May 15, 2025 • 47 mins
Mikal Mahdi was just 21 years old when he began a crime spree that spanned four states and included two murders.
One of the victims was James Myers, a 56-year-old police captain with the Orangeburg Public Safety Department in South Carolina.
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the crimes that led to Mahdi’s death sentence— and how the firing squad, once viewed as a more humane alternative to other execution methods, didn’t go as planned.
Did all three shooters miss the mark on Mikal Mahdi— or was the "mark" misplaced?
Transcript Highlights
00:02.40 Introduction
01:13.17 A botched execution
05:18.91 Mikal Mahdi killed South Carolina Public Safety Officer James Myers in 2004
10:08.71 Mikal Mahdi ended writhing in pain while strapped to a chair
14:40.64 French Guillotine - used as a deterrent
19:55.79 Electrocution of Ted Bundy
25:05.72 Prison Employees volunteer to carry out execution
30:15.15 Three shooters, two bullet holes, not one heart hit
35:10.71 Static Target from 5 yards away
39:48.66 Was this a "botched execution"?
45:02.64 Was the "marker" misplaced?
47:02.47 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody Dinars, but Joseph's gotten more. If given the task,
could we do it. There's so many people out there
that say that they would do it, but yet there's
a very small and I mean very small percentage of
(00:21):
people that have actually ever done it. What I'm talking
about is, let's see what are some of the euphemistic
terms pulling switch, pressing the button, or in our case today,
(00:42):
pulling the trigger. Today we're going to talk about an
execution that recently took place in the state of South Carolina. Now,
Brother Dave and I have talked about executions in the past,
but this one is of particular interest me. So let's
(01:04):
explore what happens in what failed happened in what summer
calling a watched execution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is body bags fifteen feet, Dave, that's all that separates
the end of a muzzle from a static target strapped
(01:29):
to a chair. Fifteen feet. Let's see, that's five yards.
Being an old high school football player, I always measure
things in yards because I can visualize that from being
on a playing field. So it's weird, I think for
many people, particularly those that deal in the metric system
(01:50):
on a regular basis. But that's a conversation for another day.
But for me, you know, I'm thinking five yards away,
that's it's not very far. And to be handed a
weapon and be told that at the other end, only
a five yard shot with a long barreled weapon that
(02:14):
is rifled hit this target. And boy, did things take
a bad turn.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We know, South Carolina, we're dealing with the execution of
Mikel Maddy. This is a man who actually wrote in
a letter for his attorneys to share, I'm guilty as hell.
What I've done is irredeemable. That is directly from the
subject of today. Mikel Mody was on a crime spree.
(02:46):
He's twenty one years old. He starts off in Virginia.
He ends up in North Carolina where he steals a
vehicle and he actually kills a clerk. He then heads
down to South Carolina where he tries to use a
credit card to get gas in his vehicle and he
(03:06):
spends like forty five minutes trying to do it and
it's not working because the credit card is not any good. Well,
the clerk calls cops. Hey, man, there's a guy out
here trying to get some gas and whatever. And so
they show up and there's a bit of a you know,
they're they're after this guy, Mikel Maddy ends up at
a farm area, not like a corn farm or you know,
(03:27):
cotton or whatever, but farmland that had been purchased by
a couple.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
As they're piece of heaven on earth.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, you know, beautiful area, a little pond and things,
and there's this shed that they had built on this property.
Was it was a big deal for them because they
don't even the couple won't even married. Fifteen months show
fifteen months and I'm thinking this is just too cool
for school. And they get married in front of the
shed that they had built, and that's where Michel Maddy
(03:57):
ran into the actual victim of this case, Jim Myers,
a fifty six year old officer of the law. Yeah,
Mikel Maddy shot him at least eight times, probably more
and then poured diesel fuel over his body and set
him on fire. That is what mcelmody admitted to, and
(04:21):
that's why he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So yeah, I found this interesting because you know, most
of the time you have to you know, if you've
got somebody involved in something like this, the fact that
he admitted to it. You, I think that many people believe,
and wrongly believe that for some reason, you're going to
(04:46):
be shown a level of mercy. Maybe he was thinking
about that, you know, by the courts, that maybe he'd
only be looking at potentially life in prison or something.
But I got to tell you, this guy is police officer,
and yeah, he's off duty. Not just a police officer.
He's a captain and had had a long career. You know,
(05:08):
he's like in his mid fifties, old Joe. Yeah, and
can you imagine you've lived this life. You've been away
from your family at night, working third watch, and I'm
just thinking about this guy's life. You know now looking back,
you know he's worked time away from his family. He's
(05:29):
probably missed ball games and dance recitals and everything else
that comes along that we always talk about. And then
you get to this kind of mucolic place where just
over the horizon you can see that you're finally going
to be able to hang up your badge and celebrate
(05:54):
and you found love and maybe even peace. And then
this descends upon you, out of all people in the world,
that this perpetrator could have shown up on the doorstep
of it's this guy, and this is arguably a just
an absolute brutal example of overkill of an individual. Why
(06:16):
would you feel compelled to do this? And you there's
an interesting point that you brought up, Dave. You use
the term frenzy with this individual, that he's hill his
sole focus is to get from point A to point B.
And you really wonder because so many people, and you know,
(06:37):
I hate the why question. I think more importantly, what
was his end game? Was he just going to, you know,
descend upon us like the Angel of Death or the
Black Plague and wipe out as many people as he could?
Where are you going to go at that point in time?
I'm always fascinated in a general sort of way about
(06:57):
these people that do this sort of thing. It's always
amazing to me. And can I back up just for
a second. You had mentioned North Carolina with this clerk,
and again the perpetrator in this case was not put
to death or had not been sentenced to be executed
(07:20):
regarding the event in South in North Carolina. But I
have kids that I teach, Okay, that work in convenience
stores and for my money, for my money. It is
one of the most dangerous jobs aside from like food delivery,
(07:44):
this sort of thing where you don't know who's going
to be walking in the door. And you know, police
officers actually refer to convenience stores many times as stopping robs.
That's what they'll refer to it, because they're easy targets,
and it is, you know, and there's so many of
these cases out there where convenience store workers have been killed.
(08:06):
I don't know, it's not a it's not a job
I would take per se. I guess you've got a
lot of time to study. You know, you can hang
out behind the counter and study, but you Dave, you
never know what's going to walk through the door.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's shocking to me as well, Joe, that I look
at convence I get people who work, the people who
actually punch a time clock working at a convenience store
or whatever they have. I just respect them so much,
I really do, especially when they're going to school, because
you know, I had to do that too when I
went to school, I had to work. And those who
(08:40):
punch a time clock and are they're just doing what
they have to do to get by, to get to
the next level. I just think it's a great example,
and too often we dismiss it, we throw that off
of the side. But it's like those jobs you do,
like working at a convenience store as a clerk, regardless
of the danger, it is a step to someplace else.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It's not the end all, you.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Know, it's not where you plan on being when you're
in college at twenty to be in that same place
twenty years from now. It's a job that has done
to get you to the next stop in your life.
And that's when I look at this guy. He's only
twenty one when he commits this crime, these crimes plural.
I don't know what he was doing, Joe. I don't
know what his plan was when he woke up July fourteenth,
(09:24):
two thousand and four. We're talking about, you know, in
this show about a botched execution, the victim is not
the victim. You know, technically he is in this story,
but I couldn't write it, Joe. I could not put
a victim next to this man's name. He was a
victimizer who was paying his debt to society, which had
(09:45):
been your life. Got to give it up. And anyway,
I don't know what he.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Was doing, what he left in his wake, though, or
two people that are stacious, that are they're neither one
of these individuals were you know, living somewhere in some palace. Okay,
they don't. They've given everything that they can give. I mean,
they both wind up, you know, giving their lives, you know,
(10:13):
to the appetite of this monster. But I can tell
you this, the monster that all the way back in
the early two thousands, that committed both of these crimes,
he had a day of reckoning, in a day where
(10:33):
his life ended with a parent awareness of his death,
writhing in pain while strapped to a chair. There was
(10:58):
a there's a running joke in in my family. I
think it was my daughter that you know, this term was,
you know, kind of used a lot when she was
a young teenager, and it kind of got adopted by
our family. And if one of us screwed up something LEXI,
(11:19):
my daughter would say, way to go, dad, you're ruining
it for everybody. And and you know, and we would
we would say that to one another all the way around.
