It is complicated. So theres no western about the Resource Base pittsburgh and in marsalis is enormous. And getting that gas to market is problematic, especially in and around a population area densely populated as this. Last question and thank you. Basically i think they are telling us there is little opportunity for improvement and growth. So what do you think of a couple of barriers that we need to remove to really get this to work. Karl rove is from austin, its okay. Clearly really believing and policymakers really believing in advocating for Unreliable Energy is part of that. Instead what we have had is a lot of social engineering and talk about Climate Change when in fact the United States and this includes regulatory regimes everywhere to unlock more growth. This includes the regulatory state as well. [applause] cspan2 provide live coverage of the u. S. Senate or proceedings in key Public Policy events. Every weekend booktv. For 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. This is brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch a moluccas on a spoke and follows on twitter. Next, botched executions in the discussion on the United States going back to 1890. He questions whether the methods we use to execute people should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. This is about one hour. Thank you all for coming. I would like to announce at 7 00 oclock there will be an event called song birds of the military. And so if any of you are so moved, please do so. This is truly the center of the famous coastal life and without it, this town would be williamstown. [laughter] i do appreciate if you will turn off your cell phones. And i hope that you have all done that now. When my son was being bar mitzvah, the first thing the rabbi said was to shut off our cell phones and you could see everyone was fumbling for their cell phones and he spoke with the authority of god and so people obeyed and then about 90 seconds into the service a cell phone rang and ive never seen a rabbi turned white quite so quickly. And so unless you incur the wrath of the rabbi, please keep your cell phones off. Lets try to do something in three parts. The first is to give you a little bit of sense of the surrounding of the book and what the book tries to do and then second, what i want to do is read you a little bit from the books and get a sense of the argument. Third and most importantly, i would like to love it if we have some conversation if we can talk about the subject. So the book is called gruesome spectacles. I recommend it for mothers day giving, as so appropriate. [laughter] this purports to be the first conference of treatment of the subject of watched executions in the. What it tries to do is to examine the history of botched executions or a 100 year timeframe. To try to make sense of the way in which it is understood in law and in Popular Culture and in the struggle to end Capital Punishment in the United States. Together with my collaborators here today, five undergraduates, we studied every american execution from 1890 to 2010 and determine that just over 3 of those executions were botched. And surprisingly among all of the technologies the news in the 20th century to execute and i will posit what you contemplate what they were, hanging, the electric chair, the gas chamber, the firing squad and lethal injection, surprisingly among all of those technologies come in the most unreliable, the one with the highest rate of things going wrong is lethal injection. So about 7 of those have been botched. We argue in the book of this that this has helped to change technology during the course of his time from hanging to electrocution from the interim electrocution to lethal injection, but that they play very little roles in the overall conversation about whether the united state should talk about Capital Punishment. In both war and Popular Culture, a botched execution is being is a mere accident and aberration. The hangman gets drunk, the rope was in tide tight enough. I hope that by offering a broad historical overview of the subject, we could see more clearly and consider where there is something a broad significance about the anon anon of this. Perhaps part of the answer is found in the eighth amendment to the constitution of the United States. Which as you all know prohibits cruel punishment. The eighth amendments prohibition of it, they have argued that execution, where it is used, must involve no more than what the courts have called mira extinguishment of life. The judges have said that when we execute, we must use it in a way that is compatible with the evolving standard of the humane society. Gruesome spectacles offers a chapter on each of the major tech ologies used in the course of the 20th centurys end in each of these chapters, i discussed the promises and the aspirations associated with each new typology as it has been deployed and its surprising how resonant or familiar what was said and then what was reset about the gas chamber and reiterated. The claims about all of them really sound alike, each in its advertised to be safe and reliable and effective. So this book tells the story about an american romance with technology. A believe in scientific progress and that plays out in the field of Capital Punishment. It also tells the story of how that belief in scientific progress was betrayed in each of those technologies. The book describes the cases in which these executions occur, telling the story of the lives of the condemned and focusing