November 6, 2025 • 42 mins
In the conclusion of this three-part series on lethal injection, Steve Monacelli and Dr. Michael Phillips interview Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim who was shot and blinded in one eye by a white supremacist on a killing spree in Dallas following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Bhuiyan explains why he campaigned to prevent the execution of his attacker, Mark Stroman. His efforts led European companies that produce lethal chemicals to stop selling them for executions in states like Texas. The episode then looks at how states have evaded such bans by buying the drugs on the black market. Finally, we’ll hear from a from a priest, the Rev. Jeff Hood, who has held the hands of more than 10 condemned prisoners and witnessed their prolonged, tortured deaths. The series ends with a discussion of the uncertain future of the death penalty in this country.
Note: The Rev. Jeff Hood wanted to clarify that he began corresponding with condemned prisoners in 2010 and has has offered counseling to more than 100 prisoners on death row. After our interview, he accompanied Anthony Boyd during his nitrous hypoxia death in Alabama on October 23. That was the eleventh execution he has attended in person.
Sources:
Breanna Ehrlich, “The Last Face Death Row Inmates See,” Rolling Stone, March 29, 2025 (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/death-row-reverend-jeff-hood-1235305460/)
Anand Giridharadas, The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014.)
Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (New York: New York University Press, 2025.)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colz Media A warning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode includes violent content which some listeners might find disturbing.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a history
of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co
author with longtime journalists Betsy Freoff, the history of eugenics
in Texas called Purifying Knife.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And I'm Stephen RONCHOLLI I'm an investigati journalist in Dallas
who specializes in political extremism and the far right. And
I report for places like the Texas Observer, the Barbed Moire.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And more like millions across the United States. Mark Anthony
Strohman was startled by the events then folded on the
terrible morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one. The
disbelief that greeted that terrorist attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon can be heard on the first
announcement of the tragedy on a Dallas talk radio station WBAP.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
All right, thank you our seven point fifty one, nine
minutes before eight o'clock a dues talk a twenty WBAP
here on the here on the Tuesday morning. And the
reason I am hesitating here there's a word of a
plane crashing into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan,
and the World Trade of plane actually crashing and to
(01:21):
the side of the World Trade Center. We're going to
have details for you on that from ABCDWS in just
a couple of moments.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Strowman later wrote that September eleventh filled him with a
great sense of rage, hatred, loss, bitterness, and utter degradation.
He blamed Arabs and Muslims as a group for the
events that day and wanted to quote those Arabs to
feel the same sense of insecurity about their immediate surroundings.
I wanted to feel the same sense of vulnerability and
(01:50):
uncertainty on American soil. Strowman, Dallas resident, had already served
two prison terms, during which he had joined the Aryan
Brotherhood prison gang. Adicted to meth and sporting neo Nazi tattoos,
he began cruising Dallas in his nineteen seventy two Chevy
Suburban hunting for quote unquote Arabs. As he later admitted,
he wasn't entirely sure what an Arab looked like, but
(02:13):
nevertheless he stalked people with quote shawls on their faces.
Stroman launched his crusade by running cars into ditches. If
he suspected the vehicles were driven by Muslims, he escalated
his campaign of terror. On September seventeenth, two thousand and one,
he fatally shot Wakhar Hassan, a forty six year old
Pakistani immigrant, as the clerk grilled to hamburger at Mom's
(02:36):
Grocery in Dallas. A few days later, Stroman found his
next victim, a farmer pilot for Bangladesh's Air Force named
Rased Bouyan. Mister Bouyan, who has experienced robberies prior to
his encounter with Stroman, told us what happened that day.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
At the Maturity First two thousand and one. To us
friday eron Juden, a customer walked in wearing bandana, sunglasses,
baseball cap and holding a double barrel a sort of
double barrels shotgun on his right side. And from the
previous rubbery experience, I thought it would be and the robbery.
(03:16):
So I put all the money on the counter and
offered in the cash as soon as he walked in,
and I said, sir, here is all the money, take it,
but please do not shoot me. Basically I begged for
my life and his gaze remained fixed, and then he
mumbled a question, where are you from. Before I could
(03:41):
say anything more than excuse me, he pulled the trigger
from point blank ring. I felt it first, like a
million bees were singing my friends. And I looked down
and saw blood pouring like an open faceter from the
right set of my head. And I remember screaming mom
(04:05):
about my voice. And I looked down some block pouring
like an open boset from the right set of my head,
and then I looked left. I saw the gunman still standing,
pointing at a director of the phrase, and I realized
that if I did not, you know, do something to
(04:26):
show that I'm dying, he might shoot be again. So
I fell to the floor and he finally left a
few seconds beyond.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Survived the attack, but he was blinded in his right eye.
He would endure not only multiple painful surgeries, but also
the unique financial horrors of the American healthcare system. Meanwhile,
Strowman was not done terrorizing the Dallas area Muslim community.
On October fourth, the shooting spree came to an end
when the white supremacist pulled up to a shell station
(04:55):
in Mesquite at about six forty five in the morning
and ordered the clerk, nine year old Vasa Dev Patel,
a Hindu immigrant from India, to hand over all the
money from the cash register. Patel reached under the counter
for a twenty two caliber pistol, and seeing the gun,
Stroman fired his weapon. The bullet struck Patel in his
chest and killed him. A security camera captured the scene,
(05:19):
and Dallas police arrested Stroman the next day.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
At Stroman's home, investigators found a semi automatic rifle, an
Uzi knockoff, a forty four magnum, and a forty five
cult that also found evidence that Stroman planted to attack
a mosque in a nearby suburb. Jury found Stroumman guilty
of capital murder in April fifth, two thousand and two,
and sends him to die by leafal injection. The story
(05:45):
then took an unexpected turn. During a two thousand and
nine pilgrimage to Mecca, Buyan said he realized that simply
forgiving his assailant would not be enough. He believed he
had a moral obligation to do all he could prevent
Strouman's death. Buyon filed a lawsuit attempting to halt Stroman's execution.
(06:06):
Despite of Buyon's best effort, the suit was rejected by
state and federal courts, and Stroman died by lethal injection
July twenty, twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Buyon's campaign of mercy, however, made a major impact on
capital punishment in the United States. He effectively shamed European
drug companies, debanning the use of the products used in
the lethal injection that killed Stroman. In turn, some states,
like Texas, decided to start buying lethal drugs illegally. In
this final episode on the history of the lethal injection
(06:36):
in the United States, Beyond will tell us about his
campaign against capital punishment and its impact. We'll also speak
to a priest, the Reverend Jeff Hood, who has accompanied,
by the time of this interview ten men to their executions.
He will also tell us why he has devoted himself
to showing love to people so despised, and also address
the future of the death penalty in the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
After being blows I did a hate crime race. Beyond
struggles through numerous traumas. He told us that after getting
shot at the convenience story where he worked, he ran
to a barbershop next door. There, he had the first
sight of his injuries, I.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Caught myself in the mirror and the image reflected back
was like something off of the horror movie. And on
my way to the hospital, I felt my eyes were closing.
I felt that my time was up. And you know,
while I was reciting from the Holy Koran and asking
God for mercy and forgiveness and giving me a second chance,
(07:36):
I also begged him to, you know, to send my life,
to give me a chance to live. And I promised
God that if you give me a chance to live,
I would help others.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In the emergency room, doctors put Beyond on life support
for time. His condition was touch and go. Beyond, a
young immigrant living on his salary as a convenience store clerk,
said that when he next opened his eyes and doctors
told him he had survived, he cried tears of joy.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
So my eyes were full of tears, not from the pain,
but from the joy of still being alive, but then
joining the last long because the hospital where I was
taken was private and expensive, and I had no health
insurance at the time, so they discharged me with a
couple of hours and told me to arrange follow up
medical treatments On my own. So, you know, the first
(08:25):
part of my American nightmare was being shot in the
face after nine to eleven, and second part began when
I was kicked up from the hospital. So as a
result of this shooting, I you know, underwent several eye surgeries. Unfortunately,
though I lost the mission in one eye, I still
carry more than three dozen shut palas on my face.
