DEATH ROW WELCOMES YOU

A reporter takes readers inside Tennessee’s system of capital punishment.

In 2018, following a decade-long hiatus, Tennessee resumed killing death row inmates. As Nashville-based journalist Hale writes, the last time he’d paid much attention to an execution was that of Timothy McVeigh in 2001—though within a decade another 489 people were executed around the country, “and I don’t recall being aware of a single one.” This harrowing book is sufficient penitence for his innocence, as he recounts his journey into the penal system as an authorized witness to death by lethal injection. He opens with a man who, mentally ill and traumatized in childhood, raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl, which prompts Hale to grapple with the conundrum that frames the discussion around capital punishment. The author evenhandedly presents the victim’s side; the little girl’s mother, for instance, voiced her dismay that her daughter’s story was overshadowed by the murderer’s troubled past. On the other hand, if one of his daughters had been the victim, “I would want to light the man on fire myself.” Even so, Hale comes down on the side of ending capital punishment, and for several reasons: Juries are sometimes unaware of extenuating circumstances such as mental illness and substance abuse, wrongful convictions are not uncommon, and judges and juries are fallible. Yet, as another victim’s relative observes, “if they give you a life sentence it means [you serve only] about thirteen years in jail before you’re out.” Tennessee’s killings came to a temporary halt during the pandemic because vaccines, not lethal drug cocktails, were the order of the day—but this situation has changed again as the pandemic wanes, making it possible that “men on the row would start getting dates and the line would start moving again.”

A thoughtful, provocative contribution to the literature on the death penalty.