Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty

by Austin Sarat

Gruesome Spectacles tells the sobering history of botched, mismanaged, and painful executions in the U.S. from 1890 to the present. Since the book's initial publication in 2014, the cruel and unusual executions of a number of people on death row, including Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma and Joseph Wood in Arizona, have made headlines and renewed vigorous debate surrounding the death penalty in America. Austin Sarat's book instantly became an essential resource for citizens, scholars, and lawmakers interested in capital punishment―even the Supreme Court, which cited the book in its recent opinion, Glossip v. Gross . Now in paperback, the book includes a new preface outlining the latest twists and turns in the death penalty debate, including the recent galvanization of citizens and leaders alike as recent botched executions have unfolded in the press. Sarat argues that unlike in the past, today's botched executions seem less like inexplicable mishaps and more like the latest symptoms of a death penalty machinery in disarray. Gruesome Spectacles traces the historical evolution of methods of execution, from hanging or firing squad to electrocution to gas and lethal injection. Even though each of these technologies was developed to "perfect" state killing by decreasing the chance of a cruel death, an estimated three percent of all American executions went awry in one way or another. Sarat recounts the gripping and truly gruesome stories of some of these deaths―stories obscured by history and to some extent, the popular press.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, True Crime, Academic, Law, American History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2014

About the author

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

On April 29 of this year, Clayton Lockett was led into the execution chamber of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary to be executed. The breadth and brutality of his crimes were undeniable--kidnapping, rape, forcible sodomy, assault and battery, and murder, all committed against a 19-year-old woman named Stephanie Neiman--and his execution on that night, which was done through lethal injection, marked the end to almost 14 years of Lockett sitting on death row. After he was strapped to the gurney, the penitentiary staff attempted to find viable veins in both of Lockett's arms but could not; instead, they inserted a single IVs into his groin, which they then covered from view. Lockett was then injected with a cocktail of drugs that had never been used in an execution before; in fact, the names of the drugs being used, as well as the amounts of each, had been kept secret from the public, including Lockett's own lawyer. Ten minutes after the execution began, Lockett was declared unconscious. Soon after that, Lockett began to speak, move, and breathe heavily. Unbeknownst to the penitentiary staff, the IV needle had never entered Lockett's vein, and the unidentified drugs were seeping into his tissue instead of directly entering his bloodstream. This continued for another half-hour, until Lockett suffered the heart attack that finally killed him.

The following day, Stanford University released Gruesome Spectacles, a short but concise history of botched executions in America between 1890 and 2010. This coincidence lends itself easily to commentary, and it's tempting to remark on how prescient it would have been had Austin Sarat's book been published even a few weeks earlier. But the truly noteworthy aspect of this coincidence is that there is no coincidence: the death penalty in America is such a flawed and dangerous practice, and executions are botched with such staggering consistency, that any book on the subject would have inevitably arrived within weeks or even days of such an example. In fact, Sarat concludes Gruesome Spectacles with a thirty-page chronological index of all "botched" executions in those 115 years--a number totaling more than 250 men and women who suffered burned flesh, misplaced IVs, strangulation, dislodged syringes, repeated jolts of electricity, drunken executioners, incompetent medical staff, and even decapitation. These failings persisted regardless of method--hanging, electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection--and in compiling examples of such horrifying outcomes into a comprehensive and readable book, Sarat hopes to expose the reality of the death penalty and how we use it.

Some may read Sarat's book, not to mention the extensive index and any mention of "suffering" on the part of these men and women, as misdirected liberal pity or the recasting of perpetrators--the murderers, the kidnappers, the rapists--as victims. In fact, in the aftermath of Lockett's botched execution, voices rose in support of the Oklahoma penitentiary and capital punishment in general, announcing that Lockett's suffering in no way matched that of his victim--one of the few undeniable truths of the situation--and that those lamenting what had happened were turning a murderer into a martyr. In their own way, these voices were arguing that those who commit the most heinous acts should not be given any comfort, some even going so far as to say Lockett and those like him deserve the pain they receive. These sentiments are easy to understand, especially when expressed by victims' families and friends, as well as those who've suffered under similar crimes, but substituting emotional impulses for ethical clarity undermines the very foundation of the American judicial system, not to mention our own collective morality.