(08:46):
And my father suffered a stroke when he heard what
about what happened to me? But luckily he's a bde.
I lost my fiance but gained more than sixty dollars
in medical bills.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Strumman languished on Texas Death Row. Buyan began picking up
the pieces.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
I moved on rebuilding my life. I worked in restaurant
and went back to school, and slowly I was, you know,
climbing the letter and getting better in my own you know,
life journey. And in two thousand and nine I went
the mact of a polgrimage a mother and it wasn't neca.
I deeply realized that though I forgave my attacker marks trument,
(09:29):
it was not an hour. I felt that, you know,
by executing Mark, we would simply lose a human life
with a dealing with the hood cause. I strongly believed
that if he was giving a chance, he might be
able to become a better human being. And I began
to see him as a human being like me, not
just simply a killer. I saw him as a victim too,
(09:53):
and I befelt for him. And I remember my promise
on my devdad that if I did a chance to live,
I would help others. And I felt that I needed
to start with him first to get my promies. So
I've returned from Mecca with a very changed heart. Look
at clarity and then you found purpose, and I launched
(10:17):
a campaign to try and save my attack that's wife
from Texas death.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We'll pick up the story of Beyon's campaign to spare
Stroman's life and how his efforts changed the history of
the American death penalty after a word from our sponsors.
Doctor Rick Halprin began teaching human rights courses at Southern
(10:44):
Methodist University in Dallas in nineteen ninety, where he now
hads one of only nine human rights programs at the
universities in the country. He has also chaired Amnesty International's
Board of Directors three times, and since nineteen seventy two
has been an anti death penalty activist. Halprin became famous
on Texas death Row as a result of his efforts,
(11:04):
and after Stroman was informed of his July twentieth, twenty
eleven execution date, the condemned man wrote a letter to
Halperin asking for help in making final arrangements, such as
locating an affordable undertaker.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
By coincidence, shortly after Stroman reached out to Halperin, the
professor received a surprise visitor to his office. The stranger
was Stroman's victim, Race Bouyan. B Yan, who had recently
become an American cist, hoped Halperin could help him find
a creative and effective way to fulfill the promise he
had made to God when he thought he was dying.
(11:36):
He began his campaign to save Stroman's life. Bu Yan, Halpern,
and another human rights activist, Hatti Juwad, carried their efforts
from Dallas to the state capitol in Austin and as
far as the European Parliament.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
A weak point in the American death penalty machinery was
its reliance on companies that provided the lethal injection chemicals.
In twenty eleven, Italy and anti death penalty Nation successfully
pressured the Illinois company Hospira to stop selling sodium theopental,
the muscle relaxant used in the three drug lethal injection
protocol used in Texas since the early nineteen eighties. That
(12:13):
same year, Reprieve, a British human rights nonprofit, arranged for
Beyond to travel to Europe to meet face to face
with executives at the corporate headquarters of the Danish pharmaceutical
company Lundbeck. Aware that the meeting would put them in
the international spotlight, Lundbeck three days prior, announced that they
would stop shipping the sedative nembitol, which was being used
(12:35):
as a substitute for sodium the appent hall to American
prison systems. Beyond described his conversation with the Lumbeck company
an interview with US the one.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Hour of great conversation. They agreed to write a letter
to the governor of Pixas asking him not to use
their product to kill human being.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
The state of Texas, however, was unwilling to grant a
crime victim as fervent wish, even though Texas politicians repeatedly
claimed they execute murderers to bring the victims closure. Boullion
said he was denied this by the Texas Border Paroles
and Pardons and then Governor Rick Perry.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
I reached out to the prison system and asking for
a mediation dialogue, but unfortunately, you know, that turned down
my request multiple times, and the reason they showed was
it would really victimise me. So basically a mediation dialogue,
(13:34):
I thought it would be helpful for me to find closure,
to find a lot of answers, but it was for them,
it would be, you know, a revictimization process for me.
So they they rejected my request to multiple crimes, and
it really made me sad that when they needed me
to testifying the court the conviction to get the death penalty.
(13:58):
I was a good victim, but then when I tried
to exercise my right as a victim to have a
mediation dialogue, I became that victim because I asked when
it right.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
In his final hours, Strowman spoke directly to his surviving victim.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I had the opportunity to talk to him of the
phone before he was executed, and it was the day
of his execution where he put my name as one
of the people he would be able to talk. So
I was lucky enough to talk to him, and when
he came on the phone, I was about to, you know,
(14:36):
go to the court to give a last fight to,
you know, stead the execution. So I was thinking, what
would I say to a human being who is about
to be executed in a couple of hours. And I'm
going to, you know, go to a court to give
a you know, a last fight to to you know,
see if he could say them. So I was very
(14:59):
emotional when he on the phone. I told him that Mark,
you know for sure that I never hated you. I
forgave you and I'm doing my best to you know,
save your life, you know, through this court hearing. And
he said that rays I never expected that from you,
(15:22):
and I love you, brother, And that brought tears into
my eyes. That it is the same human being who
shocked me for no reasons other than having hated and violence.
These are and now ten years later he saw me,
he could see me as his brother, and he said
he loved me. Why he couldn't see me as his
(15:42):
brother ten years ago? And why could he say the
same thing ten years ago? So, you know, at least
it helped me to find closer a little bit. It
helped me to move forward. At least I had the
chance to talk to my attacker and and give you
a lot of hope that people can change.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
The execution itself. However, left Beyond cold.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Well definitely this execution that was not of the victims,
because the victims and the victims' family members requested and
also fought for clemency. In a way, you went ahead
and requested the Governor of Texas, the Board of Burdens
and Earls that do not execute him in all names
in a show.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Marcie Mark Strowman died as scheduled on July twentieth, twenty eleven,
and though Beyond and Helprint failed to stop it, they
had helped start an international movement to thwart the ability
of states to carry out such lethal injections, as Professor
Colorine Elaine revealed in her book Secrets of the Killing State.
After Haspira stopped producing sodium viapental, the vacuum was filled
(16:51):
by a fly by night company called Dream Pharma. The
drug distributor quote turned out to be two desks at
a filing cabinet hidden in the back of a London
driving school. As Lane wrote, once this operation was exposed,
Great Britain banned sodium theopental sales to the United States.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
By December twenty eleven, the entire European Union had titan
export controls on any chemicals that could potentially be used
in executions. The new expanded EU ban made life much
more difficult for would be executioners in the United States.
In twenty twelve, when the state of Missouri announced it
would use the drug pro poufal as an anesthetic in
(17:31):
its executions, the EU said it would cut off exports
of that drug, which is used for surgeries in the
United States about fifty million times a year. Combined, these
moves created a lethal injection drug shortage that changed how
executions took place.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
In twenty twelve, Texas moved then to a single drug protocol,
using pennel barbitol alone rather than the old three drug
cocktail made out of thin air by Oklahoma corner Stephen
Coleman back in the nineteen seventies. Autopsies reveal that prisoners
executed with this single drug protocol die from pulmonary edema,
a condition in which the lungs fill with fluid. Medical
(18:09):
experts believe prisoners suffer intense chest pain as they suffocate,
even if they appear fully unconscious. Execution witnesses also say
they have seen prisoners eyes pop open, their eyes fill
with tears, have seen them pull against restraints, and have
heard them grown and class their jaws during such executions.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
As the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections become
harder to find, states have to rely on shady tactics
so they can keep on killing. Officials have lied to
pharmaceutical companies that are buying drugs to provide medical care
for prisoners that they later use in the death chamber.