And that's that's it's a comical remark. It's generally said
in jest and that sort of thing. But Dave. What
(11:40):
happened in that execution chamber is literally an example I think,
at least as far as capital punishment is concerned of
individuals ruining it for everybody. Uh, let's you know the thing.
The thing that's so distasteful I think for a lot
(12:02):
of people is someone has to stand up and you know,
like I mentioned earlier, you know, flip the lever, push
the button, pulled the trigger, and we have always, i think,
try to and the execution process has kind of evolved
(12:24):
in our country. Capital punishment has where individuals are seeking
to do it as humanly as they possibly can. You know.
And years ago, you know, you had judicial hangings and yeah,
there were botched hangings, but the line share of the
hangings that occurred were successful. Okay, and I'm talking about
(12:45):
on the first drop. But you can't imagine. I think
that a lot of people can't imagine seeing someone that
is suspended in the air by their neck and they're
flipping around, and that for many people, that's very distasteful.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Can I ask you something very quickly? Yeah? Sure, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
When I was a child, I didn't know when you
hang that the goal of hanging somebody was you know,
to snap their neck as they fell. I thought that
it was to strangle them. I really did. I thought
like they put the noose on and pretty much just
put their hands tied behind their back, pulled them up
until they died from you know, their neck being strangled,
(13:24):
you know, by the rope. I didn't know that it
was a mathematical thing where they had you know, took
the weight, height and everything else into consideration when they
determined where where the news needed to be fashioned and
how and all that so that when that individual dropped,
the neck would snap and it would be very quick.
I didn't know that, Yeah, it don't happen that way,
(13:45):
but I didn't know that that.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Was the whole point. And it had been literally perfected
over a period of time where there was a formula
that was applied to this. But you know, if you
go back to Noah, my son had he said, if y'all,
if y'all, I urge you to sit down and watch
(14:10):
the movie Napoleon with me and the thing with Joaquin
Phoenix that came out. I thought it was pretty good.
It's beautifully filmed, and you watch this thing being played out.
And during that period of time they had developed a guillotine,
and the guillotine was regarded as like the perfect killing machine.
The French were even using it. I think there's a
(14:33):
wood carving or a lithograph. I can't remember what it
is of the last guillotining that took place in France.
I think it was in the nineteen twenties, and it's
like looking over over a wall, and these were spectacles,
you know, they as time went by, they had tried
to prevent the public from actually seeing it, and you know,
(14:55):
they viewed it back then as I think a lot
of the ancestors did. As it's not just getting rid
of the individual and making them punished for this or
punishing them for what they've done their acts, but it
was also a matter of deterrence because if it happens
in a vacuum, you're you know, people don't really believe
(15:19):
that it happened, or they don't see it. It doesn't
like ingrain in their memory, and of course that memory
is passed on to the rest of the family. You know,
if you have a family that is represented by one individual,
that one individual is going to go back to their
family and say, you're not going to believe what I
just saw and this is a price that is paid.
(15:40):
I watched it. I watched them walk them out, I
watch them strap them to a pole or you know,
make them kneel before guillotine or whatever the case might be.
And that information has passed on. So even if there
were not people from that person's family present to witness this,
that one individual goes back set forth like a little
(16:01):
sailing ship, just you know, setting out this information. Individual saying, Man,
it ain't worth whatever it is that you want to
do to lose your life over this was horrific. We've
lost that. That doesn't exist anymore. That's that's why, that's
kind of why capital punishment is not truly in its
pure sense, not an effective deterrent, because you know, they
(16:22):
go into a blockhouse.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, when did they stop doing it in public? Joe?
I mean? And why?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Well, in the early nineteen hundreds, early twentieth century, you
had individuals that I think up until the nineteen early
nineteen hundreds, you had public executions by hanging. I don't
know much about firing squads in the US. I know
that they did exist, but there was something that took
(16:49):
place in the American mind where, yeah, we knew that
we were going to send people away to prisons. We
knew that they were there, but it was too I
don't know if it was vic Torrian sensibilities or Edwardian
sensibilities that you know that changed the mindset of people
where they did not want to observe the horror of it.
(17:11):
And let's face it, early nineteen hundreds were brutal. You
think about World War One and how brutal it was.
People had had enough death. They didn't want to see
it now. They didn't want monsters walking on the street either,
and so I think that it was at that point
in time where they you know, they kind of covered,
(17:32):
you know, concealed this look. The first place I ever
did autopsies Dave on a regular basis was inside of
a jail. The morgue was actually inside the parish jail.
And guess what sat on the site of literally right
where the morgue was prior to the morgue being there,
the parish gallows. So even at a county level back then,
(17:54):
at parish's the same as counties, there were gallows there.
And I think that they had done a public execution.
I think the last one. My history is getting jumbled
but I think it's like in the eighteen seventies or something,
so it's always been kind of part and parcel of
what happens here in our judicial system. People don't agree
(18:15):
with it, and that's okay not to agree with it.
I have my questions as well, But if you're going
to do it, if you're going to do it, there
is a level of exactitude that has to be in
place with your process. Who's going to handle the weapons,
how this thing is orchestrated. Because those that want to
(18:40):
make execution more efficient and humane, all it takes is
for one screw up and everybody else is going to
have to pay the price relative to this, and then
you're going to go searching for another methodology. We've come
through so many now, I mean, let's just think about it.
California used to have gas chamber. That doesn't exist anymore.
(19:01):
Cruel and unusual, I got admit it's it's it's kind
of harsh, all right. You think about the gallows, and
that's not something that we've seen. One of the things
that people thought was going to answer this question make
it humane. Is is actually something that that Thomas Edison
(19:25):
had a hand in and that's the creation of the
electric chair. We used it for years and years, but
there are all these horrible mishaps that occurred along the
way where it was what they were using was not
necessarily sufficient to the need. And if you want to
see the brutality of what happens with electrocution as horrible
(19:48):
as Ted Bundy was, go look at his at his
postmortem images and you'll see you'll see how scored his
his his scalp is, you know. And there are all
of these stories, some of them might be a bit apocryphal,
but there are all these stories about people catching fire.
I'm not saying that the capital punishment is wrong. I'm
(20:10):
just saying the problem is is that you don't know
how any one event is going to direct how the
rest of the country is going to go. We get
it away from the electric chair and suddenly they think
that we've got the perfect thing. We're going to use
lethal injection. Well, how are you going to facilitate this
(20:33):
if you can't get the drugs and you have to
have the right you have to have the right combination
of drugs, and you've got drug companies that won't sell
you the drugs, and then there's horror stories with that
and people can't bear watching it. So isn't it funny?
