April 23, 2025 • 48 mins
The road to the death chamber is paved with paperwork, politics—and blood.
Former prosecutor and criminal justice columnist Matthew Mangino, author of The Executioner’s Toll, pulls back the curtain on America’s executions. His book documents every person put to death in 2010, exposing the names, the crimes, the last appeals, and the cold precision process behind the state’s deadliest ritual.
From firing squads to lethal injection to the quiet hum of the execution chamber—what are their final meals? Their last words? And what does someone say when there’s nothing left to bargain?
“It’s not about justice. It’s about finality. And once it’s done—there’s no going back.” — Matthew Mangino
Step inside the machinery of death. The sentence is final. The questions aren't.
🔗 Learn more about Matthew Mangino:
Website: www.mattmangino.com
📘 The Executioner’s Toll — available now on Amazon.
Chapters
00:00 Exploring Capital Punishment: An Introduction
02:59 Matthew Mangino's Insights on the Death Penalty
05:58 Trends in Executions and Death Sentences
08:50 Methods of Execution: Firing Squad vs. Lethal Injection
12:13 The Role of Psychopathy in Capital Cases
14:58 Moral and Ethical Considerations of the Death Penalty
28:46 The Death Penalty: Public Opinion and High-Profile Cases
35:18 Final Words and Last Meals: Insights from Death Row
44:28 The Broader Implications of Capital Punishment
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/killer-psychologist--6020549/support.
Former prosecutor and criminal justice columnist Matthew Mangino, author of The Executioner’s Toll, pulls back the curtain on America’s executions. His book documents every person put to death in 2010, exposing the names, the crimes, the last appeals, and the cold precision process behind the state’s deadliest ritual.
From firing squads to lethal injection to the quiet hum of the execution chamber—what are their final meals? Their last words? And what does someone say when there’s nothing left to bargain?
“It’s not about justice. It’s about finality. And once it’s done—there’s no going back.” — Matthew Mangino
Step inside the machinery of death. The sentence is final. The questions aren't.
🔗 Learn more about Matthew Mangino:
Website: www.mattmangino.com
📘 The Executioner’s Toll — available now on Amazon.
Chapters
00:00 Exploring Capital Punishment: An Introduction
02:59 Matthew Mangino's Insights on the Death Penalty
05:58 Trends in Executions and Death Sentences
08:50 Methods of Execution: Firing Squad vs. Lethal Injection
12:13 The Role of Psychopathy in Capital Cases
14:58 Moral and Ethical Considerations of the Death Penalty
28:46 The Death Penalty: Public Opinion and High-Profile Cases
35:18 Final Words and Last Meals: Insights from Death Row
44:28 The Broader Implications of Capital Punishment
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/killer-psychologist--6020549/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist
and your host of the show. Killer Psychologist is for
true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued with the dark side
of psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Killer Psychologist. Today we're going to discuss
capital punishment, which seems to be a hot topic that
can stir up a lot of emotions for people. So
we're going to step into the shadow of the death
chamber with someone who's been closer to death row than
most would dare. Matthew Mangino, a former district attorney, a
(00:45):
criminal justice columnist, and author of The Executioners Toll, which
is a chilling and intimate chronicle of every execution carried
out in America over one unforgettable year. So today we're
going to confront the finality of justice. So who decides
(01:07):
when a life ends? And what really happens when the
sentence leaves no room for mercy or mistakes? So let's
find out.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Welcome Matthew, Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It seems to be such a hot topic that the
people seem to have a strong opinion about. And I
remember back in grad school somebody giving a presentation on
the death penalty, and I found out what little I
really knew about the system and how complex it was,
(01:41):
and it kind of left me scratching my head of saying, hmm,
there's so much more to learn and know about capital punishment.
So I want to hear from you your passion. And
you're prosecutor for many years, what even led to you
to go down this path to explore this topic.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
It's interesting as a prosecutor, I had personally prosecuted death
penalty cases, and I had always been interested in the
death penalty because the death penalty seems it's kind of
like a microcosm of what's going on generally in the
criminal justice system, and you'll see trends with regard to
(02:26):
the death penalty that then sort of overflow into into
the regular criminal justice system in the way cases are
handled and the way defendants and victims are looked at.