Death penalty. States have violated federal laws. They have illegally
(18:46):
swapped these drugs across state line, or they bought them
on the black market or to legally marginal so called
gray market, Professor Lane describes as shading lengths the state
of Ohio went to in order to buy these drugs.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
The state took fifteen thousand dollars in cash in a suitcase.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up, you know,
and chartered a private plane to fly over to Washington
where they did an under the table deal for drugs
with this little pharmacy. You know, you need a prescription
(19:20):
for these drugs, and so here's a pharmacy that, for
fifteen thousand dollars is willing to sell drugs under the
table and allegedly in a Walmart parking lot.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
To cope with the shrinking supply, states have made illegal
purchases overseas. Like other states, Texas has tried to circumvent
tightening restrictions by purchasing death penalty supplies from loosely regulated
compounding pharmacies, and some of them have been here in
the States. In twenty eighteen, it was revealed that Texas
repeatedly bought drugs from the Green Park Compounding Pharmacy in Houston,
(19:52):
which is a company that had been fined forty eight
times by federal regulators for safety violations, including providing the
wrong medication to children who were subsequently hospitalized. The number
of agonizingly prolonged executions in Texas suggests that the drugs
the state buys are often out of date or impure.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Finding out where the leflow drugs are coming from is
becoming increasingly difficult. A number of states have passed laws
may it illegal to report on who carries out the execution,
what companies supply the drugs, or how these drugs were purchased.
In any case, the difficulty in getting execution drugs has
led to a decline the death penalty across the nation.
(20:33):
At the time of the landmark nineteen seventy two Firman
versus Georgia case that temporarily halted executions in the United States,
forty states had the death penalty. Currently only twenty seven
do In twenty twenty four, four states alone, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma,
and Texas carried out seventy six percent of the executions
(20:54):
that unfolded in the United States. Some of the remaining
states with the death penalty on the books have responded
to the shortage of lethal drugs by authorizing the use
of the firing squad and killing prisoners with nitrogen gas epoxia,
which suffocates them by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen
after another outbreak. You'll hear from a priest who has
(21:16):
witnessed executions in ten different states, including death by nitrous epoxia,
and will end this three part series by discussing the
future of the death penalty. Born in the South Atlanta
(21:37):
neighborhood in Georgia, Jeff Hood grew up in a religiously
conservative home and was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister
when he is only twenty two. His worldview, however, was
shaken when he attended to his religious mentor, who was
dying of lung cancer. Before he passed away, the seventy
five year old confessed to Hood quote, I'm gay and
(21:58):
I've always been described this moment as earth shattering, and
his religious views transformed dramatically from what he later called
his backwards thinking.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
When Hood moved to Dallas in the early twenty tens,
he became well known in his new home as he
fought to make local churches more inclusive of the LGBTQ
plus community, and he got arrested along with other clergy
outside of the White House in twenty fourteen when he
was protesting President Barack Obama's aggressive campaign to port migrants.
On July seventh and twenty sixteen, Hood led a Black
(22:29):
Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas, during which a sniper
opened fire and targeted police officers.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Micah X Johnson and IRAQ war Veteran was enraged by
the police killings of Alton Stirling in Louisiana and Filando
Castile in Minnesota, so Johnson shot and killed five police officers,
the deadliest incident for law enforcement since September eleventh, two
thousand and one. Police killed Johnson that evening by detonating
(22:56):
a bomb carried by a robot to the shooter's hideout
in part garage, marking the first execution by robot in
American history. Reverend Hood was traumatized not only by the
sniper attack, but also when he got scapegoaded for the
deaths that day. Fox News hosts Megan Kelly put a
target on Hood's back in the aftermath of the sniper attack.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
Jeff Hood, he was one of the organizers of the march,
and quickly condemned the shootings.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Today never and ah, while the dreams would we have
imagined that five police officers would be dead this morn.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
But critics were quick to point out that we were
hearing a very different message from the Reverend just a
short time before the shots rang out last night. Here
are some of that.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
But I'm a.
Speaker 8 (23:45):
Channel an old Richard that I am out tremendously jel
am all right, and I'm gonna say, God, damn White America,
God damn America. White America, of the bodies a boot
(24:15):
and brown people people being flooded in our.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Free Hood agreed to be interviewed by Kelly, but the
minister soon realized that Fox viewers blamed him for the
officer's death and they threatened vengeance.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I mean after Youlaw the Seventh Man, there was talk
about threats. Didn't PD was having to take the kids
to school, and it was.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
It was absolutely horrible witnessing people die that day, including
the sniper Johnson's impromptu execution via remote control robot, deep
in Hood's opposition to violence, including state killing. In twenty
twenty two, he is ordained again, this time as a priest,
and was called the Old Catholic Faith, which accepts many
(24:56):
of the doctrines and rights of the Roman Catholic Church
that rejects the doctor front of people infallibility and authority.
Hood began writing to those on death row and then
talking and praying with them in person. In twenty twenty two,
the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Ramirez versus
Collier case that condemned prisoners have the right to die
in the company of a spiritual advisor. Hood became a
(25:18):
companion to the condemned in their last minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I began to have people reaching out during that time,
you know, and asking me if I would accompany them
to the death chamber. And you know, it's one thing
to be willing to have relationships with people who are executed.
It's a whole nother thing to be asked to participate
(25:46):
in the process. And so since then, I've witnessed or
been in the chamber with ten different guys. So from
January of twenty twenty three to now, I've watched ten
different men executed by the state.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But attended his first execution in the state of Oklahoma,
put Scott Eisenberg to death on January twelfth, twenty twenty three.
Twenty years earlier, Eisenberg murdered an elderly couple, including a
man he bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
My first execution was Scott Eisenberg in Oklahoma, and he
Scott had a number of things going on, but.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
We were very close.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
He had a lot of anger issues and I think
difficulty controlling his temper and whatnot, and you know, so
the reality was I was very frightened before I went
in because I thought Scott was just going to go ballistic,
and you know, to be in that room with someone
(26:45):
that goes ballistic, I mean, it's it's already traumatic enough.
I'm sure you can imagine without you know, something like that.
But then again, you couldn't. You can't blame them for
wanting to, you know, push back and for their lives
and whatnot. I found myself shaking, just you know, my
(27:06):
hands and my legs. This terror, I mean, just utterly terrified.
And then they opened the door and I was led
in and I saw Scott. And it's incredibly strange to
(27:26):
see someone hooked up to machines that look like they're
there to support life, and yet you know that they're
there to take his life. And so I wasn't able.
I mean, I knew that there was a window on
one side. I wasn't able to see through that window
(27:48):
because there was a curtain down. And I began to
pray with Scott. Scott had asked me to read a
number of scriptures and I did, and I dropped my
Bible at one point because I'm shaking so bad. I
was having trouble holding it. You know, he notices that
I'm shaking, he notices that I'm upset, and he looks
(28:16):
at me and tells me everything's gonna be okay. And
I'm thinking to myself, no, it's not, like, no, it
is not. And I'm thinking, you know, you're gonna die
and and I'm gonna be scarred for life. Everything is
not going to be okay. And I went to the
(28:39):
scripture in John chapter eight where Jesus encounters the adulterous woman,
and there's that famous line, famous verse, you who are
without sin cast the first stone, and I read that
in the chamber, and one of the lighter moments when
(29:01):
we were in there was when I read that you
who are without sending cassa the first tone. I remember
Scott looking up and pointing at the executioners and saying,
you know, he's talking to y'all, like this is about y'all.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Pud said that any sense that death by lethal injection
is nonviolent is an illusion.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
In every lethal injection, I have immediately heard snoring and
what sounds not like you know, snoring from you know
that one would have when they sleep or whatever, but
more of a gurgling kind of a snoring, and you
know it's the body responds in a very panicked fashion.
(29:45):
And so It's almost like it's like drowning someone who's
completely paralyzed. And I think that that's I think that's
what it's been like every time. I think that there
is a level of suffering that is that is hidden.
