November 20, 2025 • 18 mins
Florida is set to execute its record breaking 17th inmate of the year. And while the guilt of 63-year-old Richard Barry Randolph is not in question, the method by which he will die tonight is, according to his attorneys. Randolph suffers from Lupus and believes dying by lethal injection will be cruel and unusual given his condition, which his lawyers claim will amplify any sensation of pain. He’s been on death row for more than 3 decades now for the rape and brutal murder of his former coworker, and even though his death sentence had a far from unanimous jury decision, he has officially exhausted all of his appeals.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, folks. It is Thursday, November twentieth, and a man
is scheduled to die in a matter of hours in
Florida by lethal injection. He is making an argument though,
that the execution should be stopped. Why because it might
be too painful for him? And with that, welcome to
(00:22):
this episode of Amy and TJ. Robes. It's he has
some logic here for why he might feel more pain
than anyone else. I don't know if I've heard this
argument necessarily before, and we have covered a bunch of
executions here lately.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, this is the first one that I've heard that
is trying to use a medical condition that he says
will make lethal injection be torturous for him. We're talking
about sixty three year old Richard Barry Randolph, and his
attorneys say, yes, that injecting him with lethal injection will
(00:59):
be tortuous because he has lupus. And lupus one of
the side effects is that you have increased pain sensitivity,
so it causes chronic pain, and it leads to nerve
sensations like heightened nerve sensations basically, so your central nervous
system is basically ramped up.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's painful.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It can be something that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Would be painful to you and I would be extraordinarily
painful to somebody who has lupus.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, So that's the argument this man is making. Don't
know how far that's going to go, but that's certainly interesting. Robes.
As we sit here getting ready for Florida now to
continue a record pace, this will officially put them over.
They have more than if his execution goes through tonight,
they would have more than doubled their previous record for
(01:45):
executions in a year. That's correct, and they're not even
done after this one, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So the previous record was eight executions in the state
of Florida in one calendar year. Tonight's execution is number
seventeen in the state of Florida, and Governor de Santa
announced this week another execution that he's just put on
the books for next month. So there are two more
planned executions in the state of Florida alone. So yes,
it looks like if things all go according to the
(02:12):
plan Governor DeSantis has put in place, there will be
a total of nineteen inmates executed in the state of Florida.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And that's way ahead. Usually we have I don't think
nobody surprised Texas leading the way. I guess Texas, Alabama,
South Carolina are the ones now that have five There
you go. So Florida is way out and way ahead,
and Desantas has been signing death warrens left and right,
it seems here lately now this road, we've covered several
(02:40):
of these, most recently Tremaine Wood who's execution in Oklahoma.
He got commuted and he's life in prison. That was
special circumstances of the case that folks thought were worthy
of looking at. Not the argument being made for this
guy when it comes to the crime itself. No.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
In fact, the only arguments attorneys have made is that
he had a terrible childhood, that he did have an
honorable service as a member of the military, but that
he suffered PTSD, he was addicted to crack cocaine.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So they were.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Trying to kind of basically lay out as woe as me.
I had a terrible lot in life and I made
a really bad decision.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But it has not worked.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The Florida Supreme Court said, sorry, that is not an
argument that you can make to take away a death penalty.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Did I see right? One of the arguments was about
is really a lack of love from his parents or
his mom in particular, but apparently he had loving, adoptive,
correct parents.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
The judge pointed that out.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, like, I don't want to hear about your problem
with your biological parents because you were adopted by a
loving family. And he claimed though, that the mom who
adopted him was an alcoholic and that the father was abusive.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
So you know, he's claiming all of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But I figure anyone who's in a situation like his
probably could point to a terrible childhood.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, so all that's been rejected. I think the Supreme
Court is the only thing that could save him. Now.
Obviously Desanta's could save him tonight. Nobody is expecting that
at all, of course, so that is his last hope.
But this was a pretty This is another one row.
If this crime was thirty eight years ago, Yes, that's
(04:22):
a death row for thirty eight years.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And that is what DeSantis is trying to clear us.
He's saying, this is not justice, this is taking way
too long. We are not we are not following through
on what a jury has chosen as the fate of
these prisoners, and we are just dragging our feet. There
have been lots of reasons why, but he has now
tried to speed up the process and he is certainly
(04:47):
doing so. So, yes, this was a crime. It happened
back in nineteen eighty eight, the murder of a sixty
two year old woman, Minnie Ruth McCollums. She was working
in a convenience store a small town, Florida, East Palatka.