How now we've kind of come full circle back to
(20:54):
a methodology that I know we've covered at least to
one other case far. We've come full circle back to
methodology involving firearms where an individual is tied anchored to
a fixed object, in this case in South Carolina chair
and you literally have a firing squad where you know
(21:18):
they're going to send lead core projectiles down range to
pierce your body. Unfortunately, the problem is is that some
people apparently can't shoot straight. Three to eight Winchester. It
(21:46):
is arguably one of the most storied rounds of ammunition
in American history. It's existed, the thirty caliber rifle round
has existed forever and ever. I've mentioned this before, but
it bears, you know, repeating that most of the stuff
(22:08):
that we use in the civilian world, as far as
firearms go, it evolved out of the utility that the
military had. And we've got several permutations of the thirty
caliber round or approximately thirty caliber that go all the
way back to I think probably the most significant it's
(22:29):
probably thirty odd to six that was used, and there's
been several iterations along the way, and we landed on
three oh eight. Again that designation for people that don't
understand calibers, which can be it can be confusing. This
is the old British system three oh eight. It essentially
(22:50):
measures out the circumference of the round. That is, how
big around is this particular round. So if you think
about it, it's zero point three eight inches and that
(23:11):
round in particular is still in use today around the world,
even in our military. Three oh eight. You know, you
think about the old M fourteen platform, which you know
still we use a variant of M fourteen in the
military because many special ops personnel prefer this round over
(23:35):
five point five six or the two two three caliber
because it's more robust. It really packs a wallop. But
this is where South Carolina landed. They landed on three
oh eight Winchester. And the way their executions are set up,
this is strictly a voluntary program where if you're part
(24:00):
of the correctional system, and I don't mean as an inmate,
but I mean as an employee. Apparently they have and
they haven't really explained it. They keep some of the
stuff veiled you have three volunteers that step up and
they become the executioners. And so they've gone they went
a long way to kind of perfect I guess, or
(24:26):
try to account for any kind of problems that might
arise in an execution. Built out or redesigned what's referred
to as the death house. They've sent out one photo
of this thing, and it is actually the chair that
you can see that the individuals are strapped to. And
(24:46):
then I guess it's kind of hearkening back to the past.
They brought in their electric chair and there's a picture
of it. So you've got the firing squad chair there
that's facing I would assume towards the wall, because if
you look behind a veil, you can see what appears
to be clay stacked up there or maybe sandbags that's
(25:06):
behind a black curtain, and then you've got the electric
chair that's literally you're staring at. So that's the image
that they've put out and it's a very tight space.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's that's one of the things about this that when
this round, if people out there have not heard a
three h eight round being discharged, this thing would rattle
your cage. If you've got three of them going off.
Just the reverberation of the sound in this environment. It's
not like firing off a twenty two caliber, which is
(25:40):
very small, it would really get your attention. But this
is a very confined space. And I'm really amazed by this.
I'm fascinated by this because, you know, you think about
the old idea of a of a firing squad. I
think about the Kubrick movie Pass a Glory with Kirk
(26:00):
Douglas and they marched the guys out. They're strapped to
a post, they're blindfolded, and you've got a whole line
of soldiers, one line kneeling in the front, the other
standing in the back, and they're firing at it. Like
in this thing, it looks like they're firing at a distance.
They weren't only talking about fifteen feet five yards, man.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's a very very small range of fire, Joe. And
the reason we're actually spending time on it today is
because even though it is only five yards fifteen feet,
there was a problem with this execution.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
There was a problem.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Now did they have I I'm going to ask you
because I'm curious. I thought that when they an execution
was done by firing squad, that several people were dummies
or you know, they were firing blanks pretty much, that
you had say ten people, of which two or three
you know, had both live action and the rest were not.
(26:59):
And so that no, but he knew exactly who did
the killing, because that seems to.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Be consider Apparently that's not the way South Carolina is
doing this, and these people have practiced as well.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I would think, so, Joe, and fifteen feet is from
you know nothing. I mean, that's not a first down
in football.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
This is a very short distance. It's nothing. You know,
you're not cracking off a shot from a thousand yards here.
And what's really interesting, Dave, is that, you know I
mentioned the three h eight Winchester A round. This is
fired through a rifled barrel. Okay, now they don't say
whether or not the rifles are scoped. I would think
(27:39):
personally that having at a range of five yards, which
is just very elemental, I think that a scope would
probably impede your ability to fire accurately at that short
of a distance. You'd be much better off with iron sights.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're dealing with experts, We're not dealing with people who
are trying to pass their class to get a certification
to viral weapon.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah. I don't know what the qualification is other than
being a volunteer with a correction system. And you know,
I've met some people that work within the correction system
and they are many times those individuals are the most
a few, not all, but they've been the most ardent,
anti capital punished people that you come around. Because when
(28:32):
you live in an environment with people day in and
day out, you know, it really humanizes them. It's easy
for us on the outside to say, yeah, well we
need to execute this guy. We need to put him away,
and he never should breathe any more free air. A
matter of fact, he shouldn't breathe any air at all.
We're going to end his life. But they've chosen or
(28:56):
have volunteers that have come up out of this Corrections officers. Uh,
tough job, one of the most toughest, one of the
toughest jobs that you can have, because you're going into
a lockdown situation every single day. I would suffocate. There
is no way I could do that job. But because
your corrections officer does not make you an expert with
(29:17):
a weapon. You know, I'm thinking you know in the
state of the state of South Carolina. Uh. One place
that actually produces some of the greatest marksmen in the
world is right down the road in Paris Island, South Carolina.
The United States Marine Corps depot down there, Paris Island,
(29:38):
you know, Uh, and you could. I'm thinking that probably
somebody in recruit training, even when they get toward the
end of it, Uh, they would they would fare much
better under these circumstances as far as accuracy goes. I
don't know how much. I don't know how much train up,
you know, these corrections officers have had, did somebody get nervous?
(29:59):
But the the big thing here, Dave, is that what
we're being told is that out of three shooters, you've
only got two defects or bullet holes in the body.
And I don't see how in the world you could
have missed, which is I think one of the big questions.
(30:23):
And not only miss but even the two that entered
the body were not center mass shots that took out
the heart. Which is their rationale in this particular case,
is that if you can go in in these rounds,
the three oh eight, it's called a what was it
called again, it's an urban. This particular type of mo
(30:46):
is a it's like an urban ammunition, ground tap urban ammunition.
And just so we understand what happens when that round
strikes dave not to be it's not a through and
through round. You're not looking. It's not like what you
would hunt deer with. Necessarily, you're talking about something that
(31:09):
because they're talking about there's an urban designation on this.
The idea is that this is like a police sniper
around that goes in. The projectile actually fragments upon impact
and it sends these little sharps or the body. And
what happens is if you're aiming center mass of the heart.
(31:29):
So if everybody will find their sternum and move just slightly,
it's not all the way over as far as you
can go on the left side of the body. Just
find your sternum, that flat bone right in the center
of your chest. Move over about an inch and you're
right on top of your heart. Okay, it's inferior to
(31:50):
where your sternum is, the sternoclovicular notch up there. Just
go down about two or three inches and then over
to the left slightly and you're right on target. They
missed they missed that area with a rifle round.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
From five yards away, Joe fifteen feet. The only other
person with any kind of marksmen experience that could miss
that shot would be Lee Harvey Oswald. I mean, that's
about it. Everybody else is going to hit something. But
in this case, we have three shooters or three bullets
(32:26):
coming towards the subject, and you only have two that
they can say definitively entered. Two of the bullets entered
this man's body, and they did not enter in the heart.
Did they not draw an exit the circle around it?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
You know? Mark?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, here's one of the things that we're hearing. There's
actually a marker that is placed on the body. And
again they haven't demonstrated to us in the public what
this marker looks like. Okay, I've seen, I've seen, you know,
it's generally portrayed. Well, it's portrayed. Actually, I think I've
seen newsreels with this from World War Two where they're
(33:08):
executing war crimes people. Most of those were executed by
by hanging, but there are some and you'll see there's
like a white patch of cloth that is pinned approximating
the heart. Okay, you know, you know where it is,
(33:29):
and there's actually a physician there. This is the thing
about it. You've got a physician there that has a stethoscope.