in particular on the crimes that they committed. I hope to do a is to tell what i call a balanced story. Not neglecting the pain and the suffering and the way that the crimes oppose these things on their victims. All the while attempting to focus on the fate of those that we put to death. So to talk about the fate of those that we have put to death at this point in american history, its to do something i think is a little bit out of step with where most of the conversation of Capital Punishment is going in the United States. The most important issue surrounding Capital Punishment is the problem of its risk of the exceedingly innocent. So this attempts to balance that uncertain what the state of the innocent by examining the face of the guilty. And i think at the end of the day i hope this book contribute to a conversation about whether 3 is an acceptable error rate in the practices of Capital Punishment. So let me say a word about what just happened in oklahoma. I had the privilege of being invited to speak at a symposium in amherst a couple of weeks ago on privacy. My good friend and colleague in the introduction mentioned this book, which at that point was forthcoming. And so i quickly assemble the audience and talked about how silly was right about botched executions, after all, nothing about it would interest anyone, to write a book that would sell, i should have written a book instead about privacy. Then oklahoma happened. So beyond the headlines, attending the botched execution, assessing the meaning of what happened in oklahoma is the context in which it occurred. Today the Death Penalty itself seems to be in decline. States such as new jersey and connecticut, illinois, maryland, they have all recently abolished Capital Punishment. The legislative debate is ongoing in delaware, kansas, kentucky, washington state, and my favorite of all is south dakota. Public support is falling and in addition the number of death sentences imposed by American Court has fallen steadily over the last few decades from a high of 315 in 1996 up to 80 and 2013. And while i am a math college person, that seems to be a steep decline to me. Likewise, the number of executions after peaking at 98 and 1999, its dropped to 39 last year. So to the rash of people exonerated from americas death row, use of the Death Penalty in the United States has diminished to the point that only 15 state handed down death sentences in 2013. So that is roughly less than half the states that actually imposed in 2013. In this environment a period of what we called national reconsideration of Capital Punishment, the failures may assume greater significance. They may offer an additional reason for the American Public and politicians to question whether we should continue to use the Death Penalty. Finally before turning to the book itself been indulging myself in reading some of my sentences out loud, let me share with you a concern that has been shared by several of my friends, roughly the conversations go like this. Why would you want to write a book about botched execution. And of course i know what they are thinking. What kind of person are you that would write a book about botched executions. Having written about divorce and white collar crime, i will let you figure out which one i am opposed to. I have been studying Capital Punishment for more than a decade now. Friends have been concerned, gruesome spectacles would itself be gruesome. In some way to do which is a little bit unusual in a book presentation like this. I want to read from the first review of the book written by my daughter. [laughter] because i think this at least captures the aspiration of the book itself and it may assure you that it would be an appropriate gift for mom. So one would expect a book title, gruesome spectacles, to inflame the senses and create moral outrage with its terrifying descriptions of executions gone wrong. But it does not attempt to increase the readers suffering. By writing about this in a way that might stir the visceral, if ever a book took a measured approach to this subject, it is this one. And it goes on. Each case begins with a short account followed by a long detailed narrative but let each criminal to his dad. In most cases the guilt of the condemned is not in our and the crimes are indeed horrible. Is this the structure that you would adopt if your goal is simply to persuade readers of the evil of the Death Penalty . The review concludes that if youre hoping for an antiDeath Penalty read, this book will disappoint you. If youre looking for an account of botched some United States, the relevant legal decisions on what they mean, as well as an analysis of the language used to describe these cases to the press, this book has everything that you are looking for. And so that is a dream come true. So now for part two, let me read you some sentences from gruesome spectacles. This is actually the way that the book starts. On september 28, 1900, the state of North Carolina hanged this man for a murder committed in sampson county. He was born in accounting in 1865 and lived there his entire life. Even though he weighed only 110 pounds, he was said to be as tough as iron and he had the unfortunate habit of getting into violent arguments and carrying on a running feud with a neighbor, john herring. One night an argument again and in a fight broke out. He reached into the vbox and got a sharp butcher knife and stabbed him to a certain extent that he died during the night. Brought to trial in october of 