When we execute a criminal, regardless of the severity of their crimes, we are submitting to the very same ideologies that drive those criminals--namely, that committing violence against someone is justifiable. It is preposterous to think that killing someone will demonstrate to the rest of American society that killing is wrong--a sort of strange American doublethink that, as statistics demonstrate, does not actually reduce criminal behavior. If we followed this logic, courts would also order the homes of those convicted of arson to be burned, those convicted of raped to themselves be raped, and so on. But we do not follow this logic, and the reason is because it's not logical. By using the death penalty as a punishment, we are acknowledging our own inability to address the causes of crime, and instead we remove the effects by ending lives.*

At the same time, we believe that no one should endure "cruel and unusual punishment," even though the Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to define the criteria with which we might assess whether a form of capital punishment is either cruel or unusual. To most people, the idea of strapping someone to an electrified wooden chair, placing a damp sponge on top of their head, and pulling a switch, all in full view of an assembled audience, would seem both cruel and unusual, as would injecting unspecified poisons into a man's groin or gassing them in a room designed and built specifically for that purpose. Similarly, our entire judicial system operates on the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, often by a judge or jury, and yet the flaws in that system have been exposed to us over and over again. Since 1973, more than one hundred death-row inmates have been released from prison following the introduction of new evidence, recanted witness testimony, or DNA testing--innocent people who might have been executed for crimes they did not commit, and by a system of punishment prone to torturous failings.

When we advocate for capital punishment, we do so without ever acknowledging the flaws inherent in America's courts and prisons, both of which succeed only when those entrusted to run them are infallible and without prejudice--an impossible expectation for any system. And when we accept the execution of a man or woman, regardless of their guilt, we debase our own morality until we are level with those who commit the very crimes we claim to abhor. We declare that capital punishment is the natural end for those who commit the worst of crimes--that it is the final, ultimate step toward justice fulfilled--and yet we refuse to ensure that the men and women being executed are actually guilty, that we're not personifying the worst aspects of human nature in a foolish and futile attempt to change human nature, that we're not confusing justice with revenge.

In addition to the 30-page index, Sarat also includes a one-page statistical summary of which methods led to the most botched executions between 1890 and 2010. And while the overall picture is somewhat surprising--for instance, there is no relation between an increase in the use of a particular method and the number of those executions that are botched--the most startling realization is that, according to the data, there is one form of capital punishment that had a flawless record during those 115 years, one that Sarat never discusses in the short entirety of his book: the firing squad. Of the 68 people who were executed in this manner, every single one was killed outright and without apparent error. Which makes you wonder why proponents of the death penalty refuse to support and utilize a method that is, in a perverse way, so efficient and so practical. (After all, the cost of a half-dozen bullets compared to surging electricity, gas, or drugs more than undermines the statistical arguments about the cost of capital punishment compared to lifetime incarcerations.)

The truth of why is also the truth of capital punishment: besides being the most effective method, at least according to the statistics, firing squads expose the hypocritical nature of capital punishment by coming closer than all other methods to staging what looks and feels like actual murder. With electric chairs, a switch is flipped, and the man or woman being executed dies far from others; with a hanging, they fall through a trap door and have their necks broken by a rope while those who tightened the noose and pulled the lever are out of frame. Similarly, with lethal injections and gas chambers, the penitentiary staff are given distance, allowed to stand back and hand over responsibility to buttons, tubes, and needles. All four of these methods are unnatural, requiring special tools and locations constructed especially for these events--a gallows, an electrified chair, chambers, and so on. But a firing squad is direct, naked, and universal: a small group of men load guns, aim them, and fire. There are no switches or catheters, and the execution takes place in the open, without gurneys or specialized rooms. And when you consider that many of those who were executed by firing squad were condemned to death because of crimes committed in much the same manner--with guns, close up, against strangers--it blurs the line between crime and justice to the point where you're left with only one conclusion about the nature of capital punishment, the truth of what the death penalty really is.


*Throughout Sarat's book, we are offered condensed biographies of men and women who have been executed by various methods over the last 125 years, and in reading them a common thread soon emerges: troublesome personal experiences. This includes abusive relationships, persistent drug use, or unaddressed psychological problems. If elected officials were looking for ways in which criminal activity could be decreased, addressing these pressing social issues--poverty, the lack of a good education, drug abuse, readily available mental health screenings--would be a much more effective route than using capital punishment as a supposed deterrent, which is reactive rather than proactive and much more appealing to a scared constituency.


This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book is getting an unfair rap on Goodreads for not being a gory accounting of botched executions and rather being an academic text that seeks to examine capital punishment through the lens of executions gone awry.