There's a reason that, again that it's made to look
(30:07):
like a medical procedure, because it does look like a
medical procedure. I think it is a cont.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Hood found the lethal injections traumatizing, but that did not
prepare for him for what he witnessed when Alabama began
executing prisoners through nitrous hypoxia.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I can tell you that as horrible as a lethal
injection is, and yes, it is a con job, I
can tell you that I what I saw during that
nitrogen execution is indescribable. I can tell you that I
think I would rather be burned to death than be
executed by nitrogen.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
I mean it is that bad.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Wod attended the hypoxia suffocation of Kenneth Smith, a contract killer,
on January twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, the first such
execution in American history. Smith had been sent to death
thirty six years earlier. That's at the horror for him began.
We stepped into the death chamber and saw Smith outfitted
with a large mass that would deliver the poison gas.
(31:08):
Attending this execution actually put Hood's life in jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
I can describe it for y'all's listeners.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
But the mask which I'm holding right here a replica,
is basically something that is gasnetting in the back and
has silicone straps. It's put over the back of someone's
head and it is strapped as tight as possible to try.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
To keep it on.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And it looks like a firefighter's mask with sort of
a plexiglass plate on the front. And then there's a
hose that's going from the firefighter's mask with the plexis
plate to the nitrogen and so what is happening is
they try to pump as much nitrogen as possible through
(32:00):
through this line. The problem is is that these masks
don't completely hold the form. I guess it's the best
way of saying it in that it's.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Difficult for you to get an air tight seal.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
So the more oxygen that gets in here, the more
it's displacing nitrogen. And so the more oxygen that's in here,
and obviously there's going to be oxygen too, there's gonna
be oxygen in the mass before the thing even starts.
Is going to create more suffering. It's going to create
a longer process.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Knew that he would be in a chamber in which
poison gas would be released, and he felt obligated to
tell his children in advance that he could be harmed.
They were terrified, of course, but he felt an obligation
to provide smith company and compassion as well. Again, we
remind listeners that what they are about to hear might
be upsetting.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
So by the time we get to the point where
they turn the nitrogen on, all the witnesses, everybody in
the room is like going Nobody knows what's about to
happen because it's never been tried before. And so they
turn it on and Kenny immediately begins to heave back
and forth and back and forth, over and over. And
(33:17):
every time he heaves forward, the back of the mask
was strapped to the gurney, so every time he heaves forward,
his face is hitting the front of that mask over
and over and over and over, and so it's like
watching someone get like hit their face against the playglass window,
and it's like his nose and his face is flattening
(33:38):
every time he does it. And he begins to shake
back and forth and back and forth, heaving up and down.
I see spit and saliva and snot, and you know,
eyewater and all sorts of fluid is coming out of
his face. And that fluid begins to build up on
(34:01):
the front of the mask, and it begins to drizzle
like a waterfall.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Smith's convulse was so much for his prison officials worried
his mask might come off, interrupting the execution and possibly
killing Hood and maybe others in attendance. A window separated
Hood from other witnesses in the violence of Smith's death
caused a commotion.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The windows are like super thick. I shouldn't have been
able to hear anything, but I could hear somebody behind
me screaming stop stop stop stop, please stop stop stop.
And it was It was an absolute nightmare. And Kenny
did not die for at least twenty two minutes, and
it's very possible that he didn't die for a longer
(34:48):
period of time. But the state of Alabama declares they say, oh,
you know, he's not breathing, he's dead. Then they'd push
everybody out of the room and then they bring the
doctor in after everybody's led to declare him dead.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
But admits that some of the men he's counseled are
capable of unspeakable evil even after years on death row,
but he still recalls each death he's witnessed with pain.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I feel morally compromised, horrified, but I feel cold or
pushed to keep going because I think that the more
traumatic thing would be to leave these guys alone. Now,
in terms of actually seeing it, I think that it's
these images don't leave you. There's nightmares. I always say
(35:39):
that these guys haunt me. They come night after night.
You know, I'll see them at the end of my bed.
I mean, I mean, just yeah. So, so trauma is
something I've come to know very well.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
In twenty nineteen, the United States Supreme Court ruled the
prisoners do not have a right to a painless death
when a green lighted the execution of Russell Buckloo, who
had blood filled tumors and his head, neck and mouth
that could have broken up and as he was put
to death. The highest court seems to have rendered the
Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment moved.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Meanwhile, in recent years, It has not only been states
that have enforced the death penalty. Between nineteen sixty and
twenty nineteen, the federal government carried out only three executions,
but in twenty twenty to early twenty twenty one, during
the last six months of Donald Trump's first term as president,
the federal government executed thirteen men and women. These included
(36:38):
Brandon Bernard, who committed a double murder when he was
only eighteen, and another Lisa Montgomery, whose psychologists believed was
severely mentally ill and detached from reality at the time
that she murdered a pregnant woman and cut the baby
from her victim's body in order to raise the child
as her own.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Joe Biden, on the other hand, at the end of
his presidential term, sought to prevent a similar execution spree.
Forty people are on death row, and he commuted the
sons of thirty seven of them. The remaining three were Zokharzarnev,
the twenty thirteen Boston Marathon bomber, Dylan Rufe, who massacred
nine members of the Mother Emmanuel Ame Church in Charleston,
(37:18):
South Carolina twenty fifteen, and Robert Bowers, who killed eleven
at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Back in power, however,
Trump is vowed to make the death penalty great again.
Speaker 9 (37:31):
Anybody murders something in the capitol, capital punishment, capital capital punishment.
If somebody kills somebody in the capitol Washington, DC, We're
going to be seeking the death penalty. And that's a
very strong preventative.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Trump's immediate plans aside, the future of the death penalty
in the long term is not so certain. According to
a twenty twenty four Gallop opinion poll, support for the
death penalty has sunk to its lowest level in half
a century. Only fifty three percent of Americans favor capital punishment,
but that number skews heavily towards older Americans. More than
half of Americans between the ages of eighteen and forty
(38:14):
three oppose the death penalty, and almost sixty percent of
the so called gen z those born between nineteen ninety
seven and twenty twelve are firmly against the death penalty.
While Professor Karna Lane believes that even record low support
for the death penalty is exaggerated and that support for
capital punishment drops even further when other options are provided
(38:35):
to voters.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
You know, the President issued this executive order, a day
one executive order.
Speaker 10 (38:41):
Let's go for the death penalty anytime we can. Let's
execute everybody. And one of the things to realize is
that the death penalty is dying in this country for
reasons that an executive order cannot fix. People have less
confident and the death penalty. They don't trust the death penalty,
(39:03):
nor should they. Two hundred people have been exonerated from.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Death row, and race Bouillon agrees.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
The decline in executions in the United States reflects a
broad US shift in how society views death penalty. I mean,
more states are repealing it, juries are imposing it less often,
and the public support while student bting has steadily decreased,
(39:33):
especially as concerns about wrongful convictions in the racial bias
and the high costs of capital punishment came to light.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, hangings were public,
but they so often went awry and produced such grizly
seen states smood as executions inside prison yards, and some
more humane alternative that new method, the allow electric chair,
proved horrifying as well and was deemed unsuitable for general audiences.
(40:06):
The Supreme Court imposed a four year pause in the
death penalty beginning in nineteen seventy two because of its
random application. In nineteen seventy six, the High Court reauthorized
capital punishment. A crisis ensued when a Texas TV reporters
sued for the right to televise executions. Horrified at the
prospectively condemned essentially being burned alive in the electric chair
(40:28):
in front of a primetime audience, States approved the latest
innovation stake killing death by lethal injection.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
But throughout this history of execution, insurmountable flaws have remained consistent.
The quest for a human way to kill people on
an announced schedule has been futile. Each form of the
death penalty has been proven to be violent and cost
suffering at great expenditure of public money, and plausibly innocent
people have been put to death as the people in
(40:56):
charge of punishment have changed execution methods over the years,
also tried to prevent public backclash to revolting scenes of suffering,
which could create the opposition to capital punishment that they fear.