My question is is the is the physician involved in
placement of the patch? And I know that some people
might say, well, that would violate the hipocratic oath. You know, well,
(33:52):
I don't think that it would. As a matter of fact,
I think it's an extension of mercy because if you
know that this is going to happen, there's nothing you
can do about it. So if you zero in on
that area, you have a physician or nurse that stand
there with the stethoscope, they can actually appreciate and locate
the exact location of the heart and they say, okay, guys,
(34:13):
put the patch right here. All right, no question about
it at this point in time. But there has been
comment There have been comments made that would indicate that
the patch was misplaced. But even even if it is misplaced, two,
I would assume to the left, like further away from
(34:36):
the heart, then you're still even in that location. I
can't imagine out of the three shooters you're gonna you're
gonna have what's referred to as a flyer and if
you ever go to the range, and particularly with handguns,
people will have flyers every now and then, and that
means that when you fire, you have a bullet or
(34:58):
projectile that completely misses the target. You rarely see that
at a range of five yards. I know in law enforcement,
I qualified twice a year with a handgun and five yards.
I think now we have a three yard range as well.
But five yards is really nothing. You know, if you're
shooting center mass, which are taught to do center mass
(35:23):
at a static target. This guy's static. He ain't moving anywhere, okay,
and so you have a weapon that is meant to
hit the target at long range. It's high velocity. I'm
failing to understand what happened. What's fascinating about this day
(35:47):
is that the corner for this particular county and this happens.
I've been involved in autopsies involving executed individuals. The corner
in this particular county is assigned to request the examination
of the dead. This is a homicide, okay, there's no
(36:09):
other way. You know, you and I have spent a
lot of time recently talking about manner and cause of death.
There's no other way you can classify this. Okay, this
is a homicide. Even though it's state sanctioned, this is
a homicide. So in most states, if you have a
violent homicide like this, it's required that you do an autopsy.
And there's another reason you need to do it on
(36:31):
somebody that is dying at the hands of state. It's
going to be thorough. It's the most thorough autopsy you've
ever seen. I mean things places in the body are
dissected that we would not normally do. It takes a
long time to conduct one of these autopsies. But apparently
(36:53):
the pathologists that did the autopsy on this case opined
that two of the rounds entered the body at the
same spot. Okay, now, I've seen this happen by an
individual firing at close range with a handgun and they
(37:15):
score two hits in the same defect. But and it's
pretty you can still delineate it. Sometimes they're not perfectly
matched up. But you've got a physician that's saying pathologists
that's saying that none, no, no, we've got two rounds
that enter the same location, and we've got a second one,
(37:37):
you know, that is off by itself. The problem is
is that they don't go into a lot of scriptors
as to what organ systems were impacted. I can only
assume that perhaps the lung, the left lung, and it
has been implied at least that the heart was clipped
(37:59):
in some way by one of these rounds, but it
was not to the point where death was instantaneous, because
what the report is is that as soon as the
order was given for the squad to fire simultaneously. Witnesses
stated that this guy being executed screamed out simultaneously, as
(38:24):
he's not screaming out in pain at that moment time,
he is screaming out okay, and he is shot. Well
about forty seconds later, they heard him moan. Okay, most
of the time with an execution where somebody has shot
(38:45):
center mass into the heart, they're not going to make
another move. They're dead. That's the efficiency of firing squads. Okay,
that's not what happened. Forty seconds later they heard him moan,
and approximate a total of seventy seconds after the actual shooting,
he's heard to kind of whimper again and then dies.
(39:09):
That's not what you want in an execution, okay, you
want this thing to be sudden and swift and merciful.
And I know people are saying, well, he doesn't deserve mercy.
I understand that. But the argument here is the following.
If a group of people screw this up, then you're
(39:32):
going to be out walking around the weeds looking for
another means of execution. I mean, what we're going to do.
We're going back to the guillotine now, you know, because
this case, Dave, and there's already been a lawsuit filed,
and we'll talk about that in just a second, this
case from now on regarding capital punishment is going to
(39:53):
be cited. Okay, It'll be cited as being cruel and unusual,
all right. So it's the idea, it's the idea of
these individuals not doing their job effectively that's problematic. The
family retained the services of a fellow that I've personally met,
(40:14):
that I've known. Matter of fact, he was I think
he was. He was actually in to become the chief
medical Examiner in Atlanta. That's how I met him, and
I was working there. His name's Jonathan Arden, and he
was he was a medical examiner with the Office of
Chief Medical Examiner in New York. I think he was
(40:36):
in Washington, d C. As well, two major offices. And
this guy is really he's really sharp, hell of a
nice guy and very proficient at what he does. But
you know, Dave, he he actually stated he got to
review all of these materials. And the big thing about
(40:58):
it is this, he said that there were no X
rays done, The detail in the autopsy with the wound
tracks was not to his way of thinking, was not
sufficiently described, and they didn't examine the clothing. Now, you
(41:18):
don't examine the clothing on a gunfire related death. You're
going to skew your data. Okay, there's no mention of it.
According to doctor Art.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
What's the purpose for doing the clothing?
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Well, okay, let's think. Let's just think about it this way.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
If you've got if you've got somebody wearing a scrub top,
you know, like many prisoners do you know, having an
orange orange jumpsuits or scrubtops or whatever, that clothing from
a forensic standpoint, is like another layer of skin. Okay, So,
(41:56):
and this could apply to knife wounds as well. But
when you you fire three through it, it will be
a another indicator of point of impact relative to a round.
And you haven't examined the clothing. I mean, that's like
forensic pathology one O one. You know, before you actually
(42:16):
ever strip the body down, you're going to take detailed
photographs of everything that the person was wearing while they're
still wearing it, okay, and you to try to orient everything.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
And then you said, no X rays, why not take
you're doing an autopsy, why not do X rays?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I don't understand that. And here's here's another thing that
comes in with the three O eight round. What did
I say earlier? And you had actually reminded me of this.
This is not like my revelation here you actually had
had It's a fragmented round. And you know the beauty
of fragmented rounds that are demonstrated on X ray. It's
(42:58):
it's shocking, you know when you this, because when you
open up a body, all right, just so folks understand,
when you open up a body and it's been greatly traumatized,
you're going to see a mass of hemorrhage, pulled blood,
ripped tissue, all those sorts of things. X rays cut
through all of that. You don't see that mass hemorrhage.
(43:22):
What you see, particularly with a fragmented round, which is
the intention of this urban round, that you will see
a little lead storm, okay, and it will be if
the bullet acts like it does not all bullets. It's
just like Holow points. All Holow points don't necessarily deploy, okay.
Sometimes they'll just pass right through the body. The hope
(43:44):
is that it will deploy and it doesn't exit out
and harm somebody else. That's the point of the sniper round.
So if you shoot somebody and they're in a window
and they're holding hostages, you want the round to wind
up in their body and not penetrate the body, but
you want to kill them so that you know the
hostages get hurt. It doesn't pass through another wall and
into another home or somebody bystander or something like that.
(44:08):
The extra here is mind blowing or the absence of it,
and Arden makes reference to that. He also makes reference
to the idea that out of all of his years
of doing autopsies, and I can tell you his count
is huge, all right, he has. It's such a rare
occurrence that you would have two rounds go through the
(44:32):
same defect in the body. You know, it's a real
head scratcher, you know, as far as I guess, as
far as doctor Arden is going.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
To ask you something that Joe, yeah, man, if there
are two again marksmen, all three are, I'm going to
assume they are marksmen, that these are good shots, even
though it is only five yards away. I'm going to
assume they've done their homework and these three cats are
we don't worry about them hitting the target. But to
(45:00):
have two bullets go into the same track, that means
that all three of them missed the mark, and that
two of them missed the mark in the exact same spot.