The reason I wanted to write about the death penalty
was because when you research the death penalty, you'll see
(02:49):
that a lot of people write about it, and normally
they write from a specific bias. They're either for it
or against it, and they cherry picked cases that really
demonstrate why we need a death penalty as well as
you know why we shouldn't have a death penalty. So
I was trying to think about a way to approach
(03:10):
the death penalty in an unbiased manner. And so what
I thought would be interesting would be to take all
the executions in a single year and look at those cases,
look at the crime itself, the investigations by police, the
trial of pills, you know, right up to last mills
(03:30):
and last words. And I thought by doing that I
would not be cherry picking. I'd have all the cases, good, bad,
whatever supports whoever's position, and then you know, read about it.
And what I did is I mixed in there the
constitutional considerations of the death penalty and the Supreme Court's
(03:53):
treatment of the death penalty and historically how the death
penalty came about at ancient times and is still here
in two and twenty five. And I thought I'd let
readers draw their own conclusions about the death penalty. And
so that was my intent to try to look at
the death penalty in an unbiased manner.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Is there any cases that stick out to you that
just faunt you?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Well, yeah, I mean there are some terrible cases that
I wrote about in this book. There were forty six
executions in twenty ten, and when you compare that with
you know, what's going on right now. I think we
had twenty five executions in twenty and twenty four. Because
(04:42):
of COVID, that number went way down. There are only
eleven executions in twenty and twenty twenty twenty one. But
we're way off the pinnacle of executions in the modern
era of the death penalty, and that was in the
late nineties, you know, ninety nine, I think there were
(05:03):
ninety eight executions in the United States, you know, So
that number's fallen off dramatically. But what's more interesting, Dana,
is that the number of death sentences has dramatically declined
and continues to decline. I think last year there were
(05:24):
twenty six death sentences across the country, and that number
has gone progressively down. There was a time in the
mid nineties, you know, nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six,
there were over three hundred death sentences a year.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Over the last couple of years, we've had twenty five,
twenty six death sentences across the United States. So I
think you can draw from that, at least among jurors
across the country. The death penalty has fallen out of favor.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wow, And I know Craig and I were just talking
for you came on. But you know, there's some cases
in the media right now that are controversial and where
the death penalties being discussed and whether it will actually
be applied or not. Well, that will be interesting. And
Brian Kolberger which that case, that's a discussion. And then
(06:20):
Luigi Mangioni. You know, the death penalty is a discussion
that comes up, and so you hear a lot of
people talking about it. And I would love to hear
your thoughts on either of those cases.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Well, I think if I'm not mistaken, in both cases
the death penalties being sought. I think the United States
Attorney General just recently approved seeking the death penalty for
Luigi Mangioni and for Coleberger. I believe the death penalty
is on the table as well in Idaho. You know,
(06:56):
so yeah, I mean those are high profile cases that
people know a lot about if you're interested in true crime,
and there certainly is it a surge in interest among
people who are interested in true crime. These cases are
going to be watched, you know, very carefully. And you know,
the death penalty, it's very formalistic in the process. And
(07:19):
that came after the United States Supreme Court decisions in
the mid seventies, you know, because between nineteen sixty seven
and nineteen seventy seven there were no executions in this country.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Zero.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
And then there was a case Firman versus Georgia, in
which the United States Supreme Court said that it didn't
say that the death penalty was unconstitutional. What it said
was the way it was being applied it was arbitrary.
And so they struck down the death penalty as it
was being applied in states across the country and in
(07:55):
the federal government. It was only a couple of years
until the decision again out of the state of Georgia
said well what happened with states went back and they
rewrote their death penalty law. And the changes that they
made were that no longer would a judge decide whether
to impose the death penalty. A jury would and in
(08:17):
order to make the whole process a little fair and
less arbitrary, that was the idea. The jury would decide
guilt or innocence on the first degree murder charge, and
then there would be a second mini trial, they bifurcated
it then that the jury would decide life or death.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
In those cases.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And so it was a couple of years after the
firm and decision that the death penalty was back. And
you know, interesting because this is in the news a lot.