In that regard, Sarat provides an even-handed approach to botched executions, focussing on four methods of killing: hanging; electrocution; gassing; and lethal injection. While there are gruesome stories in there, the book too often refrains from making any actual claims as to the morality of the process, instead inviting the readers to form their own judgment. One interesting approach that Sarat takes is he usually describes the execution scene prior to detailing what the inmate did to end up on the gallows, in the chair, or on the gurney.

The final chapter largely focusses on the media's responsibility for sanitizing the process, which does lead me to believe that Sarat is largely opposed to the death penalty. Liz Bruenig at the New York Times has done excellent work on the subject - I recommend her piece on the execution of Brandon Bourgeois, which, as far as I'm concerned, remains the pinnacle on writing on the subject. Bruenig does not shy away from the immorality of the state's actions, depicting death in all its naked ugliness. Sarat could have done so, but pulls back, providing an academic survey that, while compelling, fails to cohere around a thesis on the subject of the death penalty.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Gruesome Spectacles, Austin Sarat presents a concise legal and cultural history of failed executions in the United States between 1890 and 2010. His analysis covers the major technologies and methodologies deployed in the execution of violent offenders, paying special attention to the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, and the lethal injection apparatus. I couldn't help but notice the omission of firing squad from his chronology. It seems like this was a missed opportunity not only from the perspective of judicial history, but from a military history standpoint as well. I would be interested in the prospects of a military history of botched firing squads to fill this gap in Sarat's research - but I digress.

This is a short and punchy book, and Sarat's arguments are crystal clear. His abolitionist leanings are on full display, but not to the detriment of argumentative balance. Sarat explores America's tenuous relationship with capital punishment and the progressivist impulse. He shows how the advent of each technological innovation in state-mandated killing came with their own set of promises, and how each and every one of these methods failed to live up to their own standards of practice. Underscoring each innovation is the perpetual search for a painless, instantaneous, and humane way to "extinguish" life. However, as Sarat's book reminds us, killing a human being isn't like flicking off a light switch; no matter how you slice and dice it, the business of killing is always a messy one.

There are a number of truly memorable cases in the pages of Sarat's book, but the one that I can't stop thinking about is the execution of Rickey Ray Rector. Rector was an African-American man sentenced to die by lethal injection for the murder of two people, including a police officer. The sentence was carried out by the State of Arkansas in 1992, and the details of his execution are horrific. For instance, it reportedly took over an hour for the death squad to find a vein, which they located only after resorting to the "cut down" method. Once the chemical solutions began to flow, it took an additional 19 minutes for Rector to die. Before reading this book, I had never heard of the "cut down" procedure, which basically entails cutting away the upper portions of flesh to gain access to a suitable vein. But it's the psychological and philosophical dimensions of this case that truly piqued my curiosity.

In the commission of his offences, Rector attempted suicide via self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He survived the attempt (obviously), but suffered permanent brain damage with significant deficits in memory, cognition and overall mental functioning. Death row staff would frequently hear him barking like a dog, and from all of the available evidence, it's clear that he did not understand the process of execution, nor did he comprehend the finality of death. Of course, this raises some serious questions about mens rea and Rector's criminal culpability.

Yet Sarat's investigation goes a step further, raising monumental questions about the legal notion of personhood itself. In one of the most fascinating sections of the book, Sarat wonders if one could even consider Rector to be the same person before and after the suicide attempt. Indeed, Rector's attorneys had argued that "[t]he person who shot Officer Martin cannot be executed [...]. He no longer lives. If we cannot execute that person, must we, nevertheless, execute his body?" If personhood is directly connected to the brain, as I tend to think it is, then I would argue that Rector was not the same person. So what is the correct object of punishment, the person or their body? In a more general sense, if we are always changing, growing and regenerating as biological organisms, are we ever truly the same person in two separate moments of our lives? How can we reconcile the biological and neuropsychological fact of perpetual change with the need to hold people accountable for their past actions? And what about executing offenders that appear to have been rehabilitated while on death row? Is it ethically permissible to kill someone if such a change of heart is considered 'genuine'? There are many concerning issues at play here for American rehabilitative justice at large.