Politicians eager to prove they are tough on crime, have
also fought to hide these gruesome spectacles from public view. Nevertheless,
Race Bouyon is optimistic that this grim aspect of life
(41:17):
in the United States might soon come to an end.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
More than two thirds of you know countries have about
his death penalty in law or practice, with only a
few countries carrying out the vast majority of executions. And
I think the future is one where the death penalty
continues to strain one life as values of human rights, dignity,
(41:44):
and justice without irreversible punishment. Again ground.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Until next time, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
And I'm Stephen Montchelli.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 10 (41:58):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia 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 (42:15):
Thanks for listening.
Colz Media A warning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode includes violent content which some listeners might find disturbing.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a history
of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co
author with longtime journalists Betsy Freoff, the history of eugenics
in Texas called Purifying Knife.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And I'm Stephen RONCHOLLI I'm an investigati journalist in Dallas
who specializes in political extremism and the far right. And
I report for places like the Texas Observer, the Barbed Moire.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And more like millions across the United States. Mark Anthony
Strohman was startled by the events then folded on the
terrible morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one. The
disbelief that greeted that terrorist attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon can be heard on the first
announcement of the tragedy on a Dallas talk radio station WBAP.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
All right, thank you our seven point fifty one, nine
minutes before eight o'clock a dues talk a twenty WBAP
here on the here on the Tuesday morning. And the
reason I am hesitating here there's a word of a
plane crashing into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan,
and the World Trade of plane actually crashing and to
(01:21):
the side of the World Trade Center. We're going to
have details for you on that from ABCDWS in just
a couple of moments.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Strowman later wrote that September eleventh filled him with a
great sense of rage, hatred, loss, bitterness, and utter degradation.
He blamed Arabs and Muslims as a group for the
events that day and wanted to quote those Arabs to
feel the same sense of insecurity about their immediate surroundings.
I wanted to feel the same sense of vulnerability and
(01:50):
uncertainty on American soil. Strowman, Dallas resident, had already served
two prison terms, during which he had joined the Aryan
Brotherhood prison gang. Adicted to meth and sporting neo Nazi tattoos,
he began cruising Dallas in his nineteen seventy two Chevy
Suburban hunting for quote unquote Arabs. As he later admitted,
he wasn't entirely sure what an Arab looked like, but
(02:13):
nevertheless he stalked people with quote shawls on their faces.
Stroman launched his crusade by running cars into ditches. If
he suspected the vehicles were driven by Muslims, he escalated
his campaign of terror. On September seventeenth, two thousand and one,
he fatally shot Wakhar Hassan, a forty six year old
Pakistani immigrant, as the clerk grilled to hamburger at Mom's
(02:36):
Grocery in Dallas. A few days later, Stroman found his
next victim, a farmer pilot for Bangladesh's Air Force named
Rased Bouyan. Mister Bouyan, who has experienced robberies prior to
his encounter with Stroman, told us what happened that day.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
At the Maturity First two thousand and one. To us
friday eron Juden, a customer walked in wearing bandana, sunglasses,
baseball cap and holding a double barrel a sort of
double barrels shotgun on his right side. And from the
previous rubbery experience, I thought it would be and the robbery.
(03:16):
So I put all the money on the counter and
offered in the cash as soon as he walked in,
and I said, sir, here is all the money, take it,
but please do not shoot me. Basically I begged for
my life and his gaze remained fixed, and then he
mumbled a question, where are you from. Before I could
(03:41):
say anything more than excuse me, he pulled the trigger
from point blank ring. I felt it first, like a
million bees were singing my friends. And I looked down
and saw blood pouring like an open faceter from the
right set of my head. And I remember screaming mom
(04:05):
about my voice. And I looked down some block pouring
like an open boset from the right set of my head,
and then I looked left. I saw the gunman still standing,
pointing at a director of the phrase, and I realized
that if I did not, you know, do something to
(04:26):
show that I'm dying, he might shoot be again. So
I fell to the floor and he finally left a
few seconds beyond.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Survived the attack, but he was blinded in his right eye.
He would endure not only multiple painful surgeries, but also
the unique financial horrors of the American healthcare system. Meanwhile,
Strowman was not done terrorizing the Dallas area Muslim community.
On October fourth, the shooting spree came to an end
when the white supremacist pulled up to a shell station
(04:55):
in Mesquite at about six forty five in the morning
and ordered the clerk, nine year old Vasa Dev Patel,
a Hindu immigrant from India, to hand over all the
money from the cash register. Patel reached under the counter
for a twenty two caliber pistol, and seeing the gun,
Stroman fired his weapon. The bullet struck Patel in his
chest and killed him. A security camera captured the scene,
(05:19):
and Dallas police arrested Stroman the next day.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
At Stroman's home, investigators found a semi automatic rifle, an
Uzi knockoff, a forty four magnum, and a forty five
cult that also found evidence that Stroman planted to attack
a mosque in a nearby suburb. Jury found Stroumman guilty
of capital murder in April fifth, two thousand and two,
and sends him to die by leafal injection. The story
(05:45):
then took an unexpected turn. During a two thousand and
nine pilgrimage to Mecca, Buyan said he realized that simply
forgiving his assailant would not be enough. He believed he
had a moral obligation to do all he could prevent
Strouman's death. Buyon filed a lawsuit attempting to halt Stroman's execution.
(06:06):
Despite of Buyon's best effort, the suit was rejected by
state and federal courts, and Stroman died by lethal injection
July twenty, twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Buyon's campaign of mercy, however, made a major impact on
capital punishment in the United States. He effectively shamed European
drug companies, debanning the use of the products used in
the lethal injection that killed Stroman. In turn, some states,
like Texas, decided to start buying lethal drugs illegally. In
this final episode on the history of the lethal injection
(06:36):
in the United States, Beyond will tell us about his
campaign against capital punishment and its impact. We'll also speak
to a priest, the Reverend Jeff Hood, who has accompanied,
by the time of this interview ten men to their executions.
He will also tell us why he has devoted himself
to showing love to people so despised, and also address
the future of the death penalty in the United States.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
After being blows I did a hate crime race. Beyond
struggles through numerous traumas. He told us that after getting
shot at the convenience story where he worked, he ran
to a barbershop next door. There, he had the first
sight of his injuries, I.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Caught myself in the mirror and the image reflected back
was like something off of the horror movie. And on
my way to the hospital, I felt my eyes were closing.
I felt that my time was up. And you know,
while I was reciting from the Holy Koran and asking
God for mercy and forgiveness and giving me a second chance,
(07:36):
I also begged him to, you know, to send my life,
to give me a chance to live. And I promised
God that if you give me a chance to live,
I would help others.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In the emergency room, doctors put Beyond on life support
for time. His condition was touch and go. Beyond, a
young immigrant living on his salary as a convenience store clerk,
said that when he next opened his eyes and doctors
told him he had survived, he cried tears of joy.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
So my eyes were full of tears, not from the pain,
but from the joy of still being alive, but then
joining the last long because the hospital where I was
taken was private and expensive, and I had no health
insurance at the time, so they discharged me with a
couple of hours and told me to arrange follow up
medical treatments On my own. So, you know, the first
(08:25):
part of my American nightmare was being shot in the
face after nine to eleven, and second part began when
I was kicked up from the hospital. So as a
result of this shooting, I you know, underwent several eye surgeries. Unfortunately,
though I lost the mission in one eye, I still
carry more than three dozen shut palas on my face.
(08:46):
And my father suffered a stroke when he heard what
about what happened to me? But luckily he's a bde.
I lost my fiance but gained more than sixty dollars
in medical bills.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Strumman languished on Texas Death Row. Buyan began picking up
the pieces.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
I moved on rebuilding my life. I worked in restaurant
and went back to school, and slowly I was, you know,
climbing the letter and getting better in my own you know,
life journey. And in two thousand and nine I went
the mact of a polgrimage a mother and it wasn't neca.