Never heard of it, but he was Richard Barry Randolph
was a former co worker of her, so he knew her.
(05:08):
And he went back to the store to rob the safe,
that was his goal, and she interrupted him. She came
in while he was trying to break into the safe.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, well he's twenty seven at the time and she's
sixty What did you just say, sixty two? Sixty two
year old lady. So this a scuffle ensues you off,
certainly assume he has the advantage in that scuffle. So
this is where it gets awful. He does beat her.
He beats her repeatedly, essentially almost taking breaks from beating
(05:42):
her so he can go continue to try to open
the safe. If you can imagine that horror. He's essentially
going back and forth between robbing and killing her essentially,
and this went on for quite some time. This was
a horrific scene they described.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, prosecutors say it was prolonged and it was brutal,
and they did. They pointed out the fact that he
was taking the time to continue to try and break
into the safe, and then he apparently said something to
authorities alluding to the fact that she was stronger than
he thought, like he was annoyed that she wouldn't die,
so he was strangling her, he was beating her, he
was stabbing her, and then he raped her. So this
(06:20):
is horrific and he doesn't deny it. He admitted this.
He actually showed police where the bloody clothes were that
he stashed away when he was caught a short while later.
So this is not a question of guilt or innocence,
but the brutality of the crime speaks volumes and it
is a tough one to stomach.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And this is one now we keep an eye on
robe to talk about lupus. Is this going to factor in.
We've seen several lethal in jets. I's say scene, but
you know what I mean, I don't mean that literally
during the year, and there are different reports afterwards of
what the witnesses say the inmate, how the inmate reacted
(07:00):
to being getting those drugs. And I think a lot
of people are going to be watching closely tonight to
see if this guy with lupes ends up, I don't know,
having some kind of an adverse reaction.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
In extraordinary pain or not.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
It Also, it was you mentioned you asked how old
she was, and I was looking at how old he was.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I think it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
She was sixty two years old when he brutally painfully
beat her. They were talking. By the way, she was
alive when police found her. I want to point that out.
She was alive, still clinging to life. She spent six
days in the hospital before she finally succumbed to her injuries.
He essentially beat her into a coma, and it was
(07:40):
the brain injuries that ended up. Her brain swelled and
she ended up dying. But she was stabbed in the throat.
I mean, it was as excruciating as you could possibly imagine.
She was sixty two. He is now sixty three. He
got to live one year longer than her. But now
he's upset and complaining about and concerned about and afraid
of feeling extraordinary pain. I don't know how many people
are going to feel very sympathetic when they read the
(08:02):
crime and what he did, and there was zero regard
for her pain, or her suffering or anything that this
sixty two year old woman went through. So now he
is sixty three and he will probably be spared, certainly
given the circumstances of her death, some of the pain
she experienced.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Then we talk about what we talk about just recently
about the end, right, we talked about, you know the
story of these entertainment twins who died together double suicide,
assisted suicide, and we were talking about in prison, if
you gave people the option to die and to die
pain painlessly, do you think people in prison with long
(08:45):
sentences would take it? And you and I I think
both said no, because in the end, people want to live.
And so here he is prison, thirty eight years death row.
This is the end, and he's fighting, fighting as hard
as he can, coming up with anything he can because
he wants to live. I'm always fascinated we all have
(09:07):
this thing. It's inherent in us. It's just instinct to
want to live, to want to survive. So we're not
surprised to see any of this. He's trying everything he
can to stay alive, no hope of getting out. He's
not trying to, you know, get his conviction overturned. He
just wants to live. I think that is it's always
fascinating about these stories.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It is fascinating. I absolutely agree with you, and you
see it every time. Only one execution that I can
remember from this year, and we have covered most of
them where we had an inmate who said, yep, go
ahead kill me.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
He skipped all the guy on in Florida.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We don't want any more appeals, don't care about trying
to get the Supreme Court to take a look at
my case.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Wasn't he also the one where they asked any last
words and his response was simply no, And that was it.