1899, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. On the surface it is nothing remarkable about what North Carolina wanted to do. Hanging had been the primary measure of execution in the founding of the american colony. It was an anything alice then on an expensive way of putting people to death. He could be handled at the local level and not elaborate execution protocol. On the day of hanging hundreds of people traveled from all over the country to witness it. As in all of the executions, the county is the stepladder as a gallo. In this instance, it failed to do its job. And it proved insufficient to break the mans neck. The attending physician quickly determine that he was still alive. Undaunted by the failure of this first execution attempt, officials cut him down, for some forcing up the ladder again, and repeated the dock. This time the execution succeeded and he died. This turned out to be the last public hanging in south carolina. Headlines announced that it had not gone as planned. For example, the Washington Post entitled its article murder or hanged twice and described what it called a ghastly gallows scene. Almost a century later in march of 1997, american newspapers carried the story of another botched execution. This time the electrocution of pedro lavina, a cuban immigrant convicted and condemned for stabbing to death a Florida High School teacher. After the current was turned on at his execution, as one newspaper put it, flames leapt from the head of the condemned. It was horrible, a witness was quoted as saying. A solid claim covered his whole head from one side to the other. And it left the impression of someone being burned alive. The medina execution like the one before it made headlines because it suggested that the quest for painless and effective and reliable and allegedly Humane Technology was by no means complete. Both of them remind us of the sovereign power over life itself no matter what technology is used. Executions like these and of course others like those in oklahoma, have been an underappreciated part of the story of Capital Punishment in the United States. From the beginning, american execution practices have been designed to differentiate violence outside of the law. To sharply set aside Capital Punishment from the time the lock and dams. This was especially true in the 20th century women when an honest efforts were made to put people to death while he and invisibly. Bureaucratic way. The course of the last century is littered with various technologies and hangings, firing squads from electrocution, lethal gas and ejection. They have been used in a continuing effort to find and apparently humane means by which the state could take light. Executions are not supposed to make beds. Americans seek to ensure that execution is nothing more than the mere extinguishment of life. But one might ask why should we care about the suffering of those that we put to death. Painful death might be more just or more effective as a deterrent that is quick and quiet and tranquil. Because justice or summon version of justice would seem to imagine this is a pain caught part of the punishment, which is something a little bit unsettling and paradoxical about the constant search for a painless way of killing those who kill. And yet even if Capital Punishment takes to do justice and satisfies the public desire for vengeance, i think the state and the public has some concern. The state and the public must distinguish the execution from the acts to which it has response. The statement also find ways of killing in a manner that does not allow the condemned to become an object of pity or probate the status of the victim. Thus, executions seems inexorably tied to the instrumentalities of their own execution. And the legitimacy of state depends upon the method of execution itself and technology mediates this by making physical pain invisible and allowing citizens to imagine that execution is clean and efficient and painless. One executions go wrong, they signal a break in the virtualization of Capital Punishment. This includes americas Death Penalty examining the history of it in the United States from 1890 through 2010, a time in which approximately 3 of all executions were botched. Botched executions occur when a break down and or a departure from the protocol were Standard Operating Procedure occurs. It involves unanticipated problems that cause the least arguably unnecessary agony for those who are being put to death. Examples of such problems include among other things inmates catching fire while being electrocuted, the condemned to being strangled during hangings instead of having their necks broken and inmates being administered the wrong dosages of drugs for lethal injections. So this book describes the problems that have plagued the technology is in an effort to understand how and why things go wrong. During executions. It tells the story of americas Death Penalty through the eyes of execution and how they have been botched. Look focuses on 1890 through 2010 because it is a critical time frame in the transformation of american Death Penalty. From its more traditional to its now more modern form. In addition it was a critical period in what stuart banner called the continued centralization and professionalization of punishment. So in these developments, we are collectively invited to search for a way of taking life that signals allegedly our superiority and marks the distinguishing state violence and violence outside the law between this and