Tennessee gave Christa Pike two lethal doses, and she survived. The Pentagon planned to livestream a firing squad execution until President Trump called it off.
Criminologist Dr. Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University, author of Death Nation, joins Keith Conrad to explain what these stories reveal about capital punishment in America. He discusses why public opinion rarely shifts for long, how Pike could argue she can’t be executed twice, and why pickpockets once worked the crowds at public hangings. He also explains why lethal injection, the method that looks the most clinical, fails more often than any other.
Robinson isn’t arguing about whether some people deserve to die. His question is whether the death penalty works as government policy, and the evidence suggests it doesn’t.
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