So yes, that is the only one.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
He is the exception.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
You are right.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Most most in maids on death row, regardless of the
quality of their life, it's still a life, and people
there's a human instinct to live, to survive, regardless of
your circumstances, and that is what we have seen time
and time again. Now when we come back, there is
an interesting part of this case. He and this is
very rare. There was not a unanimous decision for the
(10:21):
death penalty. In fact, when you hear what the spread
was among the jury, it does raise some eyebrows and
certainly has raised some questions as to whether.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Or not that should be allowed.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And continuing our coverage of Florida's seventeenth execution of the year,
happening tonight, sixty three year old Richard Barry Randolph will
die by lethal injection. He has made complaints and appeals
(10:54):
to anyone who will listen to try and stay his
execution or at least change the method of his execution.
He has lupus, and he says that this is going
to be a torturous death because of his condition, his
nerve endings, his nervous system is already experiences more pain
than most people. So to go through a lethal injection
while suffering lupus, his attorneys had argued, was cruel and unusual.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
But that has fallen on deaf ears.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And how did the judge put it? He really said, really,
now I'm going to bring this up now, He.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Said, You've had lupus for quite some time. You're just
now bringing this up. You had years to try and
change the method of execution, and you didn't. You chose
to do it in the eleventh hour, which makes him
feel like this is just an attempt to stay an
execution rather than actually mitigate pain.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So that is what the judge said. But there was
something really.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Interesting that I have learned so much as we've been
covering these executions. But in Randolph's jury, the death sentence,
there was a vote, right the jury votes. In most states,
you have to have a unanimous decision by a jury
to vote for the death penalty, and in some cases
the judge can intervene. But his jury voted eight to four,
(12:06):
and even the trial court at the time acknowledged that
that narrow margin, they said, reflected significant disagreement about what
the appropriate punishment was. They also pointed out that this
jury only heard from one mitigation witness when there should
have been more so they could have had a better
clearer picture. They say, the jury didn't get to hear
about his trouble childhood. They didn't get to hear about
(12:28):
his crack addiction, or about his military service and all
the good that he did. So there was a lot
of frustration about that. Now listen to this, I didn't
realize this. The Florida Supreme Court then changed this law
and said death sentences have to be unanimous, and then
they gave it. It had to happen in cases after
(12:48):
two thousand and four, there was some sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So he missed out on that because it happened to early.
And then just two.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Years ago in twenty twenty three, the Florida State Leasure
just wiped it all clean and said, you know what,
you can have a non unanimous death sentence. Now they
put it back to where it was, and so there
have been other instances where you have seen that eight
to four split.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That is tough. Well, I don't think it's the way
you talk. It's a tough, tough challenge for some to
accept state sanctioned killings, right. I get it, it's a
part of our system. But some people say these are monsters.
Sometimes they need to be I find then others argue
(13:32):
I'm not having the argument about it being deterrent. I'm
just saying, as a human being, it's uncomfortable the idea
of us going through ceremony of killing somebody. So it
was this guy. I still think this is a bigger
part of a problem. For me, we've seen too many
people exonerated when we're talking about somebody's life. We can't
(13:56):
have eight to four decisions. We can't have it that
kind of split. We need to be more sure than that.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Agreed, and that is the split.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
If it had been nine or sorry, if it had
been uh, what would have been been too?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I'm not a saying eleven one still not eight.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Four is what it is in the state of Florida
now since they put it back in place. Guess what
the only other state is that allows a non unanimous
death sentence to stand.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Alabama.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Now they have a ten to two split, so they
say it has to be it has to be higher.
It's higher the threshold hire ten to two. That's to me,
I was surprised eight to four. I had no idea
that it could be that wide of a margin and
still go through.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We would never accept that margin when it comes to
guilt or innocence. Now, so wide life or death. That's
that's bizarre. It's strange. Yes, we have learned so much
about the death penalty. We've learned a lot about cases
mistakes would have made and how you need to sometimes
dig a little deeper in a lot of these stories
and not just read the headlines and you understand and
can have Now even you don't have to have sympathy,
(15:01):
but you can have at least some kind of compassion
and sometimes not sympathy but empathy because you hear so
much of what families are going through on both sides
is you can relate to in a lot of ways.