the deathly call murder. So that is the end of part two. And now i would love to entertain some questions. [inaudible conversations] thank you. One of the things i know about your work is that you have been very interested in the abolition of Capital Punishment. And im wondering if you believe that this book contributes to the effort to abolish Capital Punishment. Because we both know that simply exposing this, as you have noted, does not necessarily lead people to conclude that that is what should happen. So im wondering how you see this fitting into this project. Much of the work that i have done on the Death Penalty has been to try to locate the Death Penalty and a set of broad arguments. And this really continues out for me. What it tries to make public as something that was previously hidden. So i want to go back in answering this question is what i said about the context. So what is driving, what is driving this decline of the Death Penalty . I think whats driving the decline of the Death Penalty is concerns about the way in which the Death Penalty is actually administered. So no one has ever had their mind changed a about the Death Penalty by an argument about whether the Death Penalty is revenge or retribution. No one has ever had their mind changed about Death Penalty by an argument that the Death Penalty is incompatible with dignity. What is changing minds about the Death Penalty in the United States is the worry that we cant get it right. So you talk to people who are in favor of the Death Penalty, and you say are you in favor of the Death Penalty, and they say, yes. Then you say are you in favor of executing the innocent, and most say no. Are you in favor of the Death Penalty . Yes. Are you in favor thats going to be because of the race of the victim. Most say no. Are you in favor of the Death Penalty . Yes. Are you in favor of executing people because of the poor quality of their lawyers . Most say no. So in the context in which american attention is now turned to the way in which the Death Penalty is actually administered, i think i that a conversation about botched executions adds to that set of concerns in a way which ten years ago or fifteen years ago i think it would not. And, in fact, the book demonstrates that over the course of the 20th century a conversation about botched executions never really fueled the abolitionist crusade. So i think the concern will play a part, a small part given the broad context of american rethinking of Capital Punishment. Thank you for a lovely description after to horrible of a horrible topic. Im wondering in your research if youve found over this more than hundredyear trajectory changing conceptions of cruelty; that is, you describe changing technologies and the responses to those technologies. Has the conception of cruelty itself remained the same, and so were finding a struggle to get a technology that reduces cruelty more and more, or has cruelty itself changed in response to these technologies . Right. I think the legal conception of cruelty has not, actually, has not changed very much. And, in fact, the United StatesSupreme Court has never declared a technology of execution unconstitutional per se. The court has upheld electrocution, the court has upheld hanging, and in a case called bays v. Reese, the court upheld lethal injection. So i think the little definition of cruelty has remained pretty much the same, and that is cruelty is the unnecessary or excessive infliction of pain. So i think the legal conception has really remained pretty constant. I think what i would call the social conception of cruelty has changed quite a bit and is really responsible for this effort to find a humane, painless, effective, invisible bureaucratic form. I think our sensibilities about violence and its display have changed a lot from the beginning of the 20th century when there was a kind of moral crusade to drive violence, pain and death out of the public view. And that change of sensibility resulted eventually in the United States in the ending of public executions. The last public execution occurred in kentucky in 1935. And the last thing i would say is it seems to me the question of cruelty and i how its changed may be many a sense less telling in the debate about Capital Punishment, it may be less telling than is the question of justice. And thats what i was trying to suggest earlier. And even people who are in favor of Capital Punishment in the abstract may be convinced to at least reconsider their position when they begin to think about not only what Capital Punishment does for us, but what Capital Punishment does to us. How Capital Punishment damages Central American legal values like equal treatment under the law and due process of law and the simple proposition that no human being should ever be treated in a way that is cruel. Austin, thank you for a very interesting talk. I wish i could share your optimism that the decline that we see currently in state decisions about Capital Punishment is going to continue. I actually think the opposite is likely because were at a moment in the evolution, for example, of dna technologies which have now become so predominant in science that were able to go back ex post facto and look at predna decisions and say, well, those were in error, and this is why this problem you allude to of sort of the publics unease with faulty decisions may be explaining this ebb. But were going to soon enter the phase where those sorts of convicts have all passed away or been freed or been