Deborah Denno quoted in a Globe and Mail (Canada) story about how the lethal-injection method has become the standard means of capital punishment in the United States, but how a number of botched executions this year – including at least two in Oklahoma and one in Ohio – have put the practice, as well as the death penalty itself, under intense scrutiny.
“This has been going on for 32 years,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and one of the country’s leading experts on the death penalty. “Things have gotten worse now than they ever have been. We’re seeing a pattern of devastating executions where people have suffered.”
“I think it’s inevitable, and this is a long ways away, that this country will eliminate the death penalty at some point,” said Prof. Denno.
“The overall global justification for secrecy is the desire to perpetuate the practice. There’s a growing awareness that if you lift the veil of secrecy, we’re just not going to have executions any more.”