The first execution in this country after the death penalty
was reinstated. You know what I referred to as the
modern era of the death penalty, and you may recall
was Gary Gilmour, which was a firing squad execution in Utah.
(09:04):
And you know, right now, we've just observed two executions
in the last couple of months in South Carolina by
the firing squad. So it's you know, there was a
lot of the only state that was using the fire
firing squad in any situation was Utah, and they actually
(09:24):
did one in twenty ten when I wrote my book,
Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a firing squad. But
you know, it's sort of you know, it comes around,
you know, goes around. So everybody thought that the firing
squad was our cake and brutal, and now we have
it back and other states have it available if inmates
(09:46):
so choose death row inmates.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So it's really kind.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Of a dramatic turnaround in how we look at executions
of this country.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, so there are some states where an inmate can
choose firing squad.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
South Carolina is one, and they've done it twice.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Now.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Oklahoma has just enacted a statute that makes the execution
by firing squad available if they can't come up with
lethal injection drugs. So if they don't have lethal injection
drugs available, they'll turn to the firing squad. Of course,
Utah continues to have the firing squad as an option.
(10:27):
The interesting thing about the firing squad is that there
have been many different methods of execution used in this country,
you know, from hanging to the electric chair, to the
firing squad, the gas chamber. You know, we're using nitrogen
hypoxy now, and I think Oklahoma has carried an execution
(10:50):
out using nitrogen gas now. So in all those forms
other than the nitrogen which is being used recently, all
those other forms of execution have been vetted by the
United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has never
said that any of those methods was cruel and unusual. Okay,
(11:12):
So that eighth Amendment argument doesn't work. So people have
looked at the death penalt looked at the methods of execution.
You know, we've had botched lethal injections. People were in
terrific pain for extended periods of time until they actually died.
(11:33):
You know, the same with the gas chamber. You know,
we've had people catch on fire with the electric chair,
and back in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century,
you know, a bad hangman caused a lot of pain
for people who were hung across the country. But the
firing squad, if done properly, is final, very quickly. I
(11:58):
mean a matter of seconds. Have multiple people marksmen shooting
into the chest of the condemned person, and guess what,
there's there's not a lot of pain and suffering. It's
you're not gonna sit there for twenty minutes, you know,
bleeding to death. It's almost instantaneous. So some some researchers
have suggested, Hey, the firing squad, well, you might have
(12:21):
thought in the past that it was barbaric and it
was kind of like the wild West. Hey, it might
be it might be the most humane way to carry
out an execution.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I've got to chime in with the you know, and
get your thoughts on this because you know, as you know,
we have a we have an overdose epidemic in the
country with fentanyl and such and it. Of course I'm
not a physician, but it just I what I don't
understand is, you know, lethal injection, the methods that they
use currently, as you stated, we have these ongoing problems
(12:54):
where they can't seem to stop the heart of these
inmates properly. A small amount of fentanyl will seat your
breathing and stop your heart and by the way, you're
going to be euphoric before it ends, and there's absolutely
no pain associated with it. What's not by personal experience.
But my point is people can od quite efficiently without
(13:17):
any trouble whatsoever. It just baffles me that they can't
figure this out, you know, in terms of you know,
with modern medicine, you know, the way we have it.
Does that just baffle you? It baffles me.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
I think, you know, some of the problems exists, and
I just want to go through a couple of them.
So Number one, it's hard to find people, doctors, researchers
who want to try to develop the best way to
stop the human hearts. So sometimes you're you know, you're
(13:50):
you're not dealing with the up upper echelon of researchers
who who are involved in this process. I think the
other issue is, you know, when lethal injection first came
about in most states, if not all, it was a
three drug protocol that they used, okay, and so what
(14:12):
they would use is, you know, they would use a
drug that would essentially make that person fall to sleep,
you know, go into a slumber. The second one was
a paralytic. And the reason that they used the paralytic
is because sometimes it was unsightly to watch a person
(14:35):
being drugged to death.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
They'd gyrate, they'd.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Move, and so the only reason for the paralytic was
to make it more palatable, so to speak, for the witnesses.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They so they wouldn't be upset by looking at this guy,
you know, gyrating while he's doing to death. And then
and then you had the drug to stop the heart.
