November 5, 2025 • 42 mins
In the second episode of the lethal injection series, Steve Monacelli and Michael Phillips interview Dick Reavis, a journalist who witnessed the world’s first execution by lethal injection, that of Charlie Brooks in Texas in 1982. They report on how the lethal injection method was improvised after a Dallas reporter won a temporary court order allowing television stations to broadcast executions. Worried that a televised electrocution might turn the public against the death penalty, Texas politicians instead approved lethal injection. An Oklahoma coroner who admitted he had no expertise in chemistry and knew a lot about dead bodies but not “how to get them that way,” improvised the three-drug protocol eventually used by all death-penalty states, with horrifying results. Then, Monacelli and Phillips interview law professor Corinna Lain, who says that rather than a supposedly painless death, lethal injection is more like a slow drowning.
Sources:
Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (New York: New York University Press, 2025.)
Dick Reavis, “Charlie Brooks’ Last Words,” Texas Monthly (February 1983.)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colze Media a warning this episode includes violent content which
some listeners might find disturbing.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of the
history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the
co author with longtime journalist Betsy Freeoff, of the history
of the eugenics in Texas called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And I'm Stephen Monchelli. I'm an investigative reporter who specializes
in political extremism and far right internet culture, and I
contribute to outlets like The Texas Observer, The barb Buyer.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And more.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In the last episode, we began exploring the shady history
behind the most popular form of capital punishment in the
United States, lethal injection. We described how one after another,
execution by hanging, then the electric chair, and then the
gash chamber was tauted's cleanest, quickest, most modern, painless way
to put a person to death. Each method, however, proved
(00:59):
more violent and grucie than previously expected. In order to
prevent a ground swell of opposition to the death penalty,
politicians responded by abolishing public executions in the nineteen seventies
latched on to lethal injection as the newest, gentlest and
kindest method of state killing.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I discussed in the first episode. The lethal injection protocol
was designed by an Oklahoma corner doctor, Stephen Crawford, who
once admitted to an interviewer that although he was an
expert in dead bodies, he didn't know how to get
him that way. Authorities turned to Crawford because doctors who
dealt with living bodies wanted nothing to do with executions,
So Crawford designed a three drug protocol for executions that
(01:40):
he made up pretty much out of thin air, reasoning
that if one deadly drug was good for killing, then
three drugs would be even better. The problem was that
the three drugs counteract each other and would result in
longer executions and in deaths that resembled slow drowning.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Crawford did no homework, and neither did the more than
thirty states that eventually adopted ly injection as a preferred
method of execution. This occurred after the Supreme Court brought
the death penalty back to life with its nineteen seventy
six greg versus Georgia decision. Following a ten year pause,
it would not be until December seventh, nineteen eighty two
(02:17):
the state of Texas carried out the first execution by
lethal injection in the world. In this episode, we'll talk
to a journalist, Dick Revis, who witnessed brookes execution.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
One thing I noticed was that there were a half
a dozen or more loanmen in there who had on
cowboy hats. They did not remove that Charlie was killed,
and I also thought that wasn't quite bright. But in
any case, I don't recall any anybody saying anything. We
(02:49):
were silent while all of this was going on, and
Charlie only spoke to say allow, and the beg was
dying when that happened. It was obvious that he was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Revis told us that Brooks, as he recalled it, seemingly
drifted off to sleep. But that's not all that may
have been occurring. According to Professor Karin Elaine, the author
of the recently published book Secrets of the Killing State,
who you heard from in the first episode, something very
different was likely going on in Brooks's mind and body.
(03:28):
According to Lane, Brooks was slowly suffocating. Medical experts, Lane said,
believe that those executed with lethal injections are often not
fully unconscious and that the paralytic drugs fed into their
veins prevent them from fully communicating their suffering, even as
they may be aware of it.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
The courts that have heard this medical testimony. There was
a court in.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Ohio and said, yeah, you know, all of the medical
experts are describing acute pulmonary edema as a drowning from within.
It is you can't catch your breath, You've got fluid
coming into your lungs, and you can't do anything about it.
And the court said, you know, this is the sensation
akin to waterboarding.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You know, we're waterboarding people to death. That's what we're
actually doing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
In this episode, we'll also talk about how the modern
death penalty peaked in the nineteen nineties, and why pressure
from drug manufacturers and activists led not only to a
decline in executions, but the revival in some states of
some very old forms of execution, such as the electric
chair and the firing squad.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
It's a fascinating but often frightening story, and one that
will have to continue after perhaps less gripping messages from
our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Big changes came to the death penalty in Texas in
nineteen twenty three. Before then, hangings were carried out by
sheriffs and the counties where the murderers, rapes, and other
crimes committed by the prisoner took place. Many of the
sheriffs were inexperience in hanging and goring mishaps took place.
Texas last public execution on fold in August thirty first,
(05:14):
nineteen twenty three, when African American Nathan Lee was hanged
before one hundred and fifty spectators in Brazoria County. From
nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty, close to seventy percent of
the inmates executed in Texas were African American.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
In nineteen twenty three, Texas sought to modernize and bring
industrial efficiency to state killing. All executions henceforth would be
carried out at the state prison in Huntsville, and prisoners
would die in an electric chair. Locals gave it a
glib name, Old Sparky. The state's new killing machine got
a workout the day it debuted February eighth, nineteen twenty five.
(05:51):
Texas executed five prisoners that day, all black men. Between
that date and July thirtieth, nineteen sixty four, when the
state electrocuted did Joseph Johnson, a man convicted of fatally
shooting a store owner during a robbery. Texas sent three
hundred and sixty one inmates to the electric chair. African
Americans made up sixty three percent of the prisoners who
(06:13):
died in that chair, while seventy percent of those who
died in the electric chair were Mexican American. Texas politicians
insisted that their tough on crime policies served as a deterrent,
but in fact, from nineteen thirty three to nineteen sixty four,
the year Joseph Johnson was executed, the murdery in Texas
was twelve point seven per one hundred thousand people, the
(06:35):
eight highest in the United States. Nevertheless, Texas leaders have
continued to justify the death penalty in spite of its
seemingly negligible impact on the state's violent culture, and the
violence of capital punishment was about performative toughness, not about
stopping future murders. As a reporter who witnessed a hanging
laments in the film In Cold Blood and.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Then next one, next year, same thing will happen again,
maybe this would help to start.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It never had.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
After Johnson, Texas didn't execute another inmate for eighteen years.
Following the Greg versus Georgia decision, Texas faced a potential
public relations disaster. As we mentioned last episode, Dallas television
reporter Tony Garrett filed suit to allow television cameras to
film executions, and a federal district court ranted a preliminary
(07:30):
injunction in the reporter's favor. That injunction was later overturned,
But under the Texas Capital Dome there were was worry
about what would happen to support for the death penalty
if an electrocution was broadcast live. The legislator who wrote
Texas new death penalty law to Greg decision said he
was quote repulsed by the idea of an electrocution taking
(07:53):
place in someone's living room. Lethal injection, as Professor Lane
had put it, had visual appeal because it would resemble
healthful medical procedures and because quote states have been euthanizing
pets with pentode barbital since the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Animals are typically put to sleep with a two drug protocol,
first a sedative and then the drug that does the deed.
But the three drug protocol that would be adopted by
most states that allowed capital punishment produced nightmarish results that
were typically invisible to witnesses. States typically allowed family members
of the crime victim to attend executions, and the condemned
also got to choose witnesses. In the early days of Texas'
(08:30):
reborn death penalty, the state's populist Democratic Attorney General GYM.
Mannix liked to make a show of attending each execution,
and though much of the death penalty process has been
shrouded in secrecy, such as who is providing the lethal chemicals,
states also allowed reporters to attend executions so that they
could serve as the eyes and ears of the public.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
In his younger days, Dick Revis was the civil rights
activists who served time in Alabama jail for his efforts
to secure vetting rights for African Americans. Revis became a journalist,
and by the early nineteen eighties he was a frequent
contributor to Texas Monthly, one of the state's premier investigative publications.