And there's pain all around in these stories. And it's
rare to get a celebration robes. I know, the guy
and Tremaine with Treminwood. Yet right, it's weird to have
(15:22):
one where it feels like you are celebrated. Somebody died
in that case, but here we are celebrating at least
maybe that the system got it. Maybe not one hundred
percent right, but goid it better.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
And look, all of these inmates, these death row inmates
are never getting out of prison. They are all sentenced
to life without the possibility of parole. So the question
is do you go through a thirty six and in
one case last week was it a forty seven year,
forty six year, almost fifty years on death row? You know,
do you go through that process with the appeals and
(15:54):
with all of there's a financial burden when you when
you sentence someone to death significantly than just putting someone
in prison for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And we've talked about this before too.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
When you have family members of the victims who don't
want to see an eye for an eye take place
in the name of their loved one who died, you
know there are other We have learned so much about
the fact that victims don't really have a voice in
a lot of these cases. And it's surprising to me
state by state just how different it is the rules
(16:24):
and what has to be put in place or what
laws need to be there for people to die without
a unanimous decision, what methods yes it is.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
It is fascinating. I am surprised.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
We talk about how the death penalty it's never been
proven to be a deterrent in any way, shape or form,
But my god, I feel like after this year in Florida,
you would think a criminal would say, maybe, if I'm
going to commit a crime, I'm not going to do
it in Florida.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I hadn't thought about that, But you make a point
if you see people actually following through on the death penalty,
and I think a lot of people who are pro
death penalty, will absolutely tell you that it's not. Yeah,
it would be a determined if we actually used it,
So here we are. It's not a deterrent to be
on death row for thirty forty fifty years.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And first of all, people never think they're going to
get caught. That's the number one reason why it's not
a deterrent. But then yes, if you don't have states
following through on the death penalties that they enact, if
you're not enforcing it, then yes, it doesn't seem that scary.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
You make a good point, a financial one as well,
because you hear it initially, welly is it more expensive? Right?
You kill them and it's over. You're not taking care
of him in prison anymore. This is thirty years of trials, appeals,
attorneys taking them back and forth for quarter, all of that.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And you have to have and you have to have
that in place because of the innocent people who have
been placed on death row. You have to give these
inmates every last opportunity to try and reverse course or
prove their innocence in a way that you wouldn't if
someone just had a life sentence, Because it is life
or death and We will of course be following this
case as well as the other of three scheduled for
(17:59):
the rest of the year, but in the meantime, thank
you all for listening to us. I'm a me roboch
alongside TJ.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Hey, folks. It is Thursday, November twentieth, and a man
is scheduled to die in a matter of hours in
Florida by lethal injection. He is making an argument though,
that the execution should be stopped. Why because it might
be too painful for him? And with that, welcome to
(00:22):
this episode of Amy and TJ. Robes. It's he has
some logic here for why he might feel more pain
than anyone else. I don't know if I've heard this
argument necessarily before, and we have covered a bunch of
executions here lately.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, this is the first one that I've heard that
is trying to use a medical condition that he says
will make lethal injection be torturous for him. We're talking
about sixty three year old Richard Barry Randolph, and his
attorneys say, yes, that injecting him with lethal injection will
(00:59):
be tortuous because he has lupus. And lupus one of
the side effects is that you have increased pain sensitivity,
so it causes chronic pain, and it leads to nerve
sensations like heightened nerve sensations basically, so your central nervous
system is basically ramped up.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's painful.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It can be something that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Would be painful to you and I would be extraordinarily
painful to somebody who has lupus.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, So that's the argument this man is making. Don't
know how far that's going to go, but that's certainly interesting. Robes.
As we sit here getting ready for Florida now to
continue a record pace, this will officially put them over.
They have more than if his execution goes through tonight,
they would have more than doubled their previous record for
(01:45):
executions in a year. That's correct, and they're not even
done after this one, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So the previous record was eight executions in the state
of Florida in one calendar year. Tonight's execution is number
seventeen in the state of Florida, and Governor de Santa
announced this week another execution that he's just put on
the books for next month. So there are two more
planned executions in the state of Florida alone. So yes,
it looks like if things all go according to the
(02:12):
plan Governor DeSantis has put in place, there will be
a total of nineteen inmates executed in the state of Florida.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And that's way ahead. Usually we have I don't think
nobody surprised Texas leading the way. I guess Texas, Alabama,
South Carolina are the ones now that have five There
you go. So Florida is way out and way ahead,
and Desantas has been signing death warrens left and right,
it seems here lately now this road, we've covered several
(02:40):
of these, most recently Tremaine Wood who's execution in Oklahoma.