I would buy it more if they were in the
right spot, that there were two going in there.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
That would make a whole lot more sense to me
than missing.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yeah, we come back to this idea of placement of
the marker. Was the marker misplaced and they happened to
hit the same spot through the marker, and because of
the anatomical disorientation here, you know, you you happen to
(45:41):
have two really good shots that were off target. And
that's you know, that's that's hugely problematic here, because you
want to be able to think at the end of
the day that people that do research on these sorts
of things as gruesome as it is, but it is
it's something that we study. You begin to think about
effectiveness of rounds that are being utilized for a variety
(46:05):
of different purposes, in this case, ending the life of
a cop killer who took this poor man out in
the shed that he and his wife new wife had
built with their hands, shoots him eight nine times, saturates
his body in diesel fuel, and sets him on fire. Well,
(46:28):
the problem I think arises is that, to me, in
one way, your lack of preparedness and your lack of
attention to detail dishonors his memory. Just think about that,
just for a second, because you cannot be efficient enough
to be counted upon to do your job. That's seventy
(46:49):
seconds that this individual lived after the shooting could be
seventy seconds that might change the way we all view
capital punishment. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
h
Quody Dinars, but Joseph's gotten more. If given the task,
could we do it. There's so many people out there
that say that they would do it, but yet there's
a very small and I mean very small percentage of
(00:21):
people that have actually ever done it. What I'm talking
about is, let's see what are some of the euphemistic
terms pulling switch, pressing the button, or in our case today,
(00:42):
pulling the trigger. Today we're going to talk about an
execution that recently took place in the state of South Carolina. Now,
Brother Dave and I have talked about executions in the past,
but this one is of particular interest me. So let's
(01:04):
explore what happens in what failed happened in what summer
calling a watched execution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is body bags fifteen feet, Dave, that's all that separates
the end of a muzzle from a static target strapped
(01:29):
to a chair. Fifteen feet. Let's see, that's five yards.
Being an old high school football player, I always measure
things in yards because I can visualize that from being
on a playing field. So it's weird, I think for
many people, particularly those that deal in the metric system
(01:50):
on a regular basis. But that's a conversation for another day.
But for me, you know, I'm thinking five yards away,
that's it's not very far. And to be handed a
weapon and be told that at the other end, only
a five yard shot with a long barreled weapon that
(02:14):
is rifled hit this target. And boy, did things take
a bad turn.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We know, South Carolina, we're dealing with the execution of
Mikel Maddy. This is a man who actually wrote in
a letter for his attorneys to share, I'm guilty as hell.
What I've done is irredeemable. That is directly from the
subject of today. Mikel Mody was on a crime spree.
(02:46):
He's twenty one years old. He starts off in Virginia.
He ends up in North Carolina where he steals a
vehicle and he actually kills a clerk. He then heads
down to South Carolina where he tries to use a
credit card to get gas in his vehicle and he
(03:06):
spends like forty five minutes trying to do it and
it's not working because the credit card is not any good. Well,
the clerk calls cops. Hey, man, there's a guy out
here trying to get some gas and whatever. And so
they show up and there's a bit of a you know,
they're they're after this guy, Mikel Maddy ends up at
a farm area, not like a corn farm or you know,
(03:27):
cotton or whatever, but farmland that had been purchased by
a couple.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
As they're piece of heaven on earth.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, you know, beautiful area, a little pond and things,
and there's this shed that they had built on this property.
Was it was a big deal for them because they
don't even the couple won't even married. Fifteen months show
fifteen months and I'm thinking this is just too cool
for school. And they get married in front of the
shed that they had built, and that's where Michel Maddy
(03:57):
ran into the actual victim of this case, Jim Myers,
a fifty six year old officer of the law. Yeah,
Mikel Maddy shot him at least eight times, probably more
and then poured diesel fuel over his body and set
him on fire. That is what mcelmody admitted to, and
(04:21):
that's why he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So yeah, I found this interesting because you know, most
of the time you have to you know, if you've
got somebody involved in something like this, the fact that
he admitted to it. You, I think that many people believe,
and wrongly believe that for some reason, you're going to
(04:46):
be shown a level of mercy. Maybe he was thinking
about that, you know, by the courts, that maybe he'd
only be looking at potentially life in prison or something.
But I got to tell you, this guy is police officer,
and yeah, he's off duty. Not just a police officer.
He's a captain and had had a long career. You know,
(05:08):
he's like in his mid fifties, old Joe. Yeah, and
can you imagine you've lived this life. You've been away
from your family at night, working third watch, and I'm
just thinking about this guy's life. You know now looking back,
you know he's worked time away from his family. He's
(05:29):
probably missed ball games and dance recitals and everything else
that comes along that we always talk about. And then
you get to this kind of mucolic place where just
over the horizon you can see that you're finally going
to be able to hang up your badge and celebrate
(05:54):
and you found love and maybe even peace. And then
this descends upon you, out of all people in the world,
that this perpetrator could have shown up on the doorstep
of it's this guy, and this is arguably a just
an absolute brutal example of overkill of an individual. Why
(06:16):
would you feel compelled to do this? And you there's
an interesting point that you brought up, Dave. You use
the term frenzy with this individual, that he's hill his
sole focus is to get from point A to point B.
And you really wonder because so many people, and you know,
(06:37):
I hate the why question. I think more importantly, what
was his end game? Was he just going to, you know,
descend upon us like the Angel of Death or the
Black Plague and wipe out as many people as he could?
Where are you going to go at that point in time?
I'm always fascinated in a general sort of way about
(06:57):
these people that do this sort of thing. It's always
amazing to me. And can I back up just for
a second. You had mentioned North Carolina with this clerk,
and again the perpetrator in this case was not put
to death or had not been sentenced to be executed
(07:20):
regarding the event in South in North Carolina. But I
have kids that I teach, Okay, that work in convenience
stores and for my money, for my money. It is
one of the most dangerous jobs aside from like food delivery,
(07:44):
this sort of thing where you don't know who's going
to be walking in the door. And you know, police
officers actually refer to convenience stores many times as stopping robs.
That's what they'll refer to it, because they're easy targets,
and it is, you know, and there's so many of
these cases out there where convenience store workers have been killed.
(08:06):
I don't know, it's not a it's not a job
I would take per se. I guess you've got a
lot of time to study. You know, you can hang
out behind the counter and study, but you Dave, you
never know what's going to walk through the door.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's shocking to me as well, Joe, that I look
at convence I get people who work, the people who
actually punch a time clock working at a convenience store
or whatever they have. I just respect them so much,
I really do, especially when they're going to school, because
you know, I had to do that too when I
went to school, I had to work. And those who
(08:40):
punch a time clock and are they're just doing what
they have to do to get by, to get to
the next level. I just think it's a great example,
and too often we dismiss it, we throw that off
of the side. But it's like those jobs you do,
like working at a convenience store as a clerk, regardless
of the danger, it is a step to someplace else.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It's not the end all, you.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Know, it's not where you plan on being when you're
in college at twenty to be in that same place
twenty years from now. It's a job that has done
to get you to the next stop in your life.
And that's when I look at this guy. He's only
twenty one when he commits this crime, these crimes plural.
I don't know what he was doing, Joe. I don't
know what his plan was when he woke up July fourteenth,
(09:24):
two thousand and four. We're talking about, you know, in
this show about a botched execution, the victim is not
the victim. You know, technically he is in this story,
but I couldn't write it, Joe. I could not put
a victim next to this man's name. He was a
victimizer who was paying his debt to society, which had
(09:45):
been your life. Got to give it up. And anyway,
I don't know what he.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Was doing, what he left in his wake, though, or
two people that are stacious, that are they're neither one
of these individuals were you know, living somewhere in some palace. Okay,
they don't. They've given everything that they can give. I mean,
they both wind up, you know, giving their lives, you know,
(10:13):
to the appetite of this monster. But I can tell
you this, the monster that all the way back in
the early two thousands, that committed both of these crimes,
he had a day of reckoning, in a day where
(10:33):
his life ended with a parent awareness of his death,
writhing in pain while strapped to a chair. There was
(10:58):
a there's a running joke in in my family. I
think it was my daughter that you know, this term was,
you know, kind of used a lot when she was
a young teenager, and it kind of got adopted by
our family. And if one of us screwed up something LEXI,
(11:19):
my daughter would say, way to go, dad, you're ruining
it for everybody. And and you know, and we would
we would say that to one another all the way around.