I deeply realized that though I forgave my attacker marks trument,
(09:29):
it was not an hour. I felt that, you know,
by executing Mark, we would simply lose a human life
with a dealing with the hood cause. I strongly believed
that if he was giving a chance, he might be
able to become a better human being. And I began
to see him as a human being like me, not
just simply a killer. I saw him as a victim too,
(09:53):
and I befelt for him. And I remember my promise
on my devdad that if I did a chance to live,
I would help others. And I felt that I needed
to start with him first to get my promies. So
I've returned from Mecca with a very changed heart. Look
at clarity and then you found purpose, and I launched
(10:17):
a campaign to try and save my attack that's wife
from Texas death.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
We'll pick up the story of Beyon's campaign to spare
Stroman's life and how his efforts changed the history of
the American death penalty after a word from our sponsors.
Doctor Rick Halprin began teaching human rights courses at Southern
(10:44):
Methodist University in Dallas in nineteen ninety, where he now
hads one of only nine human rights programs at the
universities in the country. He has also chaired Amnesty International's
Board of Directors three times, and since nineteen seventy two
has been an anti death penalty activist. Halprin became famous
on Texas death Row as a result of his efforts,
(11:04):
and after Stroman was informed of his July twentieth, twenty
eleven execution date, the condemned man wrote a letter to
Halperin asking for help in making final arrangements, such as
locating an affordable undertaker.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
By coincidence, shortly after Stroman reached out to Halperin, the
professor received a surprise visitor to his office. The stranger
was Stroman's victim, Race Bouyan. B Yan, who had recently
become an American cist, hoped Halperin could help him find
a creative and effective way to fulfill the promise he
had made to God when he thought he was dying.
(11:36):
He began his campaign to save Stroman's life. Bu Yan, Halpern,
and another human rights activist, Hatti Juwad, carried their efforts
from Dallas to the state capitol in Austin and as
far as the European Parliament.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
A weak point in the American death penalty machinery was
its reliance on companies that provided the lethal injection chemicals.
In twenty eleven, Italy and anti death penalty Nation successfully
pressured the Illinois company Hospira to stop selling sodium theopental,
the muscle relaxant used in the three drug lethal injection
protocol used in Texas since the early nineteen eighties. That
(12:13):
same year, Reprieve, a British human rights nonprofit, arranged for
Beyond to travel to Europe to meet face to face
with executives at the corporate headquarters of the Danish pharmaceutical
company Lundbeck. Aware that the meeting would put them in
the international spotlight, Lundbeck three days prior, announced that they
would stop shipping the sedative nembitol, which was being used
(12:35):
as a substitute for sodium the appent hall to American
prison systems. Beyond described his conversation with the Lumbeck company
an interview with US the one.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Hour of great conversation. They agreed to write a letter
to the governor of Pixas asking him not to use
their product to kill human being.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
The state of Texas, however, was unwilling to grant a
crime victim as fervent wish, even though Texas politicians repeatedly
claimed they execute murderers to bring the victims closure. Boullion
said he was denied this by the Texas Border Paroles
and Pardons and then Governor Rick Perry.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
I reached out to the prison system and asking for
a mediation dialogue, but unfortunately, you know, that turned down
my request multiple times, and the reason they showed was
it would really victimise me. So basically a mediation dialogue,
(13:34):
I thought it would be helpful for me to find closure,
to find a lot of answers, but it was for them,
it would be, you know, a revictimization process for me.
So they they rejected my request to multiple crimes, and
it really made me sad that when they needed me
to testifying the court the conviction to get the death penalty.
(13:58):
I was a good victim, but then when I tried
to exercise my right as a victim to have a
mediation dialogue, I became that victim because I asked when
it right.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
In his final hours, Strowman spoke directly to his surviving victim.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I had the opportunity to talk to him of the
phone before he was executed, and it was the day
of his execution where he put my name as one
of the people he would be able to talk. So
I was lucky enough to talk to him, and when
he came on the phone, I was about to, you know,
(14:36):
go to the court to give a last fight to,
you know, stead the execution. So I was thinking, what
would I say to a human being who is about
to be executed in a couple of hours. And I'm
going to, you know, go to a court to give
a you know, a last fight to to you know,
see if he could say them. So I was very
(14:59):
emotional when he on the phone. I told him that Mark,
you know for sure that I never hated you. I
forgave you and I'm doing my best to you know,
save your life, you know, through this court hearing. And
he said that rays I never expected that from you,
(15:22):
and I love you, brother, And that brought tears into
my eyes. That it is the same human being who
shocked me for no reasons other than having hated and violence.
These are and now ten years later he saw me,
he could see me as his brother, and he said
he loved me. Why he couldn't see me as his
(15:42):
brother ten years ago? And why could he say the
same thing ten years ago? So, you know, at least
it helped me to find closer a little bit. It
helped me to move forward. At least I had the
chance to talk to my attacker and and give you
a lot of hope that people can change.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
The execution itself. However, left Beyond cold.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Well definitely this execution that was not of the victims,
because the victims and the victims' family members requested and
also fought for clemency. In a way, you went ahead
and requested the Governor of Texas, the Board of Burdens
and Earls that do not execute him in all names
in a show.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Marcie Mark Strowman died as scheduled on July twentieth, twenty eleven,
and though Beyond and Helprint failed to stop it, they
had helped start an international movement to thwart the ability
of states to carry out such lethal injections, as Professor
Colorine Elaine revealed in her book Secrets of the Killing State.
After Haspira stopped producing sodium viapental, the vacuum was filled
(16:51):
by a fly by night company called Dream Pharma. The
drug distributor quote turned out to be two desks at
a filing cabinet hidden in the back of a London
driving school. As Lane wrote, once this operation was exposed,
Great Britain banned sodium theopental sales to the United States.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
By December twenty eleven, the entire European Union had titan
export controls on any chemicals that could potentially be used
in executions. The new expanded EU ban made life much
more difficult for would be executioners in the United States.
In twenty twelve, when the state of Missouri announced it
would use the drug pro poufal as an anesthetic in
(17:31):
its executions, the EU said it would cut off exports
of that drug, which is used for surgeries in the
United States about fifty million times a year. Combined, these
moves created a lethal injection drug shortage that changed how
executions took place.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
In twenty twelve, Texas moved then to a single drug protocol,
using pennel barbitol alone rather than the old three drug
cocktail made out of thin air by Oklahoma corner Stephen
Coleman back in the nineteen seventies. Autopsies reveal that prisoners
executed with this single drug protocol die from pulmonary edema,
a condition in which the lungs fill with fluid. Medical
(18:09):
experts believe prisoners suffer intense chest pain as they suffocate,
even if they appear fully unconscious. Execution witnesses also say
they have seen prisoners eyes pop open, their eyes fill
with tears, have seen them pull against restraints, and have
heard them grown and class their jaws during such executions.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
As the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections become
harder to find, states have to rely on shady tactics
so they can keep on killing. Officials have lied to
pharmaceutical companies that are buying drugs to provide medical care
for prisoners that they later use in the death chamber.
Death penalty. States have violated federal laws. They have illegally
(18:46):
swapped these drugs across state line, or they bought them
on the black market or to legally marginal so called
gray market, Professor Lane describes as shading lengths the state
of Ohio went to in order to buy these drugs.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
The state took fifteen thousand dollars in cash in a suitcase.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up, you know,
and chartered a private plane to fly over to Washington
where they did an under the table deal for drugs
with this little pharmacy. You know, you need a prescription
(19:20):
for these drugs, and so here's a pharmacy that, for
fifteen thousand dollars is willing to sell drugs under the
table and allegedly in a Walmart parking lot.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
To cope with the shrinking supply, states have made illegal
purchases overseas. Like other states, Texas has tried to circumvent
tightening restrictions by purchasing death penalty supplies from loosely regulated
compounding pharmacies, and some of them have been here in
the States. In twenty eighteen, it was revealed that Texas
repeatedly bought drugs from the Green Park Compounding Pharmacy in Houston,
(19:52):
which is a company that had been fined forty eight
times by federal regulators for safety violations, including providing the
wrong medication to children who were subsequently hospitalized. The number
of agonizingly prolonged executions in Texas suggests that the drugs
the state buys are often out of date or impure.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Finding out where the leflow drugs are coming from is
becoming increasingly difficult. A number of states have passed laws
may it illegal to report on who carries out the execution,
what companies supply the drugs, or how these drugs were purchased.