He got commuted and he's life in prison. That was
special circumstances of the case that folks thought were worthy
of looking at. Not the argument being made for this
guy when it comes to the crime itself. No.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
In fact, the only arguments attorneys have made is that
he had a terrible childhood, that he did have an
honorable service as a member of the military, but that
he suffered PTSD, he was addicted to crack cocaine.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So they were.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Trying to kind of basically lay out as woe as me.
I had a terrible lot in life and I made
a really bad decision.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But it has not worked.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The Florida Supreme Court said, sorry, that is not an
argument that you can make to take away a death penalty.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Did I see right? One of the arguments was about
is really a lack of love from his parents or
his mom in particular, but apparently he had loving, adoptive,
correct parents.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
The judge pointed that out.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, like, I don't want to hear about your problem
with your biological parents because you were adopted by a
loving family. And he claimed though, that the mom who
adopted him was an alcoholic and that the father was abusive.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
So you know, he's claiming all of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But I figure anyone who's in a situation like his
probably could point to a terrible childhood.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, so all that's been rejected. I think the Supreme
Court is the only thing that could save him. Now.
Obviously Desanta's could save him tonight. Nobody is expecting that
at all, of course, so that is his last hope.
But this was a pretty This is another one row.
If this crime was thirty eight years ago, Yes, that's
(04:22):
a death row for thirty eight years.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And that is what DeSantis is trying to clear us.
He's saying, this is not justice, this is taking way
too long. We are not we are not following through
on what a jury has chosen as the fate of
these prisoners, and we are just dragging our feet. There
have been lots of reasons why, but he has now
tried to speed up the process and he is certainly
(04:47):
doing so. So, yes, this was a crime. It happened
back in nineteen eighty eight, the murder of a sixty
two year old woman, Minnie Ruth McCollums. She was working
in a convenience store a small town, Florida, East Palatka.
Never heard of it, but he was Richard Barry Randolph
was a former co worker of her, so he knew her.
(05:08):
And he went back to the store to rob the safe,
that was his goal, and she interrupted him. She came
in while he was trying to break into the safe.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, well he's twenty seven at the time and she's
sixty What did you just say, sixty two? Sixty two
year old lady. So this a scuffle ensues you off,
certainly assume he has the advantage in that scuffle. So
this is where it gets awful. He does beat her.
He beats her repeatedly, essentially almost taking breaks from beating
(05:42):
her so he can go continue to try to open
the safe. If you can imagine that horror. He's essentially
going back and forth between robbing and killing her essentially,
and this went on for quite some time. This was
a horrific scene they described.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, prosecutors say it was prolonged and it was brutal,
and they did. They pointed out the fact that he
was taking the time to continue to try and break
into the safe, and then he apparently said something to
authorities alluding to the fact that she was stronger than
he thought, like he was annoyed that she wouldn't die,
so he was strangling her, he was beating her, he
was stabbing her, and then he raped her. So this
(06:20):
is horrific and he doesn't deny it. He admitted this.
He actually showed police where the bloody clothes were that
he stashed away when he was caught a short while later.
So this is not a question of guilt or innocence,
but the brutality of the crime speaks volumes and it
is a tough one to stomach.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And this is one now we keep an eye on
robe to talk about lupus. Is this going to factor in.
We've seen several lethal in jets. I's say scene, but
you know what I mean, I don't mean that literally
during the year, and there are different reports afterwards of
what the witnesses say the inmate, how the inmate reacted
(07:00):
to being getting those drugs. And I think a lot
of people are going to be watching closely tonight to
see if this guy with lupes ends up, I don't know,
having some kind of an adverse reaction.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
In extraordinary pain or not.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
It Also, it was you mentioned you asked how old
she was, and I was looking at how old he was.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I think it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
She was sixty two years old when he brutally painfully
beat her. They were talking. By the way, she was
alive when police found her. I want to point that out.
She was alive, still clinging to life. She spent six
days in the hospital before she finally succumbed to her injuries.
He essentially beat her into a coma, and it was
(07:40):
the brain injuries that ended up. Her brain swelled and
she ended up dying. But she was stabbed in the throat.
