Review: "On Human Slaughter" by Elizabeth Bruenig

 

On Human Slaughter by Elizabeth Bruenig
Published October 2023 via Atlantic Editions
★★★★

The death penalty has been carried out in the US for as long as the US has been around—just over half the states still allow it, and some of those states are doing their damndest to carry it out. But state-sanctioned killing has gotten more difficult to, uh, execute successfully—companies that produce the drugs that are used in lethal injection are loathe to sell them for those purposes, other methods (firing squad, electric chair) have fallen out of favor, largely due to the optics, and...well. Even when the state has lethal drugs on hand, as Bruenig chronicles, things do not always go to plan.

Bruenig is a journalist who has written extensively about the death penalty, and On Human Slaughter is a compilation of articles she wrote on the topic in 2022. As you can guess from the title, she does not pretend neutrality—she's clear in her stance that, separate from whether the death penalty is humane (I'm going to go with no), the way in which it is carried out in the US is often, in direct defiance of the 8th Amendment, inhumane: workers fumbling for hours to insert needles into veins; workers performing cutdowns, probably without anaesthetic, when that fails; prisoners convulsing as drugs flow into their bodies; shrouds of secrecy and lack of accountability because nobody in the system wants to admit that what they consider "standard procedure" is either not standard at all or, if it is standard procedure, making a mockery of basic ethics and humanity. And then there are the things less talked about: that the family of the accused is often treated as guilty by association; that when somebody is put to death, chances are that other innocent people are losing a father or brother or son (it's almost always men on death row) as well; that many of the people sentenced to death have backgrounds that indicate that they never really had a chance in life to begin with.

I'll note that I prefer that Bruenig is clear in her stance—while I'm willing to read a well-researched, well-thought-out take in favor of the death penalty (if someone can explain how the death penalty in the US can ever be ethical when it is so unevenly applied across race and class, I'll read it, but I'm not going to hold my breath), the last book I read on the death penalty was not nearly as impartial as the author seemed to think, and I'd rather know where the author is coming in. I don't think her writing will change any fervently pro-death-penalty minds, but if it's something you've never really thought about, it's likely to be an eye-opening read.

There is a caveat, though: On Human Slaughter is outdated even before its publication date. The articles are, as far as I can tell, presented exactly as they were published in the first place, with no updates of language or information. Sometimes this is little things ("Last year", "Last Thursday", "In April of this year"), but sometimes it's bigger things: The trial [Glossip v. Gross] wrapped up earlier this month; a decision is expected as soon as mid-May, and the defense attorneys are hopeful (loc. 284); When, as I expect, the jury in Florida decides to put Cruz to death (loc. 371)...these are two of several instances where we're left hanging because something that has since been decided had not been decided at the time of writing. In the latter case, Bruenig comes back to it in a later article, but in the former, that's the end of Glossip and the constitutionality of midazolam. I can (and did) look up the results of these things, and I got over the cognitive disconnect eventually (call me slow, but it took a while); still, I found myself wishing that slight revisions had been made (e.g., instead of "Last year", we might have "In 2021"; "In April of this year" could be "In April of 2022") and/or that bracketed notes or endnotes had been included in chapters where there have been updates since the writing. I'd also hope (not sure how realistic this is) for a foreword and/or afterword from the author—something that speaks more generally of this, outside the time-sensitive context of these articles.

Overall, not a read for the faint of heart (and time sensitivity is frustrating), but I'm very glad we have writers as incisive as Bruenig willing to tackle the subject in so much depth.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are taken from an ARC and may not be final.