executed, and well instead enter a phase where in the criminal Justice System dna will be with used to [inaudible] i think well see, frankly, a rise in using technologies to punish. I think well see a return to dna being used to justify executions and the technology. We will begin gain some again gain some comfort to continue or grow the number of executions were comfortable with. I appreciate your perspective on that. So i actually think that the Abolitionist Movement has gotten all the mileage it could get from the worry about actual innocence. I think thats money in the bank. Thats an argument thats already cashed out. Whats now driving the concern about the Death Penalty, right . Thats there and people worry about it, and the socalled csi effect you see in trials all over the United States, whats now driving the conversation is the question of cost. In a financial sense, and im going to say in this broad, in this broad moral sense, the United States doesnt have the Death Penalty. Five states execute more than twothirds of the people who are executed. And if i say texas, you know what im talking about. And you can name some of the others, right . You could name some of the others. Florida, virginia, oklahoma and missouri. Soon in the United States the Death Penalty will be the way apartheid was in south africa. Itll be increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer places. Now, it may be that texas will hold on, you know, longer than i predict. But even texas is changing. And by the way, if you look at texas, you see that even texas doesnt execute. Paris county executes. If you look at a countybycounty map of the Death Penalty in the United States im sure youre going to rush home and do that [laughter] the concentration of capital cases in the United States, it kind of reminds you if you look at a countybycounty map of a president ial election in the United States. The democrats win the elections by winning very few counties, but they win highly populace counties, right . So its a red country. I mean, new york is as red as it can be other than new york city. And if you look at the Death Penalty, thats happening. So california sentences a lot doesnt execute many people, sentences a lot of seem to death row, but almost all of those sentences come from los angeles county. Arizona sentences a lot of people to death row, but almost all of them, all of those sentences come from tucson. So you may be right and by the way, george bush, when he was governor of texas, granted one stay of execution during his time. And he did it because there was some worry that the person might be innocent. And they did dna testing, and the dna came back and confirmed his guilt. He was executed. So while i think youre right, dna can be aused to affirm can be used to affirm guilt, i think the forces that are pushing us away from Capital Punishment are very, very strong in that weve gotten a lot of mileage out of that one, and that one isnt going to and, by the way, theres some of these forces that create what i call create an abolitionist dilemma. You cant get rid of the Death Penalty without embracing life imprisonment without parole. Its a funny stance for an abolitionist. Im in favor of life in prison without parole. And every state in the United States which now has the Death Penalty has life imprisonment without parole. So, you know, predictions are predictions. So i may be wrong. You may be right. But as i say to my chirp, im right. [laughter] to my children, im right. [laughter] austin, i cant exactly see you. You mentioned your collaborators at Amherst College in the introduction, and i wondered if you could speak about the process of writing and flesh out what that collaboration meant. Yeah, fabulous. So one of the most important parts about this book is this book is a true collaboration and coauthorship with four amherst undergraduates. So those of you that are, those of you that buy the book or take it out of the Jones Library where we have many copies [laughter] will notice when you open up the front cover, you see my name and the name of four amherst undergraduates. This work couldnt have been done without them. The book couldnt have been written without them as well. Amherst college has invested heavily in the last several years in providing opportunities for students to do research with faculty. To become meaningful collaborators with faculty. Not to work for faculty, but to work with faculty. This book, the existence of this book is a testimony to the capacity of undergraduates to carry the scholarly hold that in the past load that in the past would have been thought to be only carryable by graduate students and faculty members. And may i just say one other word about that . Theres a long tradition of this kind of collaboration in the sciences, right . So every scientific article has 350 names. Associated with it. Many of them undergraduates. But there isnt such a tradition in the social sciences in humanities. And to collaborate with an undergraduate on a Research Project is to run a kind of risk. And the risk is that people will think the research cant be very good because it was done by undergraduates. But i hope when you read the book, youll be convinced that that perception is radically, is radically wrong. Ive been teaching at amherst for 40 years, and other than teaching the students who are in this room, working with these students is the best thing that happened to me in 40 years of teaching. And may i just say, i was going to save the thanks until