In nineteen eighty two, he got the chance to witness
(09:10):
an event that had never happened in the United States
or perhaps even the world. The Texas Department of Corrections
would soon pioneer the use of lethal injection, although the
first person to be put to death in this manner
was still unclear.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I recall a meeting with an editor and they said
somehow they told me that there's a lady at the capitol,
or a lady and the government in Austin, which is
where I was, a living man, who was in charge
of scheduling the executions. So I called her up and
she said, well, she didn't have any album scheduled, but
(09:47):
she could give me the naymes of it was either
four or five people who would be first, and one
of them who was candy Man, a fellow who poisoned
his own child, putting poisoned in some candy at Halloween.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Revis is referring to Ronald Clark O'Brien, a Houston area
optician who fell into debt. He was one hundred thousand
dollars deep, so he bought a life insurance policy on
his eight year old son and daughter before he prepared
five pixie sticks poisoned with potassium cyanide, and on Halloween
night in nineteen seventy four, he went trick or treating
(10:29):
with his children. A neighbor and that man's two children.
The group went to an abandoned house and knocked on
the door, and when no one answered, O'Brien convinced the
rest of the group to move on. He caught up
with them later and claimed that someone had in fact
answered the door, and then he handed out four of
the poisoned candies to the children. When the O'Brien's returned home,
the killer handed the fifth pixie stick to a neighborhood child.
(10:52):
Later that night, O'Brien told his children that they could
enjoy one candy from the evening, and he urged them
to choose the pixie sticks. And when his child, Timothy
complained the candy tasted bitter, O'Brien gave him kool aid
to wash down the poison. Timothy started vomiting and died
on the way to the hospital. None of the other
children tried the poison candy.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
That night.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
O'Brien claimed that a malevolent stranger had poisoned the candy,
and he sang at his son's funeral. His story fell apart, however,
when the police discovered the life insurance policies. When O'Brien
was unable to identify the house where he had been
supposedly handed the pixie sticks, and when the cops found
out that O'Brien had purchased cyanide from a chemical store
(11:33):
in Houston, a jury sends him to death on June third,
nineteen seventy five. The murder created a last day national legacy,
sparking paranoia about the safety of trick or treating.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
State of Texas knew that executing O'Brien would be politically
popular and would probably boost support for the death penalty.
Not knowing which resident of Texas's death row would be
strapped to the gurney first, REVS ended up interviewing all
but one inmate on the list he had been given.
Heel's process, however, is unpredictable, and a Fort Worth man
known for most of his life as Charlie Brooks, would
(12:06):
end up winning the dubious honor of being the first
to be put to death by lethal injection. He was
convicted for the fatal shooting of a twenty six year
old mechanic, David Gregory, during a nineteen seventy six robbery.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
By the time REVIS interviewed him, Brooks had converted to
Islam and taken the name Sharif Achmad abdul Rahem. That
is the name we will use referring to him for
the rest of the episode. Abdul Raheem had committed the
robbery with another man, Witty lords He posed to someone
wanting to buy a used car and asked to take
(12:37):
a test strive. Gregory agreed to ride with him. Abdul
Rahem picked up Lordes. The pair through Gregory in a
car trunk, drove him to a ramshackle motel, tied him
to a chair, and taped his mouth shut. Abdul Raheem
and Lordis accused each other of firing the fatal shot.
No weapon was ever found. Lordis eventually received the death penalty,
(12:59):
but after that was a returned, he reached an agreement
with prosecutors and received a forty year sentence. He would
end up serving only eleven. The disparity in sentencing is
one of the defining features of how capital punishment is
carried out, even after greg versus Georgia had supposedly addressed
that issue shortly before.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
His execution, Abdul Raheem insisted on his innocence, but according
to Revis, the condemned man was lying. Revis described to
us his relationship with Abdul Raheem aka Charlie Brooks.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Charlie was very alert, a test on his feet, engaged.
It was not moping around sad. He had a sense
of humor. He told me in the first interview I
had with him that he was innocent and that this
(13:51):
was rachel discrimination, that they executed more blacks than whites.
And I'm told him, oh, you want us for him
to excuse more white people? Huh. And that stunned me
because I think no one had ever said that to him.
But that would do away with racial discrimination. And there's
(14:14):
lots of white people need executed too. It was my
way of thinking.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
And he didn't get mad at me or anything. He
kind of laughed at it himself. After he paused to
understand the question. Then he kind of laughed at it himself.
But I would say he was even until until they're
getting strapped down. He was in control of his own body.
(14:40):
His mind was in great shape. He lied to me
about about whether or not he was innocent.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Brooks told Revis that although the gun went off, he
didn't pull the trigger. It was an accident.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
At some point I got in to say that, oh,
the gun went off, and I went and pulled the
transcript of this criminal trial. The gun was a revolver,
not an automatic. Revolvers don't go off to just that terry.
I even took what I had and banged it on
(15:20):
the table while it was loaded and all and nothing happened.
Revolvers don't go off until they've been cocked. Unless they've
been cocked, they can't go off.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
We'll return to the story of the world's first execution
by lethal injection and conceptive way it was used to
win public support for capital punishment. After this lovely adbreak.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
There was a little bit of last spinted drama. A
zero hour for the execution of Charlie Brooks A came.
Abdul Rahem approached the Serreme Court rejected his appeal for
the last time. Shortly before the execution was scheduled began.
Jack Strickland, the prosecutor in abdul Raheem's murder trial, had
second thoughts about the differences between the condemned man sentence
(16:16):
and that of his accomplice. Strickland testified on abdul Rahim's behalf,
but to no avail. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
said the defense team had presented no new information that
would justify a stay of execution. Just after midnight, State
Attorney General Mark White called officials in Huntsville and told
(16:36):
them that the historic execution could begin.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
From nineteen eighty two, the year of Abdulheim's execution, until
twenty eleven. Texas allowed prisoners facing executions a choice of
a last meal of their choosing. Abdu Urheim's request, however,
was rejected.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
He told me that for his last meal he wanted
a prive shrimp and oysches, and he said he had
told the authorities that that's what he wanted for his
last meal. When I got down there, I was told
that there was no shellfish in the prison system's kitchens
(17:18):
and Charlie had to pick. He finally picked steak in
beach cobbler. But I felt bad about that because the
prison people knew that they could go to the grocery
store and buy whatever Charlie wanted, and they didn't do it,
and it was sort of I thought it was an
(17:40):
indignity they inflicted on him. So when I went down
for the execution, I went down in the afternoon. Execution
was that night. I went out and laide fish just
how did he say? I don't know. Because of the situation, Worsham.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Texas would end this final meal for prisoners on death
row in twenty eleven. That's because of Lawrence Russell Brewer,
who was one of three white supremacists who chained an
African American man, James Byrd, to the back of a
car in Jasper, Texas, and dragged him to death on
June seventh, nineteen ninety eight, as a last act.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Of bitter defiance.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
On the date of Brewer's execution September twenty first, twenty eleven,
Brewer ordered a last meal that included two chicken fried steaks,
a triple meat bacon, cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue,
three fijidas, a meat lover's pizza, a pine of ice cream,
and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crust of peanuts.
When he received all the food, he refused to touch
(18:45):
a bite. A State Senator, John Whitmeyer complained bitterly at
the waste and expense lavished on such an infamous killer,
and prison officials immediately changed the policy. Today, those facing
execution are now only fed the same meal other prisoners
receive that day.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Revis believes that the process of being strapped down to
a hospital like gurney is humiliating to those being executed.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Men die with more dignity when they're on their feet,
For example, is walking to a scaffold when they still
feel in control of their lives. The hardest thing about
lethal injections is that they strap you down where you
(19:30):
can't move, and you're sitting there, absolutely helped, helpless until
they till the drugs take effect.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Revis described the atmosphere in the death chamber as Abdul
Raheem was executed as tense and quiet. A prison girlfriend,
as Revis describes her, Vanessa Sap, was present, as were
numerous officials.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
First of all, the room it's too small. My recollection
is there were was a circular self of chairs with
writing out ten feet twenty feet in a curve. It
may not it may have been a corner, but it
was barely room to hold the long man who wanted
(20:16):
to witness the execution, and Vaneza Sap and three reporters.
His wife was not present. She didn't want to be
in and she didn't want to see it. As for
the audience, reaction. I don't recall that there was anything dramatic.