In any case, the difficulty in getting execution drugs has
led to a decline the death penalty across the nation.
(20:33):
At the time of the landmark nineteen seventy two Firman
versus Georgia case that temporarily halted executions in the United States,
forty states had the death penalty. Currently only twenty seven
do In twenty twenty four, four states alone, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma,
and Texas carried out seventy six percent of the executions
(20:54):
that unfolded in the United States. Some of the remaining
states with the death penalty on the books have responded
to the shortage of lethal drugs by authorizing the use
of the firing squad and killing prisoners with nitrogen gas epoxia,
which suffocates them by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen
after another outbreak. You'll hear from a priest who has
(21:16):
witnessed executions in ten different states, including death by nitrous epoxia,
and will end this three part series by discussing the
future of the death penalty. Born in the South Atlanta
(21:37):
neighborhood in Georgia, Jeff Hood grew up in a religiously
conservative home and was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister
when he is only twenty two. His worldview, however, was
shaken when he attended to his religious mentor, who was
dying of lung cancer. Before he passed away, the seventy
five year old confessed to Hood quote, I'm gay and
(21:58):
I've always been described this moment as earth shattering, and
his religious views transformed dramatically from what he later called
his backwards thinking.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
When Hood moved to Dallas in the early twenty tens,
he became well known in his new home as he
fought to make local churches more inclusive of the LGBTQ
plus community, and he got arrested along with other clergy
outside of the White House in twenty fourteen when he
was protesting President Barack Obama's aggressive campaign to port migrants.
On July seventh and twenty sixteen, Hood led a Black
(22:29):
Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas, during which a sniper
opened fire and targeted police officers.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Micah X Johnson and IRAQ war Veteran was enraged by
the police killings of Alton Stirling in Louisiana and Filando
Castile in Minnesota, so Johnson shot and killed five police officers,
the deadliest incident for law enforcement since September eleventh, two
thousand and one. Police killed Johnson that evening by detonating
(22:56):
a bomb carried by a robot to the shooter's hideout
in part garage, marking the first execution by robot in
American history. Reverend Hood was traumatized not only by the
sniper attack, but also when he got scapegoaded for the
deaths that day. Fox News hosts Megan Kelly put a
target on Hood's back in the aftermath of the sniper attack.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
Jeff Hood, he was one of the organizers of the march,
and quickly condemned the shootings.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Today never and ah, while the dreams would we have
imagined that five police officers would be dead this morn.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
But critics were quick to point out that we were
hearing a very different message from the Reverend just a
short time before the shots rang out last night. Here
are some of that.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
But I'm a.
Speaker 8 (23:45):
Channel an old Richard that I am out tremendously jel
am all right, and I'm gonna say, God, damn White America,
God damn America. White America, of the bodies a boot
(24:15):
and brown people people being flooded in our.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Free Hood agreed to be interviewed by Kelly, but the
minister soon realized that Fox viewers blamed him for the
officer's death and they threatened vengeance.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I mean after Youlaw the Seventh Man, there was talk
about threats. Didn't PD was having to take the kids
to school, and it was.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
It was absolutely horrible witnessing people die that day, including
the sniper Johnson's impromptu execution via remote control robot, deep
in Hood's opposition to violence, including state killing. In twenty
twenty two, he is ordained again, this time as a priest,
and was called the Old Catholic Faith, which accepts many
(24:56):
of the doctrines and rights of the Roman Catholic Church
that rejects the doctor front of people infallibility and authority.
Hood began writing to those on death row and then
talking and praying with them in person. In twenty twenty two,
the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Ramirez versus
Collier case that condemned prisoners have the right to die
in the company of a spiritual advisor. Hood became a
(25:18):
companion to the condemned in their last minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I began to have people reaching out during that time,
you know, and asking me if I would accompany them
to the death chamber. And you know, it's one thing
to be willing to have relationships with people who are executed.
It's a whole nother thing to be asked to participate
(25:46):
in the process. And so since then, I've witnessed or
been in the chamber with ten different guys. So from
January of twenty twenty three to now, I've watched ten
different men executed by the state.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But attended his first execution in the state of Oklahoma,
put Scott Eisenberg to death on January twelfth, twenty twenty three.
Twenty years earlier, Eisenberg murdered an elderly couple, including a
man he bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
My first execution was Scott Eisenberg in Oklahoma, and he
Scott had a number of things going on, but.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
We were very close.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
He had a lot of anger issues and I think
difficulty controlling his temper and whatnot, and you know, so
the reality was I was very frightened before I went
in because I thought Scott was just going to go ballistic,
and you know, to be in that room with someone
(26:45):
that goes ballistic, I mean, it's it's already traumatic enough.
I'm sure you can imagine without you know, something like that.
But then again, you couldn't. You can't blame them for
wanting to, you know, push back and for their lives
and whatnot. I found myself shaking, just you know, my
(27:06):
hands and my legs. This terror, I mean, just utterly terrified.
And then they opened the door and I was led
in and I saw Scott. And it's incredibly strange to
(27:26):
see someone hooked up to machines that look like they're
there to support life, and yet you know that they're
there to take his life. And so I wasn't able.
I mean, I knew that there was a window on
one side. I wasn't able to see through that window
(27:48):
because there was a curtain down. And I began to
pray with Scott. Scott had asked me to read a
number of scriptures and I did, and I dropped my
Bible at one point because I'm shaking so bad. I
was having trouble holding it. You know, he notices that
I'm shaking, he notices that I'm upset, and he looks
(28:16):
at me and tells me everything's gonna be okay. And
I'm thinking to myself, no, it's not, like, no, it
is not. And I'm thinking, you know, you're gonna die
and and I'm gonna be scarred for life. Everything is
not going to be okay. And I went to the
(28:39):
scripture in John chapter eight where Jesus encounters the adulterous woman,
and there's that famous line, famous verse, you who are
without sin cast the first stone, and I read that
in the chamber, and one of the lighter moments when
(29:01):
we were in there was when I read that you
who are without sending cassa the first tone. I remember
Scott looking up and pointing at the executioners and saying,
you know, he's talking to y'all, like this is about y'all.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Pud said that any sense that death by lethal injection
is nonviolent is an illusion.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
In every lethal injection, I have immediately heard snoring and
what sounds not like you know, snoring from you know
that one would have when they sleep or whatever, but
more of a gurgling kind of a snoring, and you
know it's the body responds in a very panicked fashion.
(29:45):
And so It's almost like it's like drowning someone who's
completely paralyzed. And I think that that's I think that's
what it's been like every time. I think that there
is a level of suffering that is that is hidden.
There's a reason that, again that it's made to look
(30:07):
like a medical procedure, because it does look like a
medical procedure. I think it is a cont.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Hood found the lethal injections traumatizing, but that did not
prepare for him for what he witnessed when Alabama began
executing prisoners through nitrous hypoxia.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I can tell you that as horrible as a lethal
injection is, and yes, it is a con job, I
can tell you that I what I saw during that
nitrogen execution is indescribable. I can tell you that I
think I would rather be burned to death than be
executed by nitrogen.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
I mean it is that bad.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Wod attended the hypoxia suffocation of Kenneth Smith, a contract killer,
on January twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, the first such
execution in American history. Smith had been sent to death
thirty six years earlier. That's at the horror for him began.