the end, but premature gratitude is never premature. So i really want to say thanks to greg cole whos Amherst Colleges deep of the faculty and has been dean of the faculty and has been a leading figure in transforming the college to make possible the kind of collaboration that is represented, that is represented in this book. Without his belief and his leadership, this transformation would not have happened, and i would not have published my 50th or 80th or 90th book, so [applause] professor, you promised if i came 90 miles out here, youd answer my question by the way, can i just tell you . You are my favorite student. [laughter] ill go home now. If there were a lethal injection or there was something that was developed such as supposedly happens when we have to put an animal down we all in this room or a lot of us have had to put an animal to sleep. Supposedly, its one of the most humane things you can do. Its done with horses after a race even if theyre Million Dollar horses. If somehow the process were to develop to the point that there was a reasonable assure answer that that is assurance that the botched part could be taken out, what would your feeling about Capital Punishment be, and would it change at all . So thats an interesting hypothetical that i would like not to entertain. And the reason id like not to entertain it is because what ive said earlier. That promise has been made about every technology of execution. My Favorite Technology, i guess youre not supposed to have a Favorite Technology. My Favorite Technology of execution, at least from the point of view of promise, is electrocution. At the time it was introduced, it was introduced in the state of new york first, right . Electricity was the Promising New Technology of the day. And there was a competition in new york between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as to whose technology, whose form of electricity would be used; alternating current or direct current. And edison was determined that he didnt want his form of current used in electrocution, used with the Death Penalty because he was afraid it would discredit his form. So he did experiments in menlo park to see how effective westinghouses form of current would be in execution. [laughter] and did a very famous and quite its documented, you can find it on youtube. He executed an elephant. Now, by the way, it always interests me that when i mention the execution of an elephant, i get gaffes. [laughter] what he wants to show was that westinghouses form of current would be more effective and why do i tell you that . A new York State Commission examined electrocution, and it said kind of about electrocution what you were just saying about, you know, we can put down animals and its reliable. Actually, executing a human being is a complicated thing. Many of the people who are on death row are not in the best physical shape. Some are radically overweight, its hard to find a vein. Some are intraseous drug users. Its hard to find a vein. The American Medical Association doesnt want doctors performing lethal injection, so the lethal injections, even the ones that you imagine, are being performed by relatively untrained prison personnel. In oklahoma it was so bad that to find a vein, they had to go to the groin area. So, yes, we can imagine and thats what this book tries to describe. Always try to imagine the next reliable, efficient, Humane Technology. So i think the focus should be on the reality of the practices that we have. Not the, you know, the abstract hypotheticals and the promises about things that we might have. Because those are the promises that have driven us from one technology of execution to another. In the back. Thanks, austin. What is the real number, did you mention that . About 276. There were just a little less than 9,000 executions. You know, i was wondering, do laws emerge over the course of the century that specify what a legal execution was . What a legal execution yeah. What a good execution was. Good. You know, as more and more botched executions took place, surely there were lawyers who said how do we govern this process . So, i mean, im just asking you about the case law. Right. So, again, the case law has evolved, you know, theres this idea about no technology can impose any more pain than is necessary. In the bays case, the Supreme Court said if a technology imposes a substantial risk of a significant harm, then it is constitutionally, its constitutionally unacceptable. The legal regulation of methods of execution actually occurs mostly at the legislative level. So you can go to various states and see their protocol for how an execution is supposed to occur. In fact, thats what we did. Thats how we were able to figure out what a botched execution, what a botched execution was. And executions since 1890 have been highly legally regulated. And specification by legislation. Perhaps the most famous botched execution prior to the one that happened in oklahoma happened in louisiana in the 1940s. And the case, it was decided by the United StatesSupreme Court, was francis v. Weber. And it turned out that louisiana had a statute which prescribed that execution had to be by electrocution, and then it described the way electrocushion was supposed to happen. Electrocution was supposed to happen. So the regulation of the form of execution condition can be and is actually quite detailed. And, again, i want to just come back and say the most unreliable form, method of execution is lethal injection. And i want