(20:37):
Now I seem more routine.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Inspired by the story of Carol Chessman, the author and
rapist executed in the gas chamber in nineteen sixty, who
worked out a signal he could send to reporters if
he was suffering during execution. Revis and Abdul Raheem worked
out a similar arrangement. If Abdul Raheem was suffering as
he was dying, he would shake his head. Reavis would
later regret making that arrangement.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I interviewed him before the execution and we came up
with an idea. Unfortunately, it was mine that if he
felt pain while he was dying, that he should shake
his head. So I decided, and I say, it's unfortunate
(21:27):
because and as things were, we were unable to I
was unable to determine as if he was giving me
that signal.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The Revis did appeared that Abdul Raheem had simply drifted
off to sleep.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
He seemed to die peacefully. I had to put down
a dog only a couple of years ago, or have
the dog put down, and I was with him while
that happened, and I couldn't have you say. After seeing
those two things, I said, I wish I could dial
(22:03):
that work. And yeah, there was no evidence with my dog,
for example, that there was any pain. It was like
I'm putting to sleep, and I think that's what they
did with Charlie. But it would take a doctor to know.
Of course.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Abdul Raheem's death was the first of its kind. As
we mentioned last time, the three drug protocol that was
used by most states over the last three decades was
concocted out of thin air by someone no expertise on
the effect of these drugs together on the human body.
Abdul Raheem's execution was a medical experiment conducted with no
(22:43):
prior research. Professor Lane said that since abdul Rahem's execution,
doctors have had a chance to perform autopsies on those
executed by lethal injection, and witnesses have heard the cries
of those who were able to speak while dying on
the gurney.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
State experts to saying, oh, this first drug, you're going
to be ninety nine point nine niney nine percent of
the public would be you know, out and dead within
a minute. You don't even have to worry about those
other super tortuous drugs, and it's like, yeah, that's not
what was happening. They said they would stop breathing within
a minute, and there was some pretty prominent litigation, the
(23:24):
Morales case out in California, where they looked at the
executions by lethal injection and said over half of them
they actually did not stop breathing within a minute.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
In fact, it was eight and nine minutes.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And it did not kill them within two minutes of
injecting that third drug, which is called potassium chloride, but
it's referred to as liquid fire, and it chemically burns
the veins as it races to the heart where it
induces a cardiac arrest.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
So they're like, you know, the experts like, oh, you
know that is going to bring death in two minutes.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
That didn't happen, Like none of this was happening as
the state and the state's experts were so confidently just saying.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
And it turns out, you know, no one had ever.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Studied these drugs in these amounts, nobody had ever injected
these drugs.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
In these amounts into people. This is not what was used.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I mean that's interesting too, Like this is not the
drug that was used to use theized pets.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
This is not the drug that was used for positionists
as a suicide.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So it's like three totally different drugs, and you know,
and not only is nobody studied or nobody knew how
they would work, but nobody could have predicted how they
would have worked together.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I was discussed in our last episode. A lethal injection
that killed Abdul Raheem included three drugs. Sodium theopental heavy sedative,
and coroni M bromide meant to suffocate the prisoner, and
potassium chloride meant to trigger a cardiac arrest. As Professor
Lane wrote in her book Secrets of the Killing State,
because of one of the drugs using three drug protocol,
(25:12):
the drugs work poorly when combined. Quote, the pancoreum bromide
couples the inability to breathe with the inability to struggle.
They cannot fight or scream or even rive in pain,
but all would seem calm on the surface. Texas's experiment
in lethal injection was a political success for a while.
(25:32):
The novelty of the revived death penalty brought back memories
of some public hangings. Students from nearby Sam Houston State
University would show up and hold drunken parties outside the
prison in Huntsville on the night of executions, cheering loudly
enough that they could be heard inside the death chamber.
The night that Ronald Clark O'Brien, the infamous candy man
(25:55):
who killed his son for insurance money, died, a crowd
of about three hundred celebrated us, some yelling trick or
treat at the scheduled time of the execution, impelting anti
death penalty protesters with candy. A huge cheer erupted when
the officials of the Walls Unit left, signaling that O'Brien
had died a local bar through a Halloween party. Texas
(26:18):
politicians made support for the death penalty central to their
campaigns in this era. In the nineteen ninety Democratic Party
gubernatorial primary, former Texas Governor Mark White faced off against
the state Attorney General, Jim Maddox and the eventual winner,
State Treasurer Ann Richards. White and Maddox ran almost identical
campaign ads, both walking past larger than life mug shots
(26:38):
of murderers who were executed under their watch and claiming
credit for meeting out justice. Consider this ad for white.
Speaker 7 (26:47):
These haggin criminals will never again murder, ripe or deal drugs.
As governor, I made sure they received the ultimate punishment death,
and Texas is a cipher place for it. A tough
talk is an enough. The criminals know how to tangle
up the courts and delay executions. To bring them to
justice takes strength and dedication, because if the governor flinches,
(27:09):
they win. Only a governor can make executions happen. I did,
and I will.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The popularity of the death penalty was sealed for decades.
Starting with Abdul Raheem, Texas has led the United States
in state killing. As of September twenty seventh, Texas had
carried out five hundred and ninety six executions, more than
thirty six percent of all of the executions that have
unfolded since the United States Supreme Court allowed the death
penalty to resume in this country in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
More than forty percent of those executed in Texas since
nineteen eighty two had been African American, almost thirty percent
had been Mexican American. In twenty twenty four, Texas executed
six people. Only one was white.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Meanwhile, Texas put to death sixty three prisoners who committed
their crimes before they reached the age of twenty one.
According to the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, since
nineteen seventy three, eighteen people sent to Texas death Row
were later exonerated, out about two hundred nationally, and the
group argues that there is strong evidence that at least
six put to death in Huntsville were actually innocent.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Professor Lane argues that not only does death by lethal
injection violate the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and Unusual punishment,
but that most defendants facing the death penalty cannot afford
adequate legal counsel, and that an alarming number those sent
to death row, in some cases executed, have been innocent.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Two hundred people have been exonerated from death row two hundred.
And when you put that next to the sixteen hundred
executions that we've had in the modern era, what we
really have is for every eight executions, there's one exoneration.
That is a terrible, terrible number, right, for every eight
(28:58):
times we kill someone, we almost killed the wrong person.
And then there was this National Academy of Sciences report
that came out, this is the Gross Report, General Gross,
and they said, here's a conservative estimate. Four point one
percent of all people on death row today are factually innocent.
(29:20):
Four point one percent. That's one in twenty five.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
According to the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, as
of twenty fourteen, the total legal cost of executing a
prisoner was nearly four million dollars, as opposed to the
one point three million spent to keep someone in prison
for life. Lane argues that morality aside capital punishment is
catastrophically expensive. Imposing sentences of life without parole, or what
(29:48):
criminal justice experts call l WOP, would not only eliminate
the risk of making an irreversible mistake by putting an
innocent person to death, but also save taxpayers money.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Example, here's Florida fifty one million dollars. Fifty one million.
That is what Florida spends every year to maintain the
death penalty, over and above what it would cost to
punish all first degree murderers with l WOP. And if
you look at the costs that Florida spent and then
(30:21):
look at the executions that they had, how much did
it cost per execution?
Speaker 5 (30:27):
You know, to maintain this system.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And then of course the product of it, execution is
what you're getting out of it per execution. Twenty four million,
twenty four million dollars per execution, you know. And I'm
a former prosecutor, and I just have to say, what
could you do.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
With twenty four million dollars?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You know, I'd take I'd take eight million, and I'd
put it into victim services.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Now we're getting into the death penalty more broadly.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
But one of the things I've found as I'm on
this book tour and on the road, I'm talking to
survivors their family members have been slain, and one, a
woman in Tennessee, is particularly She's coming to mind right now,
and she said, listen, when my son was murdered, I
couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I was
(31:18):
afraid I was going to lose my job. I was
afraid I was going to lose my house. I needed therapy,
I needed services. I needed child care to help. I
couldn't do that. My kids needed therapy. We had all
of these needs, and the State of Tennessee said, you know,
Department of Mental Health said, we don't have that money. Sorry,
(31:39):
you know, And so she said, we're spending it all
and Zaga, what she said is it's selfish. You're spending
millions upon millions upon millions on death sentences, and you know,
on the death penalty when it could actually go to
the people who need it.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Regardless of the financial costes, death by lethal injection has
become so commonplace that executions really catch public attention. Nationally,
one than three hundred and seventy seven people have been
put to death by some form of lethal injection since
nineteen eighty two. Those executed suffered not only because of
the chemicals used, but because, as was predicted in eighteen ninety,
(32:19):
medical professionals have refused to participate because of ethical rules
prohibiting the harm of patients. Doctors and nurses and paramedics
generally refuse to administer the lethal cocktails used in death chambers.