I mean, it was as excruciating as you could possibly imagine.
She was sixty two. He is now sixty three. He
got to live one year longer than her. But now
he's upset and complaining about and concerned about and afraid
of feeling extraordinary pain. I don't know how many people
are going to feel very sympathetic when they read the
(08:02):
crime and what he did, and there was zero regard
for her pain, or her suffering or anything that this
sixty two year old woman went through. So now he
is sixty three and he will probably be spared, certainly
given the circumstances of her death, some of the pain
she experienced.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Then we talk about what we talk about just recently
about the end, right, we talked about, you know the
story of these entertainment twins who died together double suicide,
assisted suicide, and we were talking about in prison, if
you gave people the option to die and to die
pain painlessly, do you think people in prison with long
(08:45):
sentences would take it? And you and I I think
both said no, because in the end, people want to live.
And so here he is prison, thirty eight years death row.
This is the end, and he's fighting, fighting as hard
as he can, coming up with anything he can because
he wants to live. I'm always fascinated we all have
(09:07):
this thing. It's inherent in us. It's just instinct to
want to live, to want to survive. So we're not
surprised to see any of this. He's trying everything he
can to stay alive, no hope of getting out. He's
not trying to, you know, get his conviction overturned. He
just wants to live. I think that is it's always
fascinating about these stories.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It is fascinating. I absolutely agree with you, and you
see it every time. Only one execution that I can
remember from this year, and we have covered most of
them where we had an inmate who said, yep, go
ahead kill me.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
He skipped all the guy on in Florida.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We don't want any more appeals, don't care about trying
to get the Supreme Court to take a look at
my case.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Wasn't he also the one where they asked any last
words and his response was simply no, And that was it.
So yes, that is the only one.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
He is the exception.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
You are right.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Most most in maids on death row, regardless of the
quality of their life, it's still a life, and people
there's a human instinct to live, to survive, regardless of
your circumstances, and that is what we have seen time
and time again. Now when we come back, there is
an interesting part of this case. He and this is
very rare. There was not a unanimous decision for the
(10:21):
death penalty. In fact, when you hear what the spread
was among the jury, it does raise some eyebrows and
certainly has raised some questions as to whether.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Or not that should be allowed.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And continuing our coverage of Florida's seventeenth execution of the year,
happening tonight, sixty three year old Richard Barry Randolph will
die by lethal injection. He has made complaints and appeals
(10:54):
to anyone who will listen to try and stay his
execution or at least change the method of his execution.
He has lupus, and he says that this is going
to be a torturous death because of his condition, his
nerve endings, his nervous system is already experiences more pain
than most people. So to go through a lethal injection
while suffering lupus, his attorneys had argued, was cruel and unusual.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
But that has fallen on deaf ears.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And how did the judge put it? He really said, really,
now I'm going to bring this up now, He.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Said, You've had lupus for quite some time. You're just
now bringing this up. You had years to try and
change the method of execution, and you didn't. You chose
to do it in the eleventh hour, which makes him
feel like this is just an attempt to stay an
execution rather than actually mitigate pain.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So that is what the judge said. But there was
something really.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Interesting that I have learned so much as we've been
covering these executions. But in Randolph's jury, the death sentence,
there was a vote, right the jury votes. In most states,
you have to have a unanimous decision by a jury
to vote for the death penalty, and in some cases
the judge can intervene. But his jury voted eight to four,
(12:06):
and even the trial court at the time acknowledged that
that narrow margin, they said, reflected significant disagreement about what
the appropriate punishment was. They also pointed out that this
jury only heard from one mitigation witness when there should
have been more so they could have had a better
clearer picture. They say, the jury didn't get to hear
about his trouble childhood. They didn't get to hear about
(12:28):
his crack addiction, or about his military service and all
the good that he did. So there was a lot
of frustration about that. Now listen to this, I didn't
realize this. The Florida Supreme Court then changed this law
and said death sentences have to be unanimous, and then
they gave it. It had to happen in cases after
(12:48):
two thousand and four, there was some sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So he missed out on that because it happened to early.