Needless to say, I gained a lot from reading this book. For me, personally, the mark of a great book is that pandora's box quality - the ability of an author to raise an issue and prompt an infinitesimal number of questions. I firmly believe that Sarat succeeded in this endeavour. His work shines a light on the fallacious thinking we maintain about observable pain and suffering. To borrow Sarat's words, we "assume the legibility of pain" as it appears on the body of another, and we are confident in our "capacity to represent it accurately". The truth is quite the opposite. The phenomenology of pain and suffering is an intensely private matter, experienced only by the individual doing the experiencing. American history is filled with lawmakers and death house personnel who have wrongfully assumed that they can judge pain and suffering based on the observable qualities of the condemned. As Sarat cautions, to think this way is wholly naive.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book suggests some kind of macabre narrative history of botched executions, targeted at the ghoulish true-crime aficionado. In reality, it's a book more aimed at lawyers and criminologists, written by a professor of jurisprudence and even cited recently by the Supreme Court.

It has two main threads to it - the first is a history of the evolution of the methods of capital punishment, from hanging to the electric chair, firing squad, gas chamber and finally lethal injection. Each time a state or court recommended a change from the previous method, it was in pursuit of a more humane and painless means of execution, rejecting the previous method, usually under legal challenge, as 'cruel and unusual', a relic of barbarity consigned to the dustbin of executional history along with stoning, the guillotine and so on. Throughout this history are examples of botched executions that lent their weight to the arguments in pursuit of more humane alternatives - the man who had to be hung twice, the woman decapitated by the noose, the man who caught fire during electrocution, the man who suffered two hours of prison personnel's failed attempts to find a usable vein.

Austin Sarat also focuses on what role these failures have played in the marshalling of arguments against capital punishment. It is a curious fact that for much of American history, botched executions have not been seen as any kind of argument against the existence of capital punishment itself, simply the method of choice at the time. More frequently, botched executions have been depicted by state and prison officials and newspapermen as unfortunate incidents, accidents, with no relevance or impact on the larger issue at hand, rather than inherent and inevitable outcomes in a capital punishment system in search of the impossible - a humane, painless and flawless way to kill someone via bureaucratic process and procedure.

Because the truth is, modern society needs the death penalty to be humane and painless, the state's role needs to be one of aloof and impartial judgement, otherwise the true hypocrisy of capital punishment is exposed. If the state is willing to accept pain and suffering to be part of the process of execution, then how does that kind of torture before death differ from the crimes the prisoners are condemned for?

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarat's book looks at the history of botched executions in the United States and how changes in methods of capital punishment changed because of reporting about such cases.

"From the beginning, American execution practises have been designed to differentiate law's violence from violence outside the law-to sharply set Capital punishment apart from the crimes the law condemns." 4

This book ".., examines the history of botched executions in the United States from 1890 to 2010, a period in which approximately 3 percent of all executions were botched." 5

"Thus the problem of botched executions and the search for painless death might be better understood as one way of keeping sentimental, simplifying narratives of criminal and victim intact by not allowing the condemned to assume the status of victims of outmoded technologies of death." 28

"By the end of the 19th century, death itself had become more of a stranger to the American middle-class. Instead of families caring for the sick and dying at home, hospitals were now the primary site for medical treatment. Cemeteries were also moved out of public view. And the violence of the Civil War further shaped the middle class's "new relationship with death." The brutality of public hangings came to eerily resembled the mutilation and destruction of the war. " 43

"Lethal Injection was once widely thought to be the final step in the evolution of the technology of state killing. Medicalized, bureaucratic, private, quick-it seemed to provide the ultimate answer to the state's commitment to "impose no more pain than is necessary" on those its subjects to the ultimate punishment." 144

"Robert Blecker summarizes the modern attitude toward pain that began to solidify in the early 20th century: "at every opportunity we banish pain from our site; we professional and bureaucratize it's infliction in private settings. Pain, and with it punishment itself, became an abstraction; it's intentional infliction is a site and An act to be avoided, a source of shame." 157

[Gayle Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, that was gruesome. Written from an anti-death penalty stance, the book explores the history of botched executions and what, if any, effect botched executions have on the public's perception of the death penalty. Probably the most surprising and disturbing facts I learned were the number of people who used to attend as spectators when executions were public (thousands), and the early plan to gas prisoners in their sleep while they least suspected it. Really? I think that would add an element of psychological torture to the process. The prisoner knows he's condemned to die. It wouldn't take long for the "gassing while they're asleep plan" to become common knowledge. The person would go to sleep each night wondering if this is the time he won't wake up. Not to mention the fact that the gas itself would probably wake him up, coughing and gasping. The conclusions of the experiments on animals also seem a bit disingenuous. They did every awful thing that has been done to humans on animals and would say, "electrocution is most humane" and "lethal gas causes no pain." Exactly the opposite is obviously true. If the humans suffered, the animals did, too. Oh, and if you read the appendices, all I can say is "Mary the Elephant, My God!"

