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