And then you know, the company that made these drugs
didn't want to be associated with the death penalty. So
then you were going to you know, compounding pharmacies where
they would make their own drugs that were similar to
(15:11):
what these were. And that's what happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So now some states have gone to a single drug protocol.
But again, you know, the companies that make these drugs
don't want to be associated with so you're you're ending
up in some laboratory in a compounding pharmacy where they're
trying to make a lethal injection drug, and that's why
you have the problems that you do.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, now that Greg's offering fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Look, fentanyl's quite readily available in the United States, right,
I mean, and we know that fentanyl in quite small dosings, right,
like I'm talking about street fentanyl. Of course, this would
have to be a pharmaceutical grade, like you know, if
you're going to do it in this in this context.
But I just you know, we know how to use opioid.
You know, we know that opioid drugs, when misused, they
(16:00):
stop the heart, but well they stop breathing, but then
ultimately that leads to you know, the heart stopping and
that's that's via like an overdose. Right, So and it's
not that hard to do that, It's quite simple. But
I think, like you know, what Matt said is that
we can't just use street drugs, you know, to implement
this kind of a. I still would think that there
would be somebody you know in the pharmaceutical industry or
(16:23):
you know, in the in the in the drug delivery,
you know, industry that would be able to develop a
protocol right like that had an opioid you know, component
to it that you know, because then then you know,
you're not there's there's no pain in suffering generally associated
with this people you know, essentially just they go to sleep,
they check out, and there's no I mean, there would
(16:45):
be no eighth the of an issue with that whatsoever,
I would I would argue, but that's just fascinates me
that you know, it's the same thing. And you know
that's why California, California, like we have the death penalty
in California, but it's not enforced obviously, and they make
those arguments that it's like, you know, we don't have
an efficient way to do this, and I would disagree
with that. We have very efficient ways to do it.
(17:07):
Just look at all the overdose deaths we're seeing right now.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, Pennsylvania is similar. So
Pennsylvania has had the death penalty on the books, you know,
since you know the the you know, pre Constitution pre
United States, but in the modern era of the death penalty,
when the death penalty came back, Pennsylvania has only executed
three people. The last one was in nineteen ninety nine,
(17:32):
Gary Heidnik, who was a serial killer and tortured women.
And the thing about those three, they were all that
are considered volunteers, which means they gave up their right
to appeal and just said, you know, execute me. And
there hasn't been an involuntary execution in Pennsylvania since the
(17:57):
mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So the thing I will give credit to you.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
So so basically what happens is, you know, the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania has made it difficult, you know at
certain times, and you know, different governors have had sort
of unofficial moratoriums on it, Governor Wolf who served two
terms here. But you know Governor Shapiro, and I give
him credit for that. You know, people, you know, politicians
(18:23):
always want to say, well, you know, we want to
make it more efficient, we want to make sure we
don't make mistakes. You know, you're either for it or
you're against it. Is the way I look at the
death penalty and Governor Shapiro, who was a former attorney
general in the state. He came out right after he
got elected and said, listen, I've changed my mind about
(18:43):
the death penalty. I don't think there's an efficient way
to carry out executions. I don't think we can use,
you know, a criminal justice system that it isn't absolute
to ultimately take somebody's life. So I'm opposed to the
death penalty. There won't be any death penalty warrants. I'm
not saying I want to have a study to see
(19:06):
if it can be done better. I'm telling you, as
long as i'm governor, there won't be any executions in
the state of Pennsylvania. So I give them credit for
at least taking a position which can be controversial. You know,
you can certainly be looked at being soft on crime
if you take that position. But I give them credit
for coming on and saying, for me, this is now
(19:28):
a moral issue, it's not a legal issue.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah. I was going to say, that's not his arguments
that you know, there aren't efficient ways or I think
those are just maybe rationalizations for you know, justification for
why it sounds like this was more of a moral
position he was taking, which you know, that's fine. People
have their moral arguments for why they don't believe in
that right. But we and I know Dana probably wants
to ask about this. But you know, since we're both
(19:54):
forensic psychologists, we've worked and I've been on death penalty cases,
you know, where I've I've testified as to you know,
to mitigate to try to get the death penalty off
the table. But the question about like that I always
you know, would like answered and oftentimes is not addressed
in some of these capital cases, is the issue of
is this individual that we have in front of us,
(20:15):
are they a psychopath? Or are they not a psychopath?