[Jim McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I thought would be a quick read of botched executions turned out to be a serious study of capital punishment from the perspective of botched executions. The author traces the history of capital punishment from the days when it demonstrated that one's life belonged to the king, who could take it away in the most gruesome manner imaginable or just as easily grant a pardon, to the present day when executions have become bureaucratic excercises performed away from the public's view. The author also shows how botched executions and the drive to find an efficient and painless way to kill have driven the move from hanging to electrocution to gassing to the present day lethal infection. In the author's statistics of all botched executions since 1900, lethal infection actually has a higher rate of executions gone wrong (7.12% compared to 3.12% for hanging and 1.92% for the electric chair).

[giulianna Marchese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far more than descriptions of people dying in horrible ways. But this is a difficult read. The dearth of humanity in our justice system and the depth of cruelty that people are capable of is still shocking to me, no matter how many of these books I read.
It is truly absurd how often someone will declare, following a botched execution, that the condemned died instantly and actually felt no pain. How would you know? How do we know when these executions are not botched?
This is a history of people not trying to end a cruel and inhumane practice, but trying to find a technology that makes it palatable for us to continue it. In lethal injection, that technology may have reached it's final form. Not a technology that ends life painlessly, but likely just one that makes the condemned incapable of displaying that pain.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fair warning that this is an *academic* text on a fairly lurid, prurient topic. If you are reading for TV show news magazine type hyperbolic drama, you won't find it. What you will find is a thoughtful analysis of this central question: why is it, in the span of at least 150 years, through different political climates and social cultures, that botched executions haven't ever prompted a serious re-evaluation of the death penalty itself? Even though this is primarily an academic text, the prose is accessible. Though heavily foot-noted, cited, complete with comprehensive appendices -- for a book very focused on data -- Sarat never loses sight of the humanity behind each state-sponsored execution, botched or not.

Read as #8 in 2015 Pop Sugar Book Challenge: Read a book that scares you

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book profiles different instances of the failures of specific methods of state killing: hanging, electrocution, lethal gas, and lethal injection, providing about four examples of botching for each method. Most opponents of capital punishment cite the murder of innocent people as the reason to abolish the death penalty...

But right here is another reason.

If you oppose the death penalty, or if you have any interest in the topic of imprisonment, you need to read this book.

Although, if you have any interest in the topic, you probably already HAVE read this book, and I'm just extraordinarily late to the game. I will look forward to reading more from Austin Sarat.

[Stephan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history behind execution, and how the "humane" practices wasn't always humane. The book details various accounts of condemned prisoners who from the 1700s all the way to the 1900s met their fate under the gallows only to end up not dead from a snapped rope, or dying from blood loss from the rope cutting into them. Once technology started to play a role in execution, "old sparky" didn't improve the matter. This book is a great eye opener and a recommended read for all those interested in the failing of our criminal justice system.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a good and informative book. Especially the discussion of media coverage and how the courts have adjudicated over time. However, if the author desires to make a case to abolish Capital Punishment he has missed far to many reasons to do so. He neglects the possibility of innocents and the cost.

[Melissa Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gruesome, but fascinating view of pain, punishment, and execution technology and the constitutionality. Austin Sarat is brilliant, as always.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely thought provoking.

[Volbet · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's something voyeuristic about the history of how humans have brutalized one another. Be it true crime, war history and, yes, penal history, there's something both repulsive and alluring to it.

In Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty, Austin Sarat is going down the road laid by Michel Foucault, drawing on a historical analysis of corporeal punishment to demonstrate how state-sanctioned murder has always been a macabre and inhuman form of punishment. Especially, Sarat is betting everything on botched executions providing providing a convincing phenomenology of the inhumanity of the death penalty.
From the gallows, over the chair and gas, to lethal injections, Sarat tracks just how these methods of executions have all been, despite the goal being the opposite, moves towards increasingly inhuman ways of punishing prisoners. A similar point to the one Foucault made in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
And I will say that Sarat does argue this point rather well, demonstrating how the increasing humanism in penology, moving punishment from the emotional to the rational, has also served to delete the human in the way we punish.