And that's that's it's a comical remark. It's generally said
in jest and that sort of thing. But Dave. What
(11:40):
happened in that execution chamber is literally an example I think,
at least as far as capital punishment is concerned of
individuals ruining it for everybody. Uh, let's you know the thing.
The thing that's so distasteful I think for a lot
(12:02):
of people is someone has to stand up and you know,
like I mentioned earlier, you know, flip the lever, push
the button, pulled the trigger, and we have always, i think,
try to and the execution process has kind of evolved
(12:24):
in our country. Capital punishment has where individuals are seeking
to do it as humanly as they possibly can. You know.
And years ago, you know, you had judicial hangings and yeah,
there were botched hangings, but the line share of the
hangings that occurred were successful. Okay, and I'm talking about
(12:45):
on the first drop. But you can't imagine. I think
that a lot of people can't imagine seeing someone that
is suspended in the air by their neck and they're
flipping around, and that for many people, that's very distasteful.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Can I ask you something very quickly? Yeah? Sure, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
When I was a child, I didn't know when you
hang that the goal of hanging somebody was you know,
to snap their neck as they fell. I thought that
it was to strangle them. I really did. I thought
like they put the noose on and pretty much just
put their hands tied behind their back, pulled them up
until they died from you know, their neck being strangled,
(13:24):
you know, by the rope. I didn't know that it
was a mathematical thing where they had you know, took
the weight, height and everything else into consideration when they
determined where where the news needed to be fashioned and
how and all that so that when that individual dropped,
the neck would snap and it would be very quick.
I didn't know that, Yeah, it don't happen that way,
(13:45):
but I didn't know that that.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Was the whole point. And it had been literally perfected
over a period of time where there was a formula
that was applied to this. But you know, if you
go back to Noah, my son had he said, if y'all,
if y'all, I urge you to sit down and watch
(14:10):
the movie Napoleon with me and the thing with Joaquin
Phoenix that came out. I thought it was pretty good.
It's beautifully filmed, and you watch this thing being played out.
And during that period of time they had developed a guillotine,
and the guillotine was regarded as like the perfect killing machine.
The French were even using it. I think there's a
(14:33):
wood carving or a lithograph. I can't remember what it
is of the last guillotining that took place in France.
I think it was in the nineteen twenties, and it's
like looking over over a wall, and these were spectacles,
you know, they as time went by, they had tried
to prevent the public from actually seeing it, and you know,
(14:55):
they viewed it back then as I think a lot
of the ancestors did. As it's not just getting rid
of the individual and making them punished for this or
punishing them for what they've done their acts, but it
was also a matter of deterrence because if it happens
in a vacuum, you're you know, people don't really believe
(15:19):
that it happened, or they don't see it. It doesn't
like ingrain in their memory, and of course that memory
is passed on to the rest of the family. You know,
if you have a family that is represented by one individual,
that one individual is going to go back to their
family and say, you're not going to believe what I
just saw and this is a price that is paid.
(15:40):
I watched it. I watched them walk them out, I
watch them strap them to a pole or you know,
make them kneel before guillotine or whatever the case might be.
And that information has passed on. So even if there
were not people from that person's family present to witness this,
that one individual goes back set forth like a little
(16:01):
sailing ship, just you know, setting out this information. Individual saying, Man,
it ain't worth whatever it is that you want to
do to lose your life over this was horrific. We've
lost that. That doesn't exist anymore. That's that's why, that's
kind of why capital punishment is not truly in its
pure sense, not an effective deterrent, because you know, they
(16:22):
go into a blockhouse.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, when did they stop doing it in public? Joe?
I mean? And why?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Well, in the early nineteen hundreds, early twentieth century, you
had individuals that I think up until the nineteen early
nineteen hundreds, you had public executions by hanging. I don't
know much about firing squads in the US. I know
that they did exist, but there was something that took
(16:49):
place in the American mind where, yeah, we knew that
we were going to send people away to prisons. We
knew that they were there, but it was too I
don't know if it was vic Torrian sensibilities or Edwardian
sensibilities that you know that changed the mindset of people
where they did not want to observe the horror of it.
(17:11):
And let's face it, early nineteen hundreds were brutal. You
think about World War One and how brutal it was.
People had had enough death. They didn't want to see
it now. They didn't want monsters walking on the street either,
and so I think that it was at that point
in time where they you know, they kind of covered,
(17:32):
you know, concealed this look. The first place I ever
did autopsies Dave on a regular basis was inside of
a jail. The morgue was actually inside the parish jail.
And guess what sat on the site of literally right
where the morgue was prior to the morgue being there,
the parish gallows. So even at a county level back then,
(17:54):
at parish's the same as counties, there were gallows there.
And I think that they had done a public execution.
I think the last one. My history is getting jumbled
but I think it's like in the eighteen seventies or something,
so it's always been kind of part and parcel of
what happens here in our judicial system. People don't agree
(18:15):
with it, and that's okay not to agree with it.
I have my questions as well, But if you're going
to do it, if you're going to do it, there
is a level of exactitude that has to be in
place with your process. Who's going to handle the weapons,
how this thing is orchestrated. Because those that want to
(18:40):
make execution more efficient and humane, all it takes is
for one screw up and everybody else is going to
have to pay the price relative to this, and then
you're going to go searching for another methodology. We've come
through so many now, I mean, let's just think about it.
California used to have gas chamber. That doesn't exist anymore.
(19:01):
Cruel and unusual, I got admit it's it's it's kind
of harsh, all right. You think about the gallows, and
that's not something that we've seen. One of the things
that people thought was going to answer this question make
it humane. Is is actually something that that Thomas Edison
(19:25):
had a hand in and that's the creation of the
electric chair. We used it for years and years, but
there are all these horrible mishaps that occurred along the
way where it was what they were using was not
necessarily sufficient to the need. And if you want to
see the brutality of what happens with electrocution as horrible
(19:48):
as Ted Bundy was, go look at his at his
postmortem images and you'll see you'll see how scored his
his his scalp is, you know. And there are all
of these stories, some of them might be a bit apocryphal,
but there are all these stories about people catching fire.
I'm not saying that the capital punishment is wrong. I'm
(20:10):
just saying the problem is is that you don't know
how any one event is going to direct how the
rest of the country is going to go. We get
it away from the electric chair and suddenly they think
that we've got the perfect thing. We're going to use
lethal injection. Well, how are you going to facilitate this
(20:33):
if you can't get the drugs and you have to
have the right you have to have the right combination
of drugs, and you've got drug companies that won't sell
you the drugs, and then there's horror stories with that
and people can't bear watching it. So isn't it funny?
How now we've kind of come full circle back to
(20:54):
a methodology that I know we've covered at least to
one other case far. We've come full circle back to
methodology involving firearms where an individual is tied anchored to
a fixed object, in this case in South Carolina chair
and you literally have a firing squad where you know
(21:18):
they're going to send lead core projectiles down range to
pierce your body. Unfortunately, the problem is is that some
people apparently can't shoot straight. Three to eight Winchester. It
(21:46):
is arguably one of the most storied rounds of ammunition
in American history. It's existed, the thirty caliber rifle round
has existed forever and ever. I've mentioned this before, but
it bears, you know, repeating that most of the stuff
(22:08):
that we use in the civilian world, as far as
firearms go, it evolved out of the utility that the
military had. And we've got several permutations of the thirty
caliber round or approximately thirty caliber that go all the
way back to I think probably the most significant it's
(22:29):
probably thirty odd to six that was used, and there's
been several iterations along the way, and we landed on
three oh eight. Again that designation for people that don't
understand calibers, which can be it can be confusing. This
is the old British system three oh eight. It essentially
(22:50):
measures out the circumference of the round. That is, how
big around is this particular round. So if you think
about it, it's zero point three eight inches and that
(23:11):
round in particular is still in use today around the world,
even in our military. Three oh eight. You know, you
think about the old M fourteen platform, which you know
still we use a variant of M fourteen in the
military because many special ops personnel prefer this round over
(23:35):
five point five six or the two two three caliber
because it's more robust. It really packs a wallop. But
this is where South Carolina landed. They landed on three
oh eight Winchester. And the way their executions are set up,
this is strictly a voluntary program where if you're part
(24:00):
of the correctional system, and I don't mean as an inmate,
but I mean as an employee. Apparently they have and
they haven't really explained it. They keep some of the
stuff veiled you have three volunteers that step up and
they become the executioners. And so they've gone they went
a long way to kind of perfect I guess, or
(24:26):
try to account for any kind of problems that might
arise in an execution. Built out or redesigned what's referred
to as the death house. They've sent out one photo
of this thing, and it is actually the chair that
you can see that the individuals are strapped to. And
(24:46):
then I guess it's kind of hearkening back to the past.