to share may i share with you some information . So if i were to ask you which state has the highest percentage of botched executions since the introduction of lethal injection, roughly since 1980, which state would you think it would be . Texas. Texas, of course. Texas has had 21 out of 515 executions botched. Thats roughly 4 . The states with the high rate of botched executions are florida where 18 of its executions have been botched, thats roughly one out of five; ohio where 18 of its executions are botched, and North Carolina, where 18 of their executions have been botched. Why do i tell you that . Because those states have explicit regulations and protocoled for how execution protocols for how execution is supposed to happen. But remember what i said earlier. The problem is that when a botched execution happens, its written off as a mere accident. Nothing wrong with the technology, theres nothing wrong with the protocol. The electrocushioner didnt get it right electrocutioner didnt get it right. They didnt get the right mix of the drugs so well get it. [inaudible] lawyers litigate this all the time. Thats how we got bays v. Reese. What the court does, the court articulates a standard. The standard is if a form of execution poses a substantial risk or significant risk of substantial harm, then thats unconstitutional, and then lawyers litigate it. And then what happens judges decide. Well, this was just an accident, not the rob of lethal injection. Problem of lethal injection. Thats part of the way in remember what i said, this is a discourse you find in law and theyre mere accidents. Thanks. I think youve been working up to a definition of a botched execution, but im wondering if you have an explicit definition of a botched execution. An execution which departs from the protocol of Standard Operating Procedure. We tried to identify and use a definition of a botched execution that was politically neutral. So we say this is what the state law says, and this is what happened. And if what happened doesnt conform to what the state law says, then its a botched execution. Concerning media coverage, to what extent, if at all, do you think that the, perhaps the race of the offender or perhaps the nature of the crime has affected the way that a botched execution might be represented in popular media . I havent found much evidence of that. And, again, we examined newspaper coverage of botched executions. Again, newspapers, not television. I havent found much evidence of that. I think the large question thats asked about botched execution and why i think that actually the subject of botched executions is a kind of dangerous one for abolitionists is because of the response to a botched execution is often but look what they did. I mean, the man in oklahoma, treated the way he was treated, you know, he died in a terrible way. But, after all, his crime was to bury someone alive. So to take on the baggage of the issue of a botched execution for abolitionists, they need to explain why they are concerned with the fate of the condemned and not the fate of the victim. And what i think abolitionists try to say is roughly the following how we punish is as much about us and who we want to be and who we aspire to be as it is about what we do to those who we punish. And thats a question which at least in the context of botched executions, i think, transcends the question of the race or circumstances of the condemned. The issues of race, the issues of class, issues of fairness, i think they are very much alive with respect to questions about guilt determination and who gets the Death Penalty. But i dont think they carry much weight in the media cover age of botched just look at what happened in oklahoma. At least the coverage wasnt explicitly engaged with lockets race. I have a question. Im curious about the title of your book, gruesome spectacles. It seems like the last public hanging was in 1935. What is happening is a death spectacle, and it also has to do with ideas of cruelty. So i was wondering why you titled the book gruesome spectacle, and its a spectacle for whom . Right. So i was asked to think about this book in light of, you know, a lot of other work ive done on the Death Penalty. And i mentioned that one of the concerns that i have in thinking about Capital Punishment is to try to get us to think about it in light of democratic values. So what i say is every execution is public even if its not visible to us. So in that sense, every execution is a spectacle even if its not spectacular. And thats the hope of lethal injection. To take the spectacular out of execution. Well, i want to argue or suggest, and i hope the title of the book suggests, that thats a kind of impossibility in a democratic society. That executions are always public each when theyre not visible. And by the way, executions are always witnessed, though not by all of us. So the spectacle is a spectacle in the more obvious sense for those who are the immediate witnesses and a more, i dont know, metaphorical sense for those of us in whose name execution is carried out. Thank you. Thank you so much, austin, that was just brilliant. Now i have a worry, and you help me with my worry. So im thinking about mercy killing, because were now in a society with an aging population, and there is a rising interest in allowing mercy killing and thinking that its all for the good, people who are superanuated, people who are ill. And i would imagine and i know is that some of these procedures would be lethal injections so