The only issue is that Sarat also clashes with the empirical side of his argument. For example, to demonstrate the torturous ways that executions have failed, Sarat often rely solely on eye witness, dismissing the reports from experts. As a law professor, Sarat should be the first two know two of the most important rules for any lawyer or attorney:
1. Don't disagree with experts.
2. Eyewitnesses are unreliable as all hell.
However much I want to agree with Sarat, I doubt that the journalists seeing an execution knows more about the state of the executed than the pathologist who's job it is to determine if a person is dead.
And if it's because Sarat want to show how prison pathologists aren't able to do an objective determination in the event of a botched execution, that point is never made by Sarat.
There's also quite a few of the executions mentioned in the book that weren't botched, in that they didn't lead to suffering in excess of a normal execution, but where done to a person that Sarat deems to be incapable of understanding why they are to the executed.
The analysis of botched executions and unjust executions are very different, but Sarat sees fit to cover them in the same analysis and in the same manner.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignore the lurid, blood-splattered cover. This is a solid scholarly work on the death penalty, its theory, practice, and the wide gulf between the two. Criminals have been executed in the United States since the country’s inception, and before that, if you count extrajudicial killings, like lynchings and burnings. Throughout that time, there have been hardliners who dismissed the agony caused the punished, and abolitionists who reject the death penalty outright on moral grounds. Between these two far poles is everyone else, searching for a solution to potentially insoluble problems.
“Gruesome Spectacles,” is well-organized, taking on each method tried in the US, starting with hanging. Small precises of the various condemned are given, explaining the commission of their crimes, and then the unseemly manner in which they died. From botched hangings, the book goes on to botched electrocutions, gassings, and lastly fouled-up lethal injections.
It’s not easy reading, for anyone with even a shred of compassion in them—or even a gag reflex, when it comes to some of the worst botches. But the pain the families of victims feel cannot be discounted, either. Nor can we remove the desire for retribution, perhaps too deeply lodged in the human heart, even with the fulcrum of religion.
It’s a very touchy subject, whose history, byways, and future is obviously much different in America than on the Continent, or other parts of the world. That’s what makes it so strange, terrible, and fascinating, how idiomatically American it all is.
The quest, thus far, to find a fully “humane” (or at least painless) way to administer the death penalty continues. In the meantime, since the sausage is getting made in our names (and with our tax dollars) we owe it to ourselves to at least peek behind the curtain. Literally, in the case of some executions, where the condemned is not just hooded, but the gallery is shielded from seeing the ritual’s culmination. I wonder if some of the family members of victims feel cheated by this?
Fascinating and informative, regardless. Recommended, without photos or illustrations, though you can obviously go online to see some of the aftermath pictures from various botched executions. I did so, out of rank curiosity, and regret having done so; I don’t recommend you do it, either, but know that if I couldn’t dissuade myself, I’m not likely to dissuade you.

[tripletext · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a concise read about how the state has botched executing folks in the United States, and how general perception of the death penalty has changed (in spite of or because of the botched executions themselves). Despite its title, the book was less about the nitty-gritty details of botched executions; instead, it analyzed how execution methods in America reflected sentiment among the populace and the media, and how botched executions shifted the state's attitudes of what constituted a "painless" death (spoiler: there isn't such a thing as a 100% painless death, 100% of the time).

While there wasn't much to this book in terms of spicy ideas or interesting content, it did get me thinking about lofty topics: death, state-sanctioned executions, capital punishment, dying unceremoniously or pitiably, and the memory of a person after they're gone, to name a few.

So I guess I didn't really enjoy reading this book. It definitely didn't make me feel great, anyway!

[Snem · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read an article about botched executions and this book was referenced. I heard this came from student research and I found that really cool and inspiring. This is a new angle in anti-death penalty arguments and I appreciated the academic nature I which this subject was treated. The history of executions was well-done.

I always said that if I got to pick how I was to be executed I'd choose firing squad. I was disappointed to see there was no chapter on the firing squad. Perhaps because according to the chart in one of the appendices there haven't been any botched firing squad executions. But isn't that an important part of the story? I also needed some more operationalizing of the term "botched" or what constitutes unnecessary suffering.

I found it pretty fascinating how much of this death stuff is focused on the witnesses and appearances.

I recommend this for anyone with an interest in the death penalty, but it's again written academically and if you're looking for gruesome details there isn't that much.

[Katrine Austin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book had the intriguing New York Times tag line down pat but the deliverance was as dry as a text book that had been baked and yellowed in the sun on a hot desert day. I can slug through some ± books, but I just could not get past the second chapter on this one. Turned a potentially interesting investigation into the screwed up legal kills in America to a dry dissertation worthy of your grade 10 history teacher where all they did was disgorge names, dates and outcomes. I would not recommend this book to anyone. There are far more fascinating books about medieval intrigue on death.