That might happen, some states are considering using nitrogen, which demonstrably makes you happy. However, whatever method has to be witness-able. You would think the authorities would go for the strongest possible drug, but these protocols are often outdated, and prisons will usually default to using whatever they have in the prison pharmacy that complies with governing law. There's a rumour they used outdated or improperly-stored phenobarbitol. Never, ever, underestimate how cheap, outdated, and backward prisons are. Everything is geared toward to the lowest common denominator. I don't want to slam everyone who works in a prison, but...people who have other options in life generally do not choose to spend their days with murderers and rapists.

WHY EXECUTIONS SOMETIMES FAIL Since everyone is talking about the botched execution of Christa Pike, let me explain a bit about U.S. law. I'm a former death-row lawyer from Texas. First of all, the Supreme Court of the USA has decided that methods of execution which deform or mutilate the human body are "cruel and unusual" in violation of the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution. This also goes for method of execution that inflict a slow, prolonged death. These rules have not been explicitly stated by the Supreme Court Court, but are strongly implied by many of its rulings. This means electrocution, hanging, guillotine, firing squad, etc. would likely not survive judicial review. So virtually all states have changed to lethal injection, which, when done properly, does not mutilate the body or lead to a potentially long and torturous death. There is still a live controversy over which drug should be used, either the "classic" three-drug" cocktail barbiturate + paralytic + and potassium chloride. This, however, is complicated to use and risks leaving the condemned person awake but paralyzed. So Tennessee shifted to an overdose of pentobarbitol. Why do you occasionally read of people being hanged or shot by a firing squad? Because if that was a legal option in a state when they were sentenced, they have the right to choose between a firing squad, for instance, and lethal injection. Why do 7% of executions by lethal injection fail? First, many prisoners are old by the time they reach the gurney. Second, many have histories of intravenous drug abuse or one of the many medical conditions which can make it hard to find a vein. Their medical histories may also make it hard to predict how they will react to the lethal-injection drugs. Third, doctors refuse to participate in executions pursuant to the Hippocratic oath. A doctor is present only to certify death. The people who actually administer the drugs are kept anonymous. They may be nurses or phlebotomists or pharmacists, often trainees, who are not formally subject to the Hippocratic Oath. Of course, this will usually be the first time any of them have tried to kill a human being. As any prison warden will tell you, an execution is an extremely stressful and traumatic event for everyone involved. Witnesses on the victim's or prisoner's side may weep, shout, or bang on the glass. The prisoner may try to resist or give a long speech. And of course, everyone in the room except for some repeat players on the prison staff will be witnessing something they have never seen before: the intentional killing of human being. (No, I've never witnessed an execution). No matter what your attitude toward the death penalty, this is incredibly dark and unsetttling. And the people who feel it most directly are, of course, the ones doing the actual killing. So the entire situation is fraught with tension and sources of potential disruption. As for what will happen to Pike, she is in critical condition and may not survive. If she does, she will almost certainly be reprieved by the Governor of Tennessee. There is in fact an old common-law rule that someone who survives a botched execution should be allowed to live. But even if that weren't the case, I doubt political leaders in Tennessee want to risk anything like this again. deathpenaltyinfo.org/executi…

My latest for @Quillette, in which I break a lance (as Germans say) for @nathancofnas (whom I've never met or corresponded with). British outlets like the Telegraph and the Daily Mail have wrongly claimed credit for exposing Jason Arday. Jack Grove (@jgro_the) of Times Higher Education looked into Arday in 2025, but that publication let itself be bullied into submission by a letter from sinister London libel lawyers Carter-Ruck. If it hadn't been for a Substack post by Cofnas on July 21st, Arday would still be a professor. Cofnas, and nobody else, had the courage to publicly condemn Arday's plagiarism and shoddy, typo-filled work. And yet if Cofnas mentioned at all, it's to be dismissed as a "racist" or "white nationalist" because of his unfashionable hereditarian outlook. Left-wing British professors lamented that it took a "right-wing" scholar to break the news about Arday, but none of them had the courage to do it. And nobody has identified any breaches of academic standards in Cofnas' work, despite intense scrutiny. You may disagree with Cofnas' views, but, as I argue in the piece, his kind of caustic contrarianism is just what academia needs.