Corinna Lain to Discuss Lethal Injection at the School of Law Lain’s talk will be held April 2 at 1:00 p.m. in the Millhiser Moot Court Room.

By Law Communications
March 27, 2026

Corinna Lain, a law professor at the University of Richmond, will visit the law school in April to join W&L Law professor Alex Klein for a discussion about lethal injection. The event will take place on Thursday, April 2 at 1:00 p.m. in the Millhiser Moot Court Room, Sydney Lewis Hall, on the campus of Washington and Lee University. The event is free and open to the public.

Lain is the George E. Allen Chair in Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Her scholarship focuses on two areas—Supreme Court decision-making and the death penalty—and she has published numerous articles and essays about lethal injection over the last decade. Lain is a recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award and is a veteran of the United States Army.

Lain’s 2025 book, “Secrets of the Killing State,” examines the practice of lethal injection, offering an analysis of procedures and conditions that are often not visible to the public. While botched executions are part of the account, the book situates them within a broader context that includes both documented and less visible aspects of the process. The study extends beyond individual executions to consider the institutional, procedural, and historical factors that shape how lethal injection is carried out. Lain draws attention to issues such as the false scientific basis of drug protocols, the training and performance of personnel, and how “decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways.”

Alex Klein teaches and writes in the fields of capital punishment, criminal law, and criminal procedure. Her recent scholarship has examined the legal test that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed to determine whether a state’s chosen method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment, as well as how recent state laws permitting the death penalty conflict with Kennedy v. Louisiana, a 2008 decision in which the Supreme Court held that imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child violated the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.

This event is sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center.