We stepped into the death chamber and saw Smith outfitted
with a large mass that would deliver the poison gas.
(31:08):
Attending this execution actually put Hood's life in jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
I can describe it for y'all's listeners.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
But the mask which I'm holding right here a replica,
is basically something that is gasnetting in the back and
has silicone straps. It's put over the back of someone's
head and it is strapped as tight as possible to try.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
To keep it on.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And it looks like a firefighter's mask with sort of
a plexiglass plate on the front. And then there's a
hose that's going from the firefighter's mask with the plexis
plate to the nitrogen and so what is happening is
they try to pump as much nitrogen as possible through
(32:00):
through this line. The problem is is that these masks
don't completely hold the form. I guess it's the best
way of saying it in that it's.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Difficult for you to get an air tight seal.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
So the more oxygen that gets in here, the more
it's displacing nitrogen. And so the more oxygen that's in here,
and obviously there's going to be oxygen too, there's gonna
be oxygen in the mass before the thing even starts.
Is going to create more suffering. It's going to create
a longer process.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Knew that he would be in a chamber in which
poison gas would be released, and he felt obligated to
tell his children in advance that he could be harmed.
They were terrified, of course, but he felt an obligation
to provide smith company and compassion as well. Again, we
remind listeners that what they are about to hear might
be upsetting.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
So by the time we get to the point where
they turn the nitrogen on, all the witnesses, everybody in
the room is like going Nobody knows what's about to
happen because it's never been tried before. And so they
turn it on and Kenny immediately begins to heave back
and forth and back and forth, over and over. And
(33:17):
every time he heaves forward, the back of the mask
was strapped to the gurney, so every time he heaves forward,
his face is hitting the front of that mask over
and over and over and over, and so it's like
watching someone get like hit their face against the playglass window,
and it's like his nose and his face is flattening
(33:38):
every time he does it. And he begins to shake
back and forth and back and forth, heaving up and down.
I see spit and saliva and snot, and you know,
eyewater and all sorts of fluid is coming out of
his face. And that fluid begins to build up on
(34:01):
the front of the mask, and it begins to drizzle
like a waterfall.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Smith's convulse was so much for his prison officials worried
his mask might come off, interrupting the execution and possibly
killing Hood and maybe others in attendance. A window separated
Hood from other witnesses in the violence of Smith's death
caused a commotion.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The windows are like super thick. I shouldn't have been
able to hear anything, but I could hear somebody behind
me screaming stop stop stop stop, please stop stop stop.
And it was It was an absolute nightmare. And Kenny
did not die for at least twenty two minutes, and
it's very possible that he didn't die for a longer
(34:48):
period of time. But the state of Alabama declares they say, oh,
you know, he's not breathing, he's dead. Then they'd push
everybody out of the room and then they bring the
doctor in after everybody's led to declare him dead.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
But admits that some of the men he's counseled are
capable of unspeakable evil even after years on death row,
but he still recalls each death he's witnessed with pain.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I feel morally compromised, horrified, but I feel cold or
pushed to keep going because I think that the more
traumatic thing would be to leave these guys alone. Now,
in terms of actually seeing it, I think that it's
these images don't leave you. There's nightmares. I always say
(35:39):
that these guys haunt me. They come night after night.
You know, I'll see them at the end of my bed.
I mean, I mean, just yeah. So, so trauma is
something I've come to know very well.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
In twenty nineteen, the United States Supreme Court ruled the
prisoners do not have a right to a painless death
when a green lighted the execution of Russell Buckloo, who
had blood filled tumors and his head, neck and mouth
that could have broken up and as he was put
to death. The highest court seems to have rendered the
Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment moved.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Meanwhile, in recent years, It has not only been states
that have enforced the death penalty. Between nineteen sixty and
twenty nineteen, the federal government carried out only three executions,
but in twenty twenty to early twenty twenty one, during
the last six months of Donald Trump's first term as president,
the federal government executed thirteen men and women. These included
(36:38):
Brandon Bernard, who committed a double murder when he was
only eighteen, and another Lisa Montgomery, whose psychologists believed was
severely mentally ill and detached from reality at the time
that she murdered a pregnant woman and cut the baby
from her victim's body in order to raise the child
as her own.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Joe Biden, on the other hand, at the end of
his presidential term, sought to prevent a similar execution spree.
Forty people are on death row, and he commuted the
sons of thirty seven of them. The remaining three were Zokharzarnev,
the twenty thirteen Boston Marathon bomber, Dylan Rufe, who massacred
nine members of the Mother Emmanuel Ame Church in Charleston,
(37:18):
South Carolina twenty fifteen, and Robert Bowers, who killed eleven
at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Back in power, however,
Trump is vowed to make the death penalty great again.
Speaker 9 (37:31):
Anybody murders something in the capitol, capital punishment, capital capital punishment.
If somebody kills somebody in the capitol Washington, DC, We're
going to be seeking the death penalty. And that's a
very strong preventative.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Trump's immediate plans aside, the future of the death penalty
in the long term is not so certain. According to
a twenty twenty four Gallop opinion poll, support for the
death penalty has sunk to its lowest level in half
a century. Only fifty three percent of Americans favor capital punishment,
but that number skews heavily towards older Americans. More than
half of Americans between the ages of eighteen and forty
(38:14):
three oppose the death penalty, and almost sixty percent of
the so called gen z those born between nineteen ninety
seven and twenty twelve are firmly against the death penalty.
While Professor Karna Lane believes that even record low support
for the death penalty is exaggerated and that support for
capital punishment drops even further when other options are provided
(38:35):
to voters.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
You know, the President issued this executive order, a day
one executive order.
Speaker 10 (38:41):
Let's go for the death penalty anytime we can. Let's
execute everybody. And one of the things to realize is
that the death penalty is dying in this country for
reasons that an executive order cannot fix. People have less
confident and the death penalty. They don't trust the death penalty,
(39:03):
nor should they. Two hundred people have been exonerated from.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Death row, and race Bouillon agrees.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
The decline in executions in the United States reflects a
broad US shift in how society views death penalty. I mean,
more states are repealing it, juries are imposing it less often,
and the public support while student bting has steadily decreased,
(39:33):
especially as concerns about wrongful convictions in the racial bias
and the high costs of capital punishment came to light.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, hangings were public,
but they so often went awry and produced such grizly
seen states smood as executions inside prison yards, and some
more humane alternative that new method, the allow electric chair,
proved horrifying as well and was deemed unsuitable for general audiences.
(40:06):
The Supreme Court imposed a four year pause in the
death penalty beginning in nineteen seventy two because of its
random application. In nineteen seventy six, the High Court reauthorized
capital punishment. A crisis ensued when a Texas TV reporters
sued for the right to televise executions. Horrified at the
prospectively condemned essentially being burned alive in the electric chair
(40:28):
in front of a primetime audience, States approved the latest
innovation stake killing death by lethal injection.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
But throughout this history of execution, insurmountable flaws have remained consistent.
The quest for a human way to kill people on
an announced schedule has been futile. Each form of the
death penalty has been proven to be violent and cost
suffering at great expenditure of public money, and plausibly innocent
people have been put to death as the people in
(40:56):
charge of punishment have changed execution methods over the years,
also tried to prevent public backclash to revolting scenes of suffering,
which could create the opposition to capital punishment that they fear.
Politicians eager to prove they are tough on crime, have
also fought to hide these gruesome spectacles from public view. Nevertheless,
Race Bouyon is optimistic that this grim aspect of life
(41:17):
in the United States might soon come to an end.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
More than two thirds of you know countries have about
his death penalty in law or practice, with only a
few countries carrying out the vast majority of executions. And
I think the future is one where the death penalty
continues to strain one life as values of human rights, dignity,
(41:44):
and justice without irreversible punishment. Again ground.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Until next time, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
And I'm Stephen Montchelli.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 10 (41:58):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia 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 (42:15):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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