That task generally falls to seriously undertrained prison personnel, who
are asked to secure an IV line for condemned prisoners who,
often because of age, history of drug abuse, or other
(32:41):
health problems, have veins that are difficult to access. Heavily
muscled prisoners, those who are morbidly obese, and those with
dark skin can also present challenges for the amateur phlebotomists
trying to set up an execution.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Prisons sometimes lack the right equipment, such as the crest
sized syringes are proper too. Being lethal injection drugs are
pre made and have to be mixed by personnel not
properly trained in chemistry, which results in errors in dosing. Often,
people with any kind of medical competence who participate in
executions are the ones with the shadiest ethical records. Professor
(33:17):
Lane came across one case in which the state of
Missouri relied on a doctor who ignored ethical guidelines and
participated in the capital punishment process. He was incorrectly mixing
the chemicals so that the prisoners were only receiving half
the dose of the anesthesia meant to reduce the pain
of condemned as required by law. Doctor Lane shared the
horrifying discoveries lawyers who condemned prisoners made about that particular doctor.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
They looked at the protocol that was litigated and authorized
by a federal court, and it was five grams of
this particular drug. And they looked at the execution logs
of the last several and stays we're using two point
five and so, you know.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
They filed suit.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's half the anesthetic, you know, and the state you know,
wrote back and said, we are not using half the anesthetic.
It must be the pharmacy logs that are wrong. We're
going to track that down and figure out why they
are wrong. But we rest assure you we are not
violating the protocol. We're doing the amount that was legally authorized. Well,
(34:26):
they have to come back the next day and say, oh,
actually the logs were right, we were wrong. We were
injecting half of the amount. And so the court gives
the lawyers for the condemned prisoners a limited deposition to
question this doctor behind a veil, like they didn't know
(34:47):
who he was, but to question them under oath, and
you know, they're like, why are.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
You using half?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And he said, well, I'm dyslexic and so sometimes I
make mistakes. And yet Missouri stuff with them and said no,
we have every confidence in him. They lose that. The
trial court, the federal court says, this guy can't be
anywhere near look the whole thing, to the extent it's humane,
(35:15):
requires you to meticulously measure and mix chemicals in liquids
and so you can't have someone who just makes mistakes.
And then in the meantime investigative journalists, which you know,
I have to take my hat off. I tip my
hat to investigative journalists. But they were like, gee, who
is this, you know, dyslexic doctor, and they find out
(35:37):
his identity.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
You know, he admits it's him.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
He had over twenty mil practice suits, he had had
his hospital privileges revoked at two hospitals. He had been
censured by the medical board. So you know, you're asking
someone to do something, to participate in something that is
fundamentally against your reason for being as a doctor. And
(36:03):
you know, from time to time they find people, but
I think they're outliers. What I have found is they
are outliers not only on ethics, but in other ways too.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Experts on capital punishment like Lane aren't comfortable with describing
executions that go off script as quote botched, even if
it's a commonly used term. No matter how the execution proceeds,
the end result is the same, the inmate is dead. However,
there is no question that killing people by lethal injection
is so complicated and requires so much skill on the
(36:36):
part of the executioners that the process is typically far
more agonizing than death penalty advocates tell the public. According
to the anti capital punishment organization the Death Penalty Information Center,
out of nineteen executions in twenty twenty two, seven were botched,
meaning that the death took far longer than expected, that
prison personnel had to jab the condemned people multiple times
(36:56):
to get an IV line working, or worse.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
When Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett on April tweeny nine to
twenty fourteen, the state used an untested combination of three drugs.
The size of the syringes and the amount of drugs
used were wrong. Prison personnel made repeated mistakes as they
tried to insert the needle for the IV. Even though
the American Medical Association prohibits its members from participating in executions.
(37:24):
A doctor was on hand for the Lockett fiasco. The
physician tried but failed to insert an IV into the
jugular vein in Lockett's neck. The doctor then performed a
surgical procedure called a cut down, which is a deep
surgical incision through the skin, muscle, and fat performed to
expose a central vein under Lockett's clavicle procedure was bloody
(37:46):
and also failed, and the execution then tried and failed
to access a vein through Lockett's feet. Eventually, they tried
to insert an IV through the femoral vein in the
upper thigh, a procedure only the most skilled surgeon in
sad Mass. Unfortunately, the available needle was the wrong length
for it to work properly.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Lockett reportedly was stoic throughout this repeated assault on his body.
After an hour of this torture had passed, the execution
team was finally able to inject the deadly drugs. Locket groaned, convulsed,
and at one point was asked, are you unconscious? According
to witnesses, Lockett opened his eyes and said no, I
am not. After appearing to fall asleep, he began to moan,
(38:26):
arched his back, and kicked a foot before he strained
against the straps holding him against the gurney, and he
tried to get up. Locket mumbled something is wrong, oh man,
and this shit is fucking up my mind. The prison
warden ordered the blinds closed as the execution team scrambled.
Swelling had developed where the ivy had been inserted and
(38:46):
was blocking the flow of the third and final lethal drug.
The doctor was summoned to insert a needle and Lockett's
other femeral vein, but Lockett was bleeding heavily and the
blood backed up into the ivy line.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Oklahoma Governor Mayorrry Fallon had already decided to halt the execution,
but by this point Lockett's heart had irreversibly slowed down.
He subsequently died of heart failure. The entire execution from
the first attempt to stick an IV in his veins
to his death less than one hour and forty seven minutes.
That was one of the longest executions in American history.
(39:22):
The state of Oklahoma later falsely claimed that Lockett had
been unconscious the entire time. In twenty twenty two, another
so called botched lethal injection, that of Joe Nathan James
and Alabama, lasted three hours. In Ohio and elsewhere, executions
had to be abandoned when the prison staff couldn't get
an IV going.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
As we mentioned in the first episode, Reverend Jeff Hood
is a priest under the Old Catholic Right, who, by
the time we interviewed, had accompanied ten men during their executions.
He said that even the most professional execution is brutal,
but that some states, because of a regrettable amount of practice,
are much better at killing than others.
Speaker 8 (40:03):
I do think that some states know what they're doing
more than others, and I think that Texas knows what
they're doing. You don't see botched, are delayed or mishandled
executions in Texas. They go very quickly. And when you
talk to these guys, that's what they say.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
They would prefer.
Speaker 8 (40:24):
If you're going to be executed, you would want it
to go as quickly as possible. Yes, there are some
executions that look horrific. There are other executions that don't
go according to plan but don't get a lot of attention.
But they're all horrible, and I think they all have
to be talked about as such.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Whether it's because the awareness of the messy and undeniably
painful executions like those of Lockett and James, the more
than two hundred death row exonerations achieved by groups like
the Innocence Project, the growing skepticism of law enforcement amongst
young people, are the greater consciousness of how racism warps
the entire criminal justice system. There's no question that death
(41:07):
penalty is the least popular it has been in the
past hundred years. Nor is there doubt that the rate
of executions in the United States has dropped well below
its peak during the height of the War and crime
under the Clinton administration, when in nineteen ninety nine, three
hundred and fifteen death sentences were handed down, or in
(41:28):
nineteen ninety six when ninety eight prisoners were executed.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
In any case, deaths like Lockett's are bad for business
for the pharmaceutical companies who have produced the drugs used
in lethal injections. In the next and final episode of
this three part series on the shady business of lethal injection,
we'll talk about how some states like Texas have been
forced to turn to the black market or the so
called gray market to buy lethal drugs, as pharmaceutical companies
(41:54):
have restricted the purchase of those drugs for that purpose.
