Interview

What is it like to be a writer during a pandemic?

Writing was salvation, or if not salvation, a consuming distraction. I really geared up in two different genres, my usually academic fare and also op-eds / public commentary. The latter is somewhat new, but it provided an almost all-consuming way to vent about what was going on outside beyond the COVID cavern that my home became. I found new outlets – CNN, The Washington Post, Slate, The Hill and fell in love with the form, 800-1000 words. Get to the point, avoid jargon, say something that draws on expertise but has a social, legal, or political pay-off. I found myself alternating between my two genres and that also offered a way to vary the pace and keep myself fully engaged as a writer.

Why did you write your new book?

My new book, Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution, continues my several decades long exploration of America's death penalty. It offers the first book-length examination of this nation's latest execution method of choice and the promise that this method will put people to death safely, reliably, and humanely. I wanted to illuminate the way capital punishment has been, and is, sustained by the illusory quest for a perfect execution technology. If the United States is to continue killing inmates in our name, in the name of the people, we have a duty to confront the complex meanings of state killing. I wrote my book in the hope that it would contribute to achieving that goal. It is written for a general audience and tells the story of the quirky and compelling characters who brought us lethal injection and the people who it has been used to kill.