BookPeople Presents: Corinna Barrett Lain - Secrets of the Killing State

Please welcome Corinna Barrett Lain and Jordan Steiker to celebrate Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection!

This event is free and open to the public.

• Start time: 4:00 P.M.
• Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
• Location: The second floor of BookPeople.

The author will be signing and personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.

• To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.

Guidelines:

• Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

• If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
• There will not be a live stream or recording available.

About the book:

Lethal injection is nothing like what people think. This is its untold story.

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a “humane” death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true.

Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the suffering that we see, there is also suffering that we don’t see. Indeed, the story told here is even bigger than the executions themselves, for behind the scenes is where it unfolds. Fake science, torturous drugs, inept executioners, Pr*son problems, and decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways.

The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state. These are the secrets of the killing state—all that we know from litigation files, scientific studies, investigative journalism, autopsy reports, interviews, and scholarship across a number of fields. Death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain uses this groundbreaking journey into the dark reality of lethal injection to shine a light on the American death penalty more broadly and show that the state at its most powerful moment is also the state at its worst.

We are now over 45 years into the lethal injection era, and most Americans still have no idea what states are doing in their name. It’s time they found out.

About the author:

Corinna Barrett Lain is the S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and the author of "Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection" (NYU Press, 2025). She is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the death penalty and one of the leading voices on criminal justice in Virginia more broadly. Lain is a former prosecutor, former sergeant in the Army, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award.

About the moderator:

Jordan Steiker is an expert on capital punishment and constitutional law and serves as director of the Texas Law Capital Punishment Center. He is one of the leading death penalty scholars in the country, and he has written extensively on constitutional law, federal habeas corpus, and the death penalty, including a co-authored report to the American Law Institute prompting the withdrawal of the death penalty provisions of the Model Penal Code. Before joining Texas Law, Professor Steiker served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court.

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Thank you for supporting Corinna Barrett Lain, Jordan Steiker, and your local independent bookstore!

Event Venue

BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, United States