We also talked to Jeff Hood about how the difficulty
in obtaining those drugs has led states like Alabama to
turn to one of the most gruesome forms of execution yet.
And we'll also hear the story of Race Buyan, a
victim of a hate crime who fought to prevent the
execution of his white supremacist attacker. And finally, we'll explore
(42:15):
whether the death penalty might be on its last legs
in the United States. H's Stephen Monchelly for It could
Happen Here and soil next time.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I'm Michael Phillips. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it Could Happen Here listed directly
in episode descriptions.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
Thanks for listening.
Colze Media a warning this episode includes violent content which
some listeners might find disturbing.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of the
history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the
co author with longtime journalist Betsy Freeoff, of the history
of the eugenics in Texas called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And I'm Stephen Monchelli. I'm an investigative reporter who specializes
in political extremism and far right internet culture, and I
contribute to outlets like The Texas Observer, The barb Buyer.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And more.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In the last episode, we began exploring the shady history
behind the most popular form of capital punishment in the
United States, lethal injection. We described how one after another,
execution by hanging, then the electric chair, and then the
gash chamber was tauted's cleanest, quickest, most modern, painless way
to put a person to death. Each method, however, proved
(00:59):
more violent and grucie than previously expected. In order to
prevent a ground swell of opposition to the death penalty,
politicians responded by abolishing public executions in the nineteen seventies
latched on to lethal injection as the newest, gentlest and
kindest method of state killing.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I discussed in the first episode. The lethal injection protocol
was designed by an Oklahoma corner doctor, Stephen Crawford, who
once admitted to an interviewer that although he was an
expert in dead bodies, he didn't know how to get
him that way. Authorities turned to Crawford because doctors who
dealt with living bodies wanted nothing to do with executions,
So Crawford designed a three drug protocol for executions that
(01:40):
he made up pretty much out of thin air, reasoning
that if one deadly drug was good for killing, then
three drugs would be even better. The problem was that
the three drugs counteract each other and would result in
longer executions and in deaths that resembled slow drowning.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Crawford did no homework, and neither did the more than
thirty states that eventually adopted ly injection as a preferred
method of execution. This occurred after the Supreme Court brought
the death penalty back to life with its nineteen seventy
six greg versus Georgia decision. Following a ten year pause,
it would not be until December seventh, nineteen eighty two
(02:17):
the state of Texas carried out the first execution by
lethal injection in the world. In this episode, we'll talk
to a journalist, Dick Revis, who witnessed brookes execution.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
One thing I noticed was that there were a half
a dozen or more loanmen in there who had on
cowboy hats. They did not remove that Charlie was killed,
and I also thought that wasn't quite bright. But in
any case, I don't recall any anybody saying anything. We
(02:49):
were silent while all of this was going on, and
Charlie only spoke to say allow, and the beg was
dying when that happened. It was obvious that he was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Revis told us that Brooks, as he recalled it, seemingly
drifted off to sleep. But that's not all that may
have been occurring. According to Professor Karin Elaine, the author
of the recently published book Secrets of the Killing State,
who you heard from in the first episode, something very
different was likely going on in Brooks's mind and body.
(03:28):
According to Lane, Brooks was slowly suffocating. Medical experts, Lane said,
believe that those executed with lethal injections are often not
fully unconscious and that the paralytic drugs fed into their
veins prevent them from fully communicating their suffering, even as
they may be aware of it.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
The courts that have heard this medical testimony. There was
a court in.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Ohio and said, yeah, you know, all of the medical
experts are describing acute pulmonary edema as a drowning from within.
It is you can't catch your breath, You've got fluid
coming into your lungs, and you can't do anything about it.
And the court said, you know, this is the sensation
akin to waterboarding.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You know, we're waterboarding people to death. That's what we're
actually doing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
In this episode, we'll also talk about how the modern
death penalty peaked in the nineteen nineties, and why pressure
from drug manufacturers and activists led not only to a
decline in executions, but the revival in some states of
some very old forms of execution, such as the electric
chair and the firing squad.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
It's a fascinating but often frightening story, and one that
will have to continue after perhaps less gripping messages from
our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Big changes came to the death penalty in Texas in
nineteen twenty three. Before then, hangings were carried out by
sheriffs and the counties where the murderers, rapes, and other
crimes committed by the prisoner took place. Many of the
sheriffs were inexperience in hanging and goring mishaps took place.
Texas last public execution on fold in August thirty first,
(05:14):
nineteen twenty three, when African American Nathan Lee was hanged
before one hundred and fifty spectators in Brazoria County. From
nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty, close to seventy percent of
the inmates executed in Texas were African American.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
In nineteen twenty three, Texas sought to modernize and bring
industrial efficiency to state killing. All executions henceforth would be
carried out at the state prison in Huntsville, and prisoners
would die in an electric chair. Locals gave it a
glib name, Old Sparky. The state's new killing machine got
a workout the day it debuted February eighth, nineteen twenty five.
(05:51):
Texas executed five prisoners that day, all black men. Between
that date and July thirtieth, nineteen sixty four, when the
state electrocuted did Joseph Johnson, a man convicted of fatally
shooting a store owner during a robbery. Texas sent three
hundred and sixty one inmates to the electric chair. African
Americans made up sixty three percent of the prisoners who
(06:13):
died in that chair, while seventy percent of those who
died in the electric chair were Mexican American. Texas politicians
insisted that their tough on crime policies served as a deterrent,
but in fact, from nineteen thirty three to nineteen sixty four,
the year Joseph Johnson was executed, the murdery in Texas
was twelve point seven per one hundred thousand people, the
(06:35):
eight highest in the United States. Nevertheless, Texas leaders have
continued to justify the death penalty in spite of its
seemingly negligible impact on the state's violent culture, and the
violence of capital punishment was about performative toughness, not about
stopping future murders. As a reporter who witnessed a hanging
laments in the film In Cold Blood and.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Then next one, next year, same thing will happen again,
maybe this would help to start.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It never had.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
After Johnson, Texas didn't execute another inmate for eighteen years.
Following the Greg versus Georgia decision, Texas faced a potential
public relations disaster. As we mentioned last episode, Dallas television
reporter Tony Garrett filed suit to allow television cameras to
film executions, and a federal district court ranted a preliminary
(07:30):
injunction in the reporter's favor. That injunction was later overturned,
But under the Texas Capital Dome there were was worry
about what would happen to support for the death penalty
if an electrocution was broadcast live. The legislator who wrote
Texas new death penalty law to Greg decision said he
was quote repulsed by the idea of an electrocution taking
(07:53):
place in someone's living room. Lethal injection, as Professor Lane
had put it, had visual appeal because it would resemble
healthful medical procedures and because quote states have been euthanizing
pets with pentode barbital since the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Animals are typically put to sleep with a two drug protocol,
first a sedative and then the drug that does the deed.
But the three drug protocol that would be adopted by
most states that allowed capital punishment produced nightmarish results that
were typically invisible to witnesses. States typically allowed family members
of the crime victim to attend executions, and the condemned
also got to choose witnesses. In the early days of Texas'
(08:30):
reborn death penalty, the state's populist Democratic Attorney General GYM.
Mannix liked to make a show of attending each execution,
and though much of the death penalty process has been
shrouded in secrecy, such as who is providing the lethal chemicals,
states also allowed reporters to attend executions so that they
could serve as the eyes and ears of the public.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
In his younger days, Dick Revis was the civil rights
activists who served time in Alabama jail for his efforts
to secure vetting rights for African Americans. Revis became a journalist,
and by the early nineteen eighties he was a frequent
contributor to Texas Monthly, one of the state's premier investigative publications.
In nineteen eighty two, he got the chance to witness
(09:10):
an event that had never happened in the United States
or perhaps even the world. The Texas Department of Corrections
would soon pioneer the use of lethal injection, although the
first person to be put to death in this manner
was still unclear.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
I recall a meeting with an editor and they said
somehow they told me that there's a lady at the capitol,
or a lady and the government in Austin, which is
where I was, a living man, who was in charge
of scheduling the executions. So I called her up and
she said, well, she didn't have any album scheduled, but
(09:47):
she could give me the naymes of it was either
four or five people who would be first, and one
of them who was candy Man, a fellow who poisoned
his own child, putting poisoned in some candy at Halloween.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Revis is referring to Ronald Clark O'Brien, a Houston area
optician who fell into debt. He was one hundred thousand
dollars deep, so he bought a life insurance policy on
his eight year old son and daughter before he prepared
five pixie sticks poisoned with potassium cyanide, and on Halloween
night in nineteen seventy four, he went trick or treating
(10:29):
with his children. A neighbor and that man's two children.
