Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, is featured in Emmy award–winning investigative reporter Gianna Toboni’s new book, “The Volunteer: The Failure of the Death Penalty in America and One Inmate’s Quest to Die with Dignity,” which was reviewed by The Progressive Magazine.
A 2022 nationwide analysis showed that 35 percent were botched due to “executioner incompetence, failures to follow protocols, or defects in the protocols themselves.” Death penalty expert Deborah Denno points out in the book that botched executions have been happening for decades. “People always characterize these botches as sort of a fluke,” she told Toboni. “But it’s been forty years of flukes and they get worse and worse.”