And then just two.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Years ago in twenty twenty three, the Florida State Leasure
just wiped it all clean and said, you know what,
you can have a non unanimous death sentence. Now they
put it back to where it was, and so there
have been other instances where you have seen that eight
to four split.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That is tough. Well, I don't think it's the way
you talk. It's a tough, tough challenge for some to
accept state sanctioned killings, right. I get it, it's a
part of our system. But some people say these are monsters.
Sometimes they need to be I find then others argue
(13:32):
I'm not having the argument about it being deterrent. I'm
just saying, as a human being, it's uncomfortable the idea
of us going through ceremony of killing somebody. So it
was this guy. I still think this is a bigger
part of a problem. For me, we've seen too many
people exonerated when we're talking about somebody's life. We can't
(13:56):
have eight to four decisions. We can't have it that
kind of split. We need to be more sure than that.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Agreed, and that is the split.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
If it had been nine or sorry, if it had
been uh, what would have been been too?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I'm not a saying eleven one still not eight.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Four is what it is in the state of Florida
now since they put it back in place. Guess what
the only other state is that allows a non unanimous
death sentence to stand.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Alabama.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Now they have a ten to two split, so they
say it has to be it has to be higher.
It's higher the threshold hire ten to two. That's to me,
I was surprised eight to four. I had no idea
that it could be that wide of a margin and
still go through.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We would never accept that margin when it comes to
guilt or innocence. Now, so wide life or death. That's
that's bizarre. It's strange. Yes, we have learned so much
about the death penalty. We've learned a lot about cases
mistakes would have made and how you need to sometimes
dig a little deeper in a lot of these stories
and not just read the headlines and you understand and
can have Now even you don't have to have sympathy,
(15:01):
but you can have at least some kind of compassion
and sometimes not sympathy but empathy because you hear so
much of what families are going through on both sides
is you can relate to in a lot of ways.
And there's pain all around in these stories. And it's
rare to get a celebration robes. I know, the guy
and Tremaine with Treminwood. Yet right, it's weird to have
(15:22):
one where it feels like you are celebrated. Somebody died
in that case, but here we are celebrating at least
maybe that the system got it. Maybe not one hundred
percent right, but goid it better.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
And look, all of these inmates, these death row inmates
are never getting out of prison. They are all sentenced
to life without the possibility of parole. So the question
is do you go through a thirty six and in
one case last week was it a forty seven year,
forty six year, almost fifty years on death row? You know,
do you go through that process with the appeals and
(15:54):
with all of there's a financial burden when you when
you sentence someone to death significantly than just putting someone
in prison for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And we've talked about this before too.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
When you have family members of the victims who don't
want to see an eye for an eye take place
in the name of their loved one who died, you
know there are other We have learned so much about
the fact that victims don't really have a voice in
a lot of these cases. And it's surprising to me
state by state just how different it is the rules
(16:24):
and what has to be put in place or what
laws need to be there for people to die without
a unanimous decision, what methods yes it is.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
It is fascinating. I am surprised.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
We talk about how the death penalty it's never been
proven to be a deterrent in any way, shape or form,
But my god, I feel like after this year in Florida,
you would think a criminal would say, maybe, if I'm
going to commit a crime, I'm not going to do
it in Florida.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I hadn't thought about that, But you make a point
if you see people actually following through on the death penalty,
and I think a lot of people who are pro
death penalty, will absolutely tell you that it's not. Yeah,
it would be a determined if we actually used it,
So here we are. It's not a deterrent to be
on death row for thirty forty fifty years.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And first of all, people never think they're going to
get caught. That's the number one reason why it's not
a deterrent. But then yes, if you don't have states
following through on the death penalties that they enact, if
you're not enforcing it, then yes, it doesn't seem that scary.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
You make a good point, a financial one as well,
because you hear it initially, welly is it more expensive? Right?
You kill them and it's over. You're not taking care
of him in prison anymore. This is thirty years of trials, appeals,
attorneys taking them back and forth for quarter, all of that.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And you have to have and you have to have
that in place because of the innocent people who have
been placed on death row. You have to give these
inmates every last opportunity to try and reverse course or
prove their innocence in a way that you wouldn't if
someone just had a life sentence, Because it is life
or death and We will of course be following this
case as well as the other of three scheduled for
(17:59):
the rest of the year, but in the meantime, thank
you all for listening to us. I'm a me roboch
alongside TJ.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Robach
T.J. Holmes
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