And that matters because it matters because we know that
psychopathy is not a treatable condition. If it's not a
disorder that we can we as psychologists have any treatments
that would work to remove that or reduce that that
excess of that severe antisocial personality architecture. So I'm wondering
(20:38):
what you what your thoughts are on that As far
as cases like these cases here, were any of those
folks assessed, you know, psychologically assessed or forensically assessed throughout
that process? Yeah, so I'm sure that they were.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I mean, as you said, I mean, you've been involved in,
you know, the penalty phase of trials where the prosecution
is going to set forth their aggravating factors and the
defense is going to set forth their mitigating factors. You know,
the best example that I have, you know, with this
(21:15):
whole idea of psychopathy or you know someone who's a
sociopath or a psychopath. You know, I spent six years
on the prole Board in Pennsylvania. So after I left
the District Attorney's office, Governor Rendell, who was governor at
the time, appointed me to the pro board. So I
spent a six year term there. And what we did
on the prole board is we would break into panels
(21:37):
across the state and we would interview every you know,
violent offender who was eligible for parole. And you know,
being a district attorney in suburban Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania,
you know, I thought I saw a lot and I
experienced a lot. I didn't scratch the surface until I
(21:57):
got on the pro board and start interviewing people. But
you know, it was interesting. This is not a scientific
this is anecdotal, okay. But you you would be in
an interview with somebody and sometimes you know, guys would
show up for their interview, you know, their hair was
standing up there and taking a shower for a week,
like they didn't even know this was going to happen.
They just walked in the door. But every once in
(22:20):
a while you would get somebody who would come in
there and they would be perfect. They answered every question perfectly,
exactly what you wanted to hear, clean cut, you know, charismatic,
you know, just explaining in detail their their reentry plan
and taking responsibility. And I you know, so you're taking
(22:44):
your notes and you're thinking, and then all of a
sudden it hits you and you say, I'm talking to
a psychopath right.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right, I'm being played. It's too perfect.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
And then you try to like, you know, how can
I ask a question or get into a subject that's going.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
To reveal that and you can't.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
And so that's my experience, and it didn't happen often,
but those times you're like, oh, well, in a lot
of instances, you know, those assessments are not necessarily done
throughout the trial process or even even through the penalty phases.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Like I can speak to the one case that I
was testifying for the defense on which was I was
only testifying as to mitigation or to try to get
the death penalty you know, off the tables in the
penalty phase, and the defendant in this case had only
been evaluated by a previous psychologist and they didn't do
any formal testing. The defense didn't get any formal testing
done for obvious reason, so they had an opinion about
(23:41):
a certain condition that did not involve, you know, the
discussion of antisocial personality disorder, which is what you know,
psychopathy is classified as. But the reason I bring this
up is that this is a discussion that it's from
a public policy standpoint, I think that needs to be
explored more because there is a difference between you know,
whether or not somebody is redeemable or not in terms
(24:03):
of their ability to re enter or to be rehabilitated,
you know, And what we know from the literature is
that psychopaths are not rehabilitatable at this you know, we
don't have evidence that we can rehabilitate them. And there
is a distinction particularly amongst the ones that are you know,
that are deemed dangerous to society, but also dangerous to
the institutional society in which they are residing. In other words,
(24:26):
in the prison, right. So so some argue and again
this is again an argument about you know, why the
death penalty is not appropriate is that you know, you
could give a life sentence and then protect society, you know,
from these individuals. But they're forgetting about something. They're forgetting
about the prison culture and the prison society and the
people that work and within those institutions. And those are
(24:47):
people too, right because their staff and there there are
other inmates that don't necessarily want to be killed. And
I've worked in maximum security prisons and I've worked with psychopaths,
psychopaths who have killed other inmates while in custody, and
they are not you know, they're not on death row.
They are lifers, and they commit murder when they're in prison.