The group went to an abandoned house and knocked on
the door, and when no one answered, O'Brien convinced the
rest of the group to move on. He caught up
with them later and claimed that someone had in fact
answered the door, and then he handed out four of
the poisoned candies to the children. When the O'Brien's returned home,
the killer handed the fifth pixie stick to a neighborhood child.
(10:52):
Later that night, O'Brien told his children that they could
enjoy one candy from the evening, and he urged them
to choose the pixie sticks. And when his child, Timothy
complained the candy tasted bitter, O'Brien gave him kool aid
to wash down the poison. Timothy started vomiting and died
on the way to the hospital. None of the other
children tried the poison candy.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
That night.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
O'Brien claimed that a malevolent stranger had poisoned the candy,
and he sang at his son's funeral. His story fell apart, however,
when the police discovered the life insurance policies. When O'Brien
was unable to identify the house where he had been
supposedly handed the pixie sticks, and when the cops found
out that O'Brien had purchased cyanide from a chemical store
(11:33):
in Houston, a jury sends him to death on June third,
nineteen seventy five. The murder created a last day national legacy,
sparking paranoia about the safety of trick or treating.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
State of Texas knew that executing O'Brien would be politically
popular and would probably boost support for the death penalty.
Not knowing which resident of Texas's death row would be
strapped to the gurney first, REVS ended up interviewing all
but one inmate on the list he had been given.
Heel's process, however, is unpredictable, and a Fort Worth man
known for most of his life as Charlie Brooks, would
(12:06):
end up winning the dubious honor of being the first
to be put to death by lethal injection. He was
convicted for the fatal shooting of a twenty six year
old mechanic, David Gregory, during a nineteen seventy six robbery.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
By the time REVIS interviewed him, Brooks had converted to
Islam and taken the name Sharif Achmad abdul Rahem. That
is the name we will use referring to him for
the rest of the episode. Abdul Raheem had committed the
robbery with another man, Witty lords He posed to someone
wanting to buy a used car and asked to take
(12:37):
a test strive. Gregory agreed to ride with him. Abdul
Rahem picked up Lordes. The pair through Gregory in a
car trunk, drove him to a ramshackle motel, tied him
to a chair, and taped his mouth shut. Abdul Raheem
and Lordis accused each other of firing the fatal shot.
No weapon was ever found. Lordis eventually received the death penalty,
(12:59):
but after that was a returned, he reached an agreement
with prosecutors and received a forty year sentence. He would
end up serving only eleven. The disparity in sentencing is
one of the defining features of how capital punishment is
carried out, even after greg versus Georgia had supposedly addressed
that issue shortly before.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
His execution, Abdul Raheem insisted on his innocence, but according
to Revis, the condemned man was lying. Revis described to
us his relationship with Abdul Raheem aka Charlie Brooks.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Charlie was very alert, a test on his feet, engaged.
It was not moping around sad. He had a sense
of humor. He told me in the first interview I
had with him that he was innocent and that this
(13:51):
was rachel discrimination, that they executed more blacks than whites.
And I'm told him, oh, you want us for him
to excuse more white people? Huh. And that stunned me
because I think no one had ever said that to him.
But that would do away with racial discrimination. And there's
(14:14):
lots of white people need executed too. It was my
way of thinking.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
And he didn't get mad at me or anything. He
kind of laughed at it himself. After he paused to
understand the question. Then he kind of laughed at it himself.
But I would say he was even until until they're
getting strapped down. He was in control of his own body.
(14:40):
His mind was in great shape. He lied to me
about about whether or not he was innocent.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Brooks told Revis that although the gun went off, he
didn't pull the trigger. It was an accident.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
At some point I got in to say that, oh,
the gun went off, and I went and pulled the
transcript of this criminal trial. The gun was a revolver,
not an automatic. Revolvers don't go off to just that terry.
I even took what I had and banged it on
(15:20):
the table while it was loaded and all and nothing happened.
Revolvers don't go off until they've been cocked. Unless they've
been cocked, they can't go off.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
We'll return to the story of the world's first execution
by lethal injection and conceptive way it was used to
win public support for capital punishment. After this lovely adbreak.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
There was a little bit of last spinted drama. A
zero hour for the execution of Charlie Brooks A came.
Abdul Rahem approached the Serreme Court rejected his appeal for
the last time. Shortly before the execution was scheduled began.
Jack Strickland, the prosecutor in abdul Raheem's murder trial, had
second thoughts about the differences between the condemned man sentence
(16:16):
and that of his accomplice. Strickland testified on abdul Rahim's behalf,
but to no avail. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
said the defense team had presented no new information that
would justify a stay of execution. Just after midnight, State
Attorney General Mark White called officials in Huntsville and told
(16:36):
them that the historic execution could begin.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
From nineteen eighty two, the year of Abdulheim's execution, until
twenty eleven. Texas allowed prisoners facing executions a choice of
a last meal of their choosing. Abdu Urheim's request, however,
was rejected.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
He told me that for his last meal he wanted
a prive shrimp and oysches, and he said he had
told the authorities that that's what he wanted for his
last meal. When I got down there, I was told
that there was no shellfish in the prison system's kitchens
(17:18):
and Charlie had to pick. He finally picked steak in
beach cobbler. But I felt bad about that because the
prison people knew that they could go to the grocery
store and buy whatever Charlie wanted, and they didn't do it,
and it was sort of I thought it was an
(17:40):
indignity they inflicted on him. So when I went down
for the execution, I went down in the afternoon. Execution
was that night. I went out and laide fish just
how did he say? I don't know. Because of the situation, Worsham.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Texas would end this final meal for prisoners on death
row in twenty eleven. That's because of Lawrence Russell Brewer,
who was one of three white supremacists who chained an
African American man, James Byrd, to the back of a
car in Jasper, Texas, and dragged him to death on
June seventh, nineteen ninety eight, as a last act.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Of bitter defiance.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
On the date of Brewer's execution September twenty first, twenty eleven,
Brewer ordered a last meal that included two chicken fried steaks,
a triple meat bacon, cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue,
three fijidas, a meat lover's pizza, a pine of ice cream,
and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crust of peanuts.
When he received all the food, he refused to touch
(18:45):
a bite. A State Senator, John Whitmeyer complained bitterly at
the waste and expense lavished on such an infamous killer,
and prison officials immediately changed the policy. Today, those facing
execution are now only fed the same meal other prisoners
receive that day.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Revis believes that the process of being strapped down to
a hospital like gurney is humiliating to those being executed.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Men die with more dignity when they're on their feet,
For example, is walking to a scaffold when they still
feel in control of their lives. The hardest thing about
lethal injections is that they strap you down where you
(19:30):
can't move, and you're sitting there, absolutely helped, helpless until
they till the drugs take effect.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Revis described the atmosphere in the death chamber as Abdul
Raheem was executed as tense and quiet. A prison girlfriend,
as Revis describes her, Vanessa Sap, was present, as were
numerous officials.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
First of all, the room it's too small. My recollection
is there were was a circular self of chairs with
writing out ten feet twenty feet in a curve. It
may not it may have been a corner, but it
was barely room to hold the long man who wanted
(20:16):
to witness the execution, and Vaneza Sap and three reporters.
His wife was not present. She didn't want to be
in and she didn't want to see it. As for
the audience, reaction. I don't recall that there was anything dramatic.
