In today's episode of Interactions, we want to talk about prisoners on death row and the r-i-g-h-t right to death—the right, if there is one, for death row inmates to have a say in deciding the way in which they die. For this, we’re going to be looking at the case of Michael Nance, a death row inmate who requested death by firing squad in the state of Georgia. By current law, death row inmates are allowed to contest the means of execution, which currently is by lethal injection. 

But to do so, they have to come up with the alternative means of execution themselves. We’ll be getting into relevant cases like Glossip v. Gross, how retributive justice unfolds in American prisons, and discussing the ethics of what happens when the burden falls on the prisoner to decide the way they die. 

In this first episode of two, we talk to Daniel LaChance of Emory University, an author and legal scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, criminology, and literary studies.

Listen now.

Check out LaChance's two books: Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment and Crimesploitation.