On the night of May 14, 1988, Larry Mahoney was drunk, so drunk that his blood-alcohol concentration—the percentage of alcohol in his blood—was more than twice Kentucky's legal limit at the time of .10 percent. Regardless, Mahoney got behind the wheel of his pickup truck and proceeded to drive northbound in the southbound lane of Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Kentucky, crashing head-on into a church bus returning from an amusement park. The collision ruptured the bus's gas tank, causing a fire that killed twenty-three children and four adults and injured a dozen others, mostly as a result of smoke inhalation. Mahoney had no recollection that he had caused the deaths of twenty-seven people until he woke up in a hospital bed the following morning with minor injuries. He was subsequently convicted of assault, manslaughter, wanton endangerment, and drunken driving and was sent to the Kentucky State Reformatory, where...