(20:37):
Now I seem more routine.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Inspired by the story of Carol Chessman, the author and
rapist executed in the gas chamber in nineteen sixty, who
worked out a signal he could send to reporters if
he was suffering during execution. Revis and Abdul Raheem worked
out a similar arrangement. If Abdul Raheem was suffering as
he was dying, he would shake his head. Reavis would
later regret making that arrangement.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I interviewed him before the execution and we came up
with an idea. Unfortunately, it was mine that if he
felt pain while he was dying, that he should shake
his head. So I decided, and I say, it's unfortunate
(21:27):
because and as things were, we were unable to I
was unable to determine as if he was giving me
that signal.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The Revis did appeared that Abdul Raheem had simply drifted
off to sleep.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
He seemed to die peacefully. I had to put down
a dog only a couple of years ago, or have
the dog put down, and I was with him while
that happened, and I couldn't have you say. After seeing
those two things, I said, I wish I could dial
(22:03):
that work. And yeah, there was no evidence with my dog,
for example, that there was any pain. It was like
I'm putting to sleep, and I think that's what they
did with Charlie. But it would take a doctor to know.
Of course.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Abdul Raheem's death was the first of its kind. As
we mentioned last time, the three drug protocol that was
used by most states over the last three decades was
concocted out of thin air by someone no expertise on
the effect of these drugs together on the human body.
Abdul Raheem's execution was a medical experiment conducted with no
(22:43):
prior research. Professor Lane said that since abdul Rahem's execution,
doctors have had a chance to perform autopsies on those
executed by lethal injection, and witnesses have heard the cries
of those who were able to speak while dying on
the gurney.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
State experts to saying, oh, this first drug, you're going
to be ninety nine point nine niney nine percent of
the public would be you know, out and dead within
a minute. You don't even have to worry about those
other super tortuous drugs, and it's like, yeah, that's not
what was happening. They said they would stop breathing within
a minute, and there was some pretty prominent litigation, the
(23:24):
Morales case out in California, where they looked at the
executions by lethal injection and said over half of them
they actually did not stop breathing within a minute.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
In fact, it was eight and nine minutes.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And it did not kill them within two minutes of
injecting that third drug, which is called potassium chloride, but
it's referred to as liquid fire, and it chemically burns
the veins as it races to the heart where it
induces a cardiac arrest.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
So they're like, you know, the experts like, oh, you
know that is going to bring death in two minutes.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
That didn't happen, Like none of this was happening as
the state and the state's experts were so confidently just saying.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
And it turns out, you know, no one had ever.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Studied these drugs in these amounts, nobody had ever injected
these drugs.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
In these amounts into people. This is not what was used.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I mean that's interesting too, Like this is not the
drug that was used to use theized pets.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
This is not the drug that was used for positionists
as a suicide.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So it's like three totally different drugs, and you know,
and not only is nobody studied or nobody knew how
they would work, but nobody could have predicted how they
would have worked together.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I was discussed in our last episode. A lethal injection
that killed Abdul Raheem included three drugs. Sodium theopental heavy sedative,
and coroni M bromide meant to suffocate the prisoner, and
potassium chloride meant to trigger a cardiac arrest. As Professor
Lane wrote in her book Secrets of the Killing State,
because of one of the drugs using three drug protocol,
(25:12):
the drugs work poorly when combined. Quote, the pancoreum bromide
couples the inability to breathe with the inability to struggle.
They cannot fight or scream or even rive in pain,
but all would seem calm on the surface. Texas's experiment
in lethal injection was a political success for a while.
(25:32):
The novelty of the revived death penalty brought back memories
of some public hangings. Students from nearby Sam Houston State
University would show up and hold drunken parties outside the
prison in Huntsville on the night of executions, cheering loudly
enough that they could be heard inside the death chamber.
The night that Ronald Clark O'Brien, the infamous candy man
(25:55):
who killed his son for insurance money, died, a crowd
of about three hundred celebrated us, some yelling trick or
treat at the scheduled time of the execution, impelting anti
death penalty protesters with candy. A huge cheer erupted when
the officials of the Walls Unit left, signaling that O'Brien
had died a local bar through a Halloween party. Texas
(26:18):
politicians made support for the death penalty central to their
campaigns in this era. In the nineteen ninety Democratic Party
gubernatorial primary, former Texas Governor Mark White faced off against
the state Attorney General, Jim Maddox and the eventual winner,
State Treasurer Ann Richards. White and Maddox ran almost identical
campaign ads, both walking past larger than life mug shots
(26:38):
of murderers who were executed under their watch and claiming
credit for meeting out justice. Consider this ad for white.
Speaker 7 (26:47):
These haggin criminals will never again murder, ripe or deal drugs.
As governor, I made sure they received the ultimate punishment death,
and Texas is a cipher place for it. A tough
talk is an enough. The criminals know how to tangle
up the courts and delay executions. To bring them to
justice takes strength and dedication, because if the governor flinches,
(27:09):
they win. Only a governor can make executions happen. I did,
and I will.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The popularity of the death penalty was sealed for decades.
Starting with Abdul Raheem, Texas has led the United States
in state killing. As of September twenty seventh, Texas had
carried out five hundred and ninety six executions, more than
thirty six percent of all of the executions that have
unfolded since the United States Supreme Court allowed the death
penalty to resume in this country in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
More than forty percent of those executed in Texas since
nineteen eighty two had been African American, almost thirty percent
had been Mexican American. In twenty twenty four, Texas executed
six people. Only one was white.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Meanwhile, Texas put to death sixty three prisoners who committed
their crimes before they reached the age of twenty one.
According to the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, since
nineteen seventy three, eighteen people sent to Texas death Row
were later exonerated, out about two hundred nationally, and the
group argues that there is strong evidence that at least
six put to death in Huntsville were actually innocent.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Professor Lane argues that not only does death by lethal
injection violate the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and Unusual punishment,
but that most defendants facing the death penalty cannot afford
adequate legal counsel, and that an alarming number those sent
to death row, in some cases executed, have been innocent.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Two hundred people have been exonerated from death row two hundred.
And when you put that next to the sixteen hundred
executions that we've had in the modern era, what we
really have is for every eight executions, there's one exoneration.
That is a terrible, terrible number, right, for every eight
(28:58):
times we kill someone, we almost killed the wrong person.
And then there was this National Academy of Sciences report
that came out, this is the Gross Report, General Gross,
and they said, here's a conservative estimate. Four point one
percent of all people on death row today are factually innocent.
(29:20):
Four point one percent. That's one in twenty five.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
According to the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, as
of twenty fourteen, the total legal cost of executing a
prisoner was nearly four million dollars, as opposed to the
one point three million spent to keep someone in prison
for life. Lane argues that morality aside capital punishment is
catastrophically expensive. Imposing sentences of life without parole, or what
(29:48):
criminal justice experts call l WOP, would not only eliminate
the risk of making an irreversible mistake by putting an
innocent person to death, but also save taxpayers money.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Example, here's Florida fifty one million dollars. Fifty one million.
That is what Florida spends every year to maintain the
death penalty, over and above what it would cost to
punish all first degree murderers with l WOP. And if
you look at the costs that Florida spent and then
(30:21):
look at the executions that they had, how much did
it cost per execution?
Speaker 5 (30:27):
You know, to maintain this system.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And then of course the product of it, execution is
what you're getting out of it per execution. Twenty four million,
twenty four million dollars per execution, you know. And I'm
a former prosecutor, and I just have to say, what
could you do.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
With twenty four million dollars?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You know, I'd take I'd take eight million, and I'd
put it into victim services.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Now we're getting into the death penalty more broadly.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
But one of the things I've found as I'm on
this book tour and on the road, I'm talking to
survivors their family members have been slain, and one, a
woman in Tennessee, is particularly She's coming to mind right now,
and she said, listen, when my son was murdered, I
couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I was
(31:18):
afraid I was going to lose my job. I was
afraid I was going to lose my house. I needed therapy,
I needed services. I needed child care to help. I
couldn't do that. My kids needed therapy. We had all
of these needs, and the State of Tennessee said, you know,
Department of Mental Health said, we don't have that money. Sorry,
(31:39):
you know, And so she said, we're spending it all
and Zaga, what she said is it's selfish. You're spending
millions upon millions upon millions on death sentences, and you know,
on the death penalty when it could actually go to
the people who need it.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Regardless of the financial costes, death by lethal injection has
become so commonplace that executions really catch public attention. Nationally,
one than three hundred and seventy seven people have been
put to death by some form of lethal injection since
nineteen eighty two. Those executed suffered not only because of
the chemicals used, but because, as was predicted in eighteen ninety,
(32:19):
medical professionals have refused to participate because of ethical rules
prohibiting the harm of patients. Doctors and nurses and paramedics
generally refuse to administer the lethal cocktails used in death chambers.