They brought in their electric chair and there's a picture
of it. So you've got the firing squad chair there
that's facing I would assume towards the wall, because if
you look behind a veil, you can see what appears
to be clay stacked up there or maybe sandbags that's
(25:06):
behind a black curtain, and then you've got the electric
chair that's literally you're staring at. So that's the image
that they've put out and it's a very tight space.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's that's one of the things about this that when
this round, if people out there have not heard a
three h eight round being discharged, this thing would rattle
your cage. If you've got three of them going off.
Just the reverberation of the sound in this environment. It's
not like firing off a twenty two caliber, which is
(25:40):
very small, it would really get your attention. But this
is a very confined space. And I'm really amazed by this.
I'm fascinated by this because, you know, you think about
the old idea of a of a firing squad. I
think about the Kubrick movie Pass a Glory with Kirk
(26:00):
Douglas and they marched the guys out. They're strapped to
a post, they're blindfolded, and you've got a whole line
of soldiers, one line kneeling in the front, the other
standing in the back, and they're firing at it. Like
in this thing, it looks like they're firing at a distance.
They weren't only talking about fifteen feet five yards, man.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That's a very very small range of fire, Joe. And
the reason we're actually spending time on it today is
because even though it is only five yards fifteen feet,
there was a problem with this execution.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
There was a problem.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Now did they have I I'm going to ask you
because I'm curious. I thought that when they an execution
was done by firing squad, that several people were dummies
or you know, they were firing blanks pretty much, that
you had say ten people, of which two or three
you know, had both live action and the rest were not.
(26:59):
And so that no, but he knew exactly who did
the killing, because that seems to.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Be consider Apparently that's not the way South Carolina is
doing this, and these people have practiced as well.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I would think, so, Joe, and fifteen feet is from
you know nothing. I mean, that's not a first down
in football.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
This is a very short distance. It's nothing. You know,
you're not cracking off a shot from a thousand yards here.
And what's really interesting, Dave, is that, you know I
mentioned the three h eight Winchester A round. This is
fired through a rifled barrel. Okay, now they don't say
whether or not the rifles are scoped. I would think
(27:39):
personally that having at a range of five yards, which
is just very elemental, I think that a scope would
probably impede your ability to fire accurately at that short
of a distance. You'd be much better off with iron sights.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're dealing with experts, We're not dealing with people who
are trying to pass their class to get a certification
to viral weapon.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah. I don't know what the qualification is other than
being a volunteer with a correction system. And you know,
I've met some people that work within the correction system
and they are many times those individuals are the most
a few, not all, but they've been the most ardent,
anti capital punished people that you come around. Because when
(28:32):
you live in an environment with people day in and
day out, you know, it really humanizes them. It's easy
for us on the outside to say, yeah, well we
need to execute this guy. We need to put him away,
and he never should breathe any more free air. A
matter of fact, he shouldn't breathe any air at all.
We're going to end his life. But they've chosen or
(28:56):
have volunteers that have come up out of this Corrections officers. Uh,
tough job, one of the most toughest, one of the
toughest jobs that you can have, because you're going into
a lockdown situation every single day. I would suffocate. There
is no way I could do that job. But because
your corrections officer does not make you an expert with
(29:17):
a weapon. You know, I'm thinking you know in the
state of the state of South Carolina. Uh. One place
that actually produces some of the greatest marksmen in the
world is right down the road in Paris Island, South Carolina.
The United States Marine Corps depot down there, Paris Island,
(29:38):
you know, Uh, and you could. I'm thinking that probably
somebody in recruit training, even when they get toward the
end of it, Uh, they would they would fare much
better under these circumstances as far as accuracy goes. I
don't know how much. I don't know how much train up,
you know, these corrections officers have had, did somebody get nervous?
(29:59):
But the the big thing here, Dave, is that what
we're being told is that out of three shooters, you've
only got two defects or bullet holes in the body.
And I don't see how in the world you could
have missed, which is I think one of the big questions.
(30:23):
And not only miss but even the two that entered
the body were not center mass shots that took out
the heart. Which is their rationale in this particular case,
is that if you can go in in these rounds,
the three oh eight, it's called a what was it
called again, it's an urban. This particular type of mo
(30:46):
is a it's like an urban ammunition, ground tap urban ammunition.
And just so we understand what happens when that round
strikes dave not to be it's not a through and
through round. You're not looking. It's not like what you
would hunt deer with. Necessarily, you're talking about something that
(31:09):
because they're talking about there's an urban designation on this.
The idea is that this is like a police sniper
around that goes in. The projectile actually fragments upon impact
and it sends these little sharps or the body. And
what happens is if you're aiming center mass of the heart.
(31:29):
So if everybody will find their sternum and move just slightly,
it's not all the way over as far as you
can go on the left side of the body. Just
find your sternum, that flat bone right in the center
of your chest. Move over about an inch and you're
right on top of your heart. Okay, it's inferior to
(31:50):
where your sternum is, the sternoclovicular notch up there. Just
go down about two or three inches and then over
to the left slightly and you're right on target. They
missed they missed that area with a rifle round.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
From five yards away, Joe fifteen feet. The only other
person with any kind of marksmen experience that could miss
that shot would be Lee Harvey Oswald. I mean, that's
about it. Everybody else is going to hit something. But
in this case, we have three shooters or three bullets
(32:26):
coming towards the subject, and you only have two that
they can say definitively entered. Two of the bullets entered
this man's body, and they did not enter in the heart.
Did they not draw an exit the circle around it?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
You know? Mark?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Well, here's one of the things that we're hearing. There's
actually a marker that is placed on the body. And
again they haven't demonstrated to us in the public what
this marker looks like. Okay, I've seen, I've seen, you know,
it's generally portrayed. Well, it's portrayed. Actually, I think I've
seen newsreels with this from World War Two where they're
(33:08):
executing war crimes people. Most of those were executed by
by hanging, but there are some and you'll see there's
like a white patch of cloth that is pinned approximating
the heart. Okay, you know, you know where it is,
(33:29):
and there's actually a physician there. This is the thing
about it. You've got a physician there that has a stethoscope.
My question is is the is the physician involved in
placement of the patch? And I know that some people
might say, well, that would violate the hipocratic oath. You know, well,
(33:52):
I don't think that it would. As a matter of fact,
I think it's an extension of mercy because if you
know that this is going to happen, there's nothing you
can do about it. So if you zero in on
that area, you have a physician or nurse that stand
there with the stethoscope, they can actually appreciate and locate
the exact location of the heart and they say, okay, guys,
(34:13):
put the patch right here. All right, no question about
it at this point in time. But there has been
comment There have been comments made that would indicate that
the patch was misplaced. But even even if it is misplaced, two,
I would assume to the left, like further away from
(34:36):
the heart, then you're still even in that location. I
can't imagine out of the three shooters you're gonna you're
gonna have what's referred to as a flyer and if
you ever go to the range, and particularly with handguns,
people will have flyers every now and then, and that
means that when you fire, you have a bullet or
(34:58):
projectile that completely misses the target. You rarely see that
at a range of five yards. I know in law enforcement,
I qualified twice a year with a handgun and five yards.
