than people who aren't. And so there's that disparity that I see. The other thing I thought, frankly, was good thing Dodge is on the case and cutting government waste because the single most wasteful government program, and I'll stand flat-footed on this. is the death penalty. Really? yeah. yeah. And you know, at the federal level, just by way of like federal stats, it costs eight times more just to try the case at the federal level than it does to try the case when death isn't on the table. So that's eight times more and you might not get a death sentence. from that, you you think about the Marjorie Taylor Greene shootings down in Florida and they put that thing on multiple, you know, over a dozen victims and the jury came back with life. And so here you have somebody, yes, he killed a very prominent person. I think he's also crowdfunded, you know, there are people who are like, well, you know, I... every murder is a terrible murder, but I'm just saying I think there's a chance that, you you could put in all the money in the world and you may not even get that death penalty and all that's down the drain. And then there's the cost of housing this person on death row versus, you know, life without prison, parole. So, you know, it's, you would save millions upon millions of dollars. by calling it a day. We've got life without parole, which, I mean, you are taking their life. You're just saving millions of dollars. And yet here we are. So. You said something earlier that I just want to clarify. You said Marjorie Taylor's bringing murder in Florida. Oh, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. Somehow she is on my. She is on my mind. That's exactly right. Yes, I sure am. I don't even know how that happened. Thank you. No, I didn't come back to it. I was gone. So, So, How do we fix this? I mean, like you've mentioned that, you know, this isn't necessarily like a book about the death penalty as much as it is about secrecy. So like, what do we do about... you know, accountability in this space or is there anything that we can do? Yeah, I mean, I say at the beginning, this is a book about how we kill. It's not a book about whether we kill. But those two questions are not unrelated. And as I say at the beginning, you know, I have my own views, but I just I'm going to hold those back. want readers to come to their own conclusions. before they ever hear from me. But by the end of the book, know, one of the things that I say is, frankly, that the story of lethal injection is a story about all the ways that states can't be trusted with this. I mean, it really does just ruthlessly. document all the reasons states can't be trusted with the ability to take life and all the ways that they've tried to cover it up. So I think in the discourse, we tend to focus on one question. Did this person, does this person deserve to live? Does this person deserve to die? And when I look at it, I think, well, that's just half of the equation. other question is does the state deserve to take this life? And so that's, I think, a larger question that I leave readers with. Yeah, because like I'm thinking, depending on where you're at statewide, I mean, the information that you put in the book, like talk a little bit about the difficulty or ease in which it was to find this stuff. So like, for instance, if Mia is just an average lay person, you know, I pick up your book, I read it, I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. I wonder what our state's doing. You know, like, would I be as successful as you were? asked because I really do have to say hats off to the investigative journalists. whose work is, you I feature throughout the book. And so they've done a lot of the hard digging and FOIA requests and going over to India and finding out that Harris Pharma is just a guy named Chris Harris who left, you know, gave the DEA an address that turns out to be his apartment that he left without paying six months rent. You know, like, I wasn't going to be able to find that. So. You know, in that way, I think little pieces of this story have been trickling out, you know, for a decade or more. It just hasn't been put together. so there's the investigative journalism piece. I found a lot of it in litigation documents and some of those on a deep dive. I'm seeing beta documents that I can't get. And so. some of that was reaching out to the lawyers and saying, I know that you've got these documents or can I get the expert report or something like that where I just, wasn't able to get it myself, but they were filed. they're there somewhere. And then a lot of this was reading, so the science, you've got competing experts, some are saying this, some are saying this. Well, I want to see the scientific studies that you're referring to. So it's pulling all of that. And then a lot of times, at least at first, I couldn't understand the, you know, the pharmacology, the pharmacological studies. So I'm pulling the pharmacology textbooks and I'm getting into that and so that I can understand it. And so there's the whole medical side. I think I ended up reading over 150 medical journal articles on all sorts of related studies and the ethics and all of those conversations. And then there was other scholarship that I'm pulling. so... It's not, you know, some of this is literally covered by secrecy. And I talk about, for example, a state statute. I think that was Missouri that said, can't, you know, if you, we're not gonna tell you this information. Okay, it's a secrecy statute. And by the way, if you find it on your own and you repeat it, if you share it, you're liable for damages, including punitive damages. Another state says, we're going to make you a felon for sharing this information. If you find out who the pharmaceutical producer is and you share it, that's a felony. a lot of this information was possible, but it's States have done every single thing they possibly can to hide it and not make it accessible to the public. You could do it. Investigative journalists have done it and have reported it at their own risk. but there are reasons why the American public still thinks lethal injection is basically a very humane thing that sometimes goes wrong for reasons we can't quite understand. That's not so. All right. Last question ish. If I consumed 3000 calories, I'm going to change as a person, good, better and different. Like you talked earlier about you consuming 3000 pages worth of information on a particular subject. And I know that's probably not the least bit of information that you've consumed. You've probably consumed a ton. Like we just talked about it. So like has writing this book changed you? Because it changed me just reading it, and I can only imagine it changed you as a writer. So it's like a... Yeah. Will, do you want to see the piles? I'll see if I can do this. I'll see if I can do this. I don't know if you can see all of that, but I have just piles and piles and piles of information. essentially at this point have an electronic library of all things lethal injection. It's a dark topic and it's part of the reason I didn't want to write about lethal injection and I didn't even want to write an article about lethal injection, let alone a book on lethal injection. It's one thing to write about the death penalty and that can be depressing and dark in its own right. But studying lethal injection is studying executions and that is where the rubber hits the road, right? That's what the death penalty actually is. And so it is especially dark and there's just so much tragedy. There's these family members of the victim, there's the victim of the crime itself, there's the person. who, you know, I talk about this in the epilogue, not always, but so often, you know, 17 years later, they're not even the same person they were. They've like, you know, redeemed some of them have started prison ministries, you know, and so like, there's that tragedy, there's their family who have been going through this and their family members have done nothing wrong, but we're gonna watch the state. set a particular time and day to kill their family member and then other people are gonna file into a room to watch it, right? And so you've got the trauma on the media. It's just, you know, it's so much, it's so much trauma. And so it was pretty dark. I do have some passages that I personally associate with like, yeah, I cried or I had to stop and went over to my couch and cried. you know, so there are some of those passages, but I think it was, you know, really important work and I would do it all again. That's amazing. you've got my commitment to finish your book because as I've told you before, just talking, was like, man, I can read a chapter at a time and then I've got to put it down because then I want to break something. So yeah, just thank you so much for putting your heart and soul into the secrets of the killing state. Definitely can't recommend it. it enough. And you have a preferred place that people find your book because. episode will be releasing on the day of your book release so where should they buy it? You can buy it in any major bookstore, independent bookstores too. If you're so inclined to support independent bookstores, I am embarking on a book tour. right now we have dates, Politics and Prose in DC, Red Emma's in Baltimore, Making Worlds in Philly, and the co-op in Chicago and then this fall I'll be embarking on a driving tour mostly around the south. I do have a website. It's carinalane.com and events are all listed there for those who want one. actually, Driving around your little Tesla cyber truck thing My sister bought a van in the last year and when I told her I was gonna do this kind of crazy thing, she basically said, you're gonna need somebody. I'll do it. So until she stops and like opens the door and kicks me out alongside of the road, she'll be going with me and we're, you know, it's gonna be the experience and the adventure of a lifetime for sure, but. of fun. Well, definitely looking forward to hearing how that went. And as always, just thank you so much, Karina. You're great. yeah, gosh, what a heavy subject. But to our listeners and viewers, hey, thanks for stopping by again. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we will see you next time. Take care. Bye. Thank you.