That task generally falls to seriously undertrained prison personnel, who
are asked to secure an IV line for condemned prisoners who,
often because of age, history of drug abuse, or other
(32:41):
health problems, have veins that are difficult to access. Heavily
muscled prisoners, those who are morbidly obese, and those with
dark skin can also present challenges for the amateur phlebotomists
trying to set up an execution.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Prisons sometimes lack the right equipment, such as the crest
sized syringes are proper too. Being lethal injection drugs are
pre made and have to be mixed by personnel not
properly trained in chemistry, which results in errors in dosing. Often,
people with any kind of medical competence who participate in
executions are the ones with the shadiest ethical records. Professor
(33:17):
Lane came across one case in which the state of
Missouri relied on a doctor who ignored ethical guidelines and
participated in the capital punishment process. He was incorrectly mixing
the chemicals so that the prisoners were only receiving half
the dose of the anesthesia meant to reduce the pain
of condemned as required by law. Doctor Lane shared the
horrifying discoveries lawyers who condemned prisoners made about that particular doctor.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
They looked at the protocol that was litigated and authorized
by a federal court, and it was five grams of
this particular drug. And they looked at the execution logs
of the last several and stays we're using two point
five and so, you know.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
They filed suit.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's half the anesthetic, you know, and the state you know,
wrote back and said, we are not using half the anesthetic.
It must be the pharmacy logs that are wrong. We're
going to track that down and figure out why they
are wrong. But we rest assure you we are not
violating the protocol. We're doing the amount that was legally authorized. Well,
(34:26):
they have to come back the next day and say, oh,
actually the logs were right, we were wrong. We were
injecting half of the amount. And so the court gives
the lawyers for the condemned prisoners a limited deposition to
question this doctor behind a veil, like they didn't know
(34:47):
who he was, but to question them under oath, and
you know, they're like, why are.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
You using half?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And he said, well, I'm dyslexic and so sometimes I
make mistakes. And yet Missouri stuff with them and said no,
we have every confidence in him. They lose that. The
trial court, the federal court says, this guy can't be
anywhere near look the whole thing, to the extent it's humane,
(35:15):
requires you to meticulously measure and mix chemicals in liquids
and so you can't have someone who just makes mistakes.
And then in the meantime investigative journalists, which you know,
I have to take my hat off. I tip my
hat to investigative journalists. But they were like, gee, who
is this, you know, dyslexic doctor, and they find out
(35:37):
his identity.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
You know, he admits it's him.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
He had over twenty mil practice suits, he had had
his hospital privileges revoked at two hospitals. He had been
censured by the medical board. So you know, you're asking
someone to do something, to participate in something that is
fundamentally against your reason for being as a doctor. And
(36:03):
you know, from time to time they find people, but
I think they're outliers. What I have found is they
are outliers not only on ethics, but in other ways too.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Experts on capital punishment like Lane aren't comfortable with describing
executions that go off script as quote botched, even if
it's a commonly used term. No matter how the execution proceeds,
the end result is the same, the inmate is dead. However,
there is no question that killing people by lethal injection
is so complicated and requires so much skill on the
(36:36):
part of the executioners that the process is typically far
more agonizing than death penalty advocates tell the public. According
to the anti capital punishment organization the Death Penalty Information Center,
out of nineteen executions in twenty twenty two, seven were botched,
meaning that the death took far longer than expected, that
prison personnel had to jab the condemned people multiple times
(36:56):
to get an IV line working, or worse.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
When Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett on April tweeny nine to
twenty fourteen, the state used an untested combination of three drugs.
The size of the syringes and the amount of drugs
used were wrong. Prison personnel made repeated mistakes as they
tried to insert the needle for the IV. Even though
the American Medical Association prohibits its members from participating in executions.
(37:24):
A doctor was on hand for the Lockett fiasco. The
physician tried but failed to insert an IV into the
jugular vein in Lockett's neck. The doctor then performed a
surgical procedure called a cut down, which is a deep
surgical incision through the skin, muscle, and fat performed to
expose a central vein under Lockett's clavicle procedure was bloody
(37:46):
and also failed, and the execution then tried and failed
to access a vein through Lockett's feet. Eventually, they tried
to insert an IV through the femoral vein in the
upper thigh, a procedure only the most skilled surgeon in
sad Mass. Unfortunately, the available needle was the wrong length
for it to work properly.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Lockett reportedly was stoic throughout this repeated assault on his body.
After an hour of this torture had passed, the execution
team was finally able to inject the deadly drugs. Locket groaned, convulsed,
and at one point was asked, are you unconscious? According
to witnesses, Lockett opened his eyes and said no, I
am not. After appearing to fall asleep, he began to moan,
(38:26):
arched his back, and kicked a foot before he strained
against the straps holding him against the gurney, and he
tried to get up. Locket mumbled something is wrong, oh man,
and this shit is fucking up my mind. The prison
warden ordered the blinds closed as the execution team scrambled.
Swelling had developed where the ivy had been inserted and
(38:46):
was blocking the flow of the third and final lethal drug.
The doctor was summoned to insert a needle and Lockett's
other femeral vein, but Lockett was bleeding heavily and the
blood backed up into the ivy line.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Oklahoma Governor Mayorrry Fallon had already decided to halt the execution,
but by this point Lockett's heart had irreversibly slowed down.
He subsequently died of heart failure. The entire execution from
the first attempt to stick an IV in his veins
to his death less than one hour and forty seven minutes.
That was one of the longest executions in American history.
(39:22):
The state of Oklahoma later falsely claimed that Lockett had
been unconscious the entire time. In twenty twenty two, another
so called botched lethal injection, that of Joe Nathan James
and Alabama, lasted three hours. In Ohio and elsewhere, executions
had to be abandoned when the prison staff couldn't get
an IV going.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
As we mentioned in the first episode, Reverend Jeff Hood
is a priest under the Old Catholic Right, who, by
the time we interviewed, had accompanied ten men during their executions.
He said that even the most professional execution is brutal,
but that some states, because of a regrettable amount of practice,
are much better at killing than others.
Speaker 8 (40:03):
I do think that some states know what they're doing
more than others, and I think that Texas knows what
they're doing. You don't see botched, are delayed or mishandled
executions in Texas. They go very quickly. And when you
talk to these guys, that's what they say.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
They would prefer.
Speaker 8 (40:24):
If you're going to be executed, you would want it
to go as quickly as possible. Yes, there are some
executions that look horrific. There are other executions that don't
go according to plan but don't get a lot of attention.
But they're all horrible, and I think they all have
to be talked about as such.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Whether it's because the awareness of the messy and undeniably
painful executions like those of Lockett and James, the more
than two hundred death row exonerations achieved by groups like
the Innocence Project, the growing skepticism of law enforcement amongst
young people, are the greater consciousness of how racism warps
the entire criminal justice system. There's no question that death
(41:07):
penalty is the least popular it has been in the
past hundred years. Nor is there doubt that the rate
of executions in the United States has dropped well below
its peak during the height of the War and crime
under the Clinton administration, when in nineteen ninety nine, three
hundred and fifteen death sentences were handed down, or in
(41:28):
nineteen ninety six when ninety eight prisoners were executed.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
In any case, deaths like Lockett's are bad for business
for the pharmaceutical companies who have produced the drugs used
in lethal injections. In the next and final episode of
this three part series on the shady business of lethal injection,
we'll talk about how some states like Texas have been
forced to turn to the black market or the so
called gray market to buy lethal drugs, as pharmaceutical companies
(41:54):
have restricted the purchase of those drugs for that purpose.
We also talked to Jeff Hood about how the difficulty
in obtaining those drugs has led states like Alabama to
turn to one of the most gruesome forms of execution yet.
And we'll also hear the story of Race Buyan, a
victim of a hate crime who fought to prevent the
execution of his white supremacist attacker. And finally, we'll explore
(42:15):
whether the death penalty might be on its last legs
in the United States. H's Stephen Monchelly for It could
Happen Here and soil next time.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I'm Michael Phillips. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it Could Happen Here listed directly
in episode descriptions.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.