I think now we have a three yard range as well.
But five yards is really nothing. You know, if you're
shooting center mass, which are taught to do center mass
(35:23):
at a static target. This guy's static. He ain't moving anywhere, okay,
and so you have a weapon that is meant to
hit the target at long range. It's high velocity. I'm
failing to understand what happened. What's fascinating about this day
(35:47):
is that the corner for this particular county and this happens.
I've been involved in autopsies involving executed individuals. The corner
in this particular county is assigned to request the examination
of the dead. This is a homicide, okay, there's no
(36:09):
other way. You know, you and I have spent a
lot of time recently talking about manner and cause of death.
There's no other way you can classify this. Okay, this
is a homicide. Even though it's state sanctioned, this is
a homicide. So in most states, if you have a
violent homicide like this, it's required that you do an autopsy.
And there's another reason you need to do it on
(36:31):
somebody that is dying at the hands of state. It's
going to be thorough. It's the most thorough autopsy you've
ever seen. I mean things places in the body are
dissected that we would not normally do. It takes a
long time to conduct one of these autopsies. But apparently
(36:53):
the pathologists that did the autopsy on this case opined
that two of the rounds entered the body at the
same spot. Okay, now, I've seen this happen by an
individual firing at close range with a handgun and they
(37:15):
score two hits in the same defect. But and it's
pretty you can still delineate it. Sometimes they're not perfectly
matched up. But you've got a physician that's saying pathologists
that's saying that none, no, no, we've got two rounds
that enter the same location, and we've got a second one,
(37:37):
you know, that is off by itself. The problem is
is that they don't go into a lot of scriptors
as to what organ systems were impacted. I can only
assume that perhaps the lung, the left lung, and it
has been implied at least that the heart was clipped
(37:59):
in some way by one of these rounds, but it
was not to the point where death was instantaneous, because
what the report is is that as soon as the
order was given for the squad to fire simultaneously. Witnesses
stated that this guy being executed screamed out simultaneously, as
(38:24):
he's not screaming out in pain at that moment time,
he is screaming out okay, and he is shot. Well
about forty seconds later, they heard him moan. Okay, most
of the time with an execution where somebody has shot
(38:45):
center mass into the heart, they're not going to make
another move. They're dead. That's the efficiency of firing squads. Okay,
that's not what happened. Forty seconds later they heard him moan,
and approximate a total of seventy seconds after the actual shooting,
he's heard to kind of whimper again and then dies.
(39:09):
That's not what you want in an execution, okay, you
want this thing to be sudden and swift and merciful.
And I know people are saying, well, he doesn't deserve mercy.
I understand that. But the argument here is the following.
If a group of people screw this up, then you're
(39:32):
going to be out walking around the weeds looking for
another means of execution. I mean, what we're going to do.
We're going back to the guillotine now, you know, because
this case, Dave, and there's already been a lawsuit filed,
and we'll talk about that in just a second, this
case from now on regarding capital punishment is going to
(39:53):
be cited. Okay, It'll be cited as being cruel and unusual,
all right. So it's the idea, it's the idea of
these individuals not doing their job effectively that's problematic. The
family retained the services of a fellow that I've personally met,
(40:14):
that I've known. Matter of fact, he was I think
he was. He was actually in to become the chief
medical Examiner in Atlanta. That's how I met him, and
I was working there. His name's Jonathan Arden, and he
was he was a medical examiner with the Office of
Chief Medical Examiner in New York. I think he was
(40:36):
in Washington, d C. As well, two major offices. And
this guy is really he's really sharp, hell of a
nice guy and very proficient at what he does. But
you know, Dave, he he actually stated he got to
review all of these materials. And the big thing about
(40:58):
it is this, he said that there were no X
rays done, The detail in the autopsy with the wound
tracks was not to his way of thinking, was not
sufficiently described, and they didn't examine the clothing. Now, you
(41:18):
don't examine the clothing on a gunfire related death. You're
going to skew your data. Okay, there's no mention of it.
According to doctor Art.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
What's the purpose for doing the clothing?
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Well, okay, let's think. Let's just think about it this way.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
If you've got if you've got somebody wearing a scrub top,
you know, like many prisoners do you know, having an
orange orange jumpsuits or scrubtops or whatever, that clothing from
a forensic standpoint, is like another layer of skin. Okay, So,
(41:56):
and this could apply to knife wounds as well. But
when you you fire three through it, it will be
a another indicator of point of impact relative to a round.
And you haven't examined the clothing. I mean, that's like
forensic pathology one O one. You know, before you actually
(42:16):
ever strip the body down, you're going to take detailed
photographs of everything that the person was wearing while they're
still wearing it, okay, and you to try to orient everything.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
And then you said, no X rays, why not take
you're doing an autopsy, why not do X rays?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I don't understand that. And here's here's another thing that
comes in with the three O eight round. What did
I say earlier? And you had actually reminded me of this.
This is not like my revelation here you actually had
had It's a fragmented round. And you know the beauty
of fragmented rounds that are demonstrated on X ray. It's
(42:58):
it's shocking, you know when you this, because when you
open up a body, all right, just so folks understand,
when you open up a body and it's been greatly traumatized,
you're going to see a mass of hemorrhage, pulled blood,
ripped tissue, all those sorts of things. X rays cut
through all of that. You don't see that mass hemorrhage.
(43:22):
What you see, particularly with a fragmented round, which is
the intention of this urban round, that you will see
a little lead storm, okay, and it will be if
the bullet acts like it does not all bullets. It's
just like Holow points. All Holow points don't necessarily deploy, okay.
Sometimes they'll just pass right through the body. The hope
(43:44):
is that it will deploy and it doesn't exit out
and harm somebody else. That's the point of the sniper round.
So if you shoot somebody and they're in a window
and they're holding hostages, you want the round to wind
up in their body and not penetrate the body, but
you want to kill them so that you know the
hostages get hurt. It doesn't pass through another wall and
into another home or somebody bystander or something like that.
(44:08):
The extra here is mind blowing or the absence of it,
and Arden makes reference to that. He also makes reference
to the idea that out of all of his years
of doing autopsies, and I can tell you his count
is huge, all right, he has. It's such a rare
occurrence that you would have two rounds go through the
(44:32):
same defect in the body. You know, it's a real
head scratcher, you know, as far as I guess, as
far as doctor Arden is going.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
To ask you something that Joe, yeah, man, if there
are two again marksmen, all three are, I'm going to
assume they are marksmen, that these are good shots, even
though it is only five yards away. I'm going to
assume they've done their homework and these three cats are
we don't worry about them hitting the target. But to
(45:00):
have two bullets go into the same track, that means
that all three of them missed the mark, and that
two of them missed the mark in the exact same spot.
I would buy it more if they were in the
right spot, that there were two going in there.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
That would make a whole lot more sense to me
than missing.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yeah, we come back to this idea of placement of
the marker. Was the marker misplaced and they happened to
hit the same spot through the marker, and because of
the anatomical disorientation here, you know, you you happen to
(45:41):
have two really good shots that were off target. And
that's you know, that's that's hugely problematic here, because you
want to be able to think at the end of
the day that people that do research on these sorts
of things as gruesome as it is, but it is
it's something that we study. You begin to think about
effectiveness of rounds that are being utilized for a variety
(46:05):
of different purposes, in this case, ending the life of
a cop killer who took this poor man out in
the shed that he and his wife new wife had
built with their hands, shoots him eight nine times, saturates
his body in diesel fuel, and sets him on fire. Well,
(46:28):
the problem I think arises is that, to me, in
one way, your lack of preparedness and your lack of
attention to detail dishonors his memory. Just think about that,
just for a second, because you cannot be efficient enough
to be counted upon to do your job. That's seventy
(46:49):
seconds that this individual lived after the shooting could be
seventy seconds that might change the way we all view
capital punishment. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
h
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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