Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty

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 show more 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). show less