On Human Slaughter: Evil, Justice, Mercy

A collection of compassionate reporting from America’s death row, named a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist for feature writing. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine’s 165-year archive.

Elizabeth Bruenig’s sensitive reporting pulls back the curtain on an increasingly routine crisis in America’s death chambers: state executioner’s inability to kill the condemned humanely. She takes readers to the torturous final moments of death row inmates, while considering the often heinous crimes that earned them their sentences, and the complex legal system and prison bureaucracy that uphold them. Thoughtful and profound, Bruenig negotiates the culture of violence in America and examines what’s at stake when we refuse to see the humanity in those who have done the inhumane.