And so so that's an interesting thing to think about.
(25:08):
You know, it's like we I think we miss a
lot of these people, like in terms of like figuring
out like who are the really really dangerous ones that
are dangerous even when they're in you know, they're incarcerated
for the rest of their life, right, And that's an interesting.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Argument, it is, and interesting that you bring up, you know,
the subject of the well being of other inmates. One
of the cases that I wrote about in twenty ten,
actually the last execution of twenty ten was a guy
named Mark David Doody okay, and he was in prison.
(25:48):
He was serving two life sentences and really he hadn't
killed that they knew of in the past, but he
was doing life sentences as an habitual violent offender.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
So he got life sentences because he had harmed a
lot of people, okay. And so he's in prison and
he decides that he doesn't want to be in prison anymore.
He knows he's never getting out, but he doesn't really
have the courage to kill himself. So what he does
is he murders his cellmate. Okay, he tricks him into
(26:22):
some story. You know, hey, listen, if I tie you
up and act like I'm harming you, they'll both give
us our own cells, and you know, we'll have our
own space. So, you know, this young guy he's in
the cell with falls forward. He ties him up, and
he strangles him to death and kills Then he gets
a piece of paper and starts writing a letter to
the kid's mother saying, hey.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know your son is a loser. It's not a
big deal.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
You know, that kind of thing. And he tells the
prison officials. He says, listen, he said, execute me, or
I'm going to kill again. And time it may not
be an inmate, it might be personnel here, you know,
and I'm just telling you kill me or I'm gonna
(27:08):
kill again. So you know, when you when you look
at as I said, you know, make your own decision.
You know, that's the case that cries out for the
death penalt right. That's a great, great illustration and example
of this. Yeah, where again, I mean, I'm not making
the argument for or against the death penalty. I'm actually
a little ambivalent about it in many senses. But I
do believe that, like well, what you describe these situations
(27:30):
where we if we have clear evidence that this person
has what we call really severe psychopathy, they pose imminent
danger to life, you know, and that includes people that
in the incarcerated environments. We have to ask the question,
are we doing a disservice to the community by not
putting that person to death? Right in those kind of
(27:52):
rarer cases. I mean, I'm not these are these are
generally fairly rare, but.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They do happen because I can think of a case
where I had a you know, a guy on my
case slow when I first started working at New Folsom Prison,
which is a maxim security prison in California. And the
guy was in the psychiatric services, you know, which is
a lock up unit that's a prison inside the prison,
as you know. And you know he was in that
lock up unit because he murdered his CELLI just in
a similar way that you just described. And what's interesting
(28:17):
is he murdered the celly because he found out that
the cellmate was convicted of a child sex offense. So
that was his rationale for thing that murder. But you know,
he was already life without so you know, they often
the DA in some of these instances. They sometimes they'll prosecute.
Sometimes they'll decline if the person already has consecutive life
sentences because it may not be you know, feasible to
(28:39):
even bother doing that.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Let me ask you a quick question off the subject, Craig.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Okay, so you.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Worked at fulsome prison, New Folsome, Yes, Oh not the
Johnny Cash. I was always trying to I always wondered
why Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, but he
ended up in fulsome prison in California.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
He did. He played the old false So there's two prisons,
you know, in Fulsome So there's the old there's the
second prison built in California in the eighteen hundred. San
Quentin was the first one, and actually death Row was
at old Fulsom for a while and then it went
to San Quentin. But anyway, the new new prison was
built like in nineteen eighty six, and that's a that's
a max you know, super max, a maxim security facility.
(29:19):
So yeah, Johnny did play there, but there's pictures of him,
you know, playing you know, to the inmates back and
what with the nineteen sixties or it was quite a
while ago, but so yeah, yeah, that's what I mean
about the death It's so nuanced, you know what I mean.
We were talking before we started taping even you know,
(29:39):
one of the things that I found really interesting is
to situations. And the first one was Saddam who sang okay.
So you know, at the time, Saddam Hussein was arrested
and he was going on trial and then you know,
he ultimately was executed. You know, the.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Polling at the time said that about sixty one sixty
two percent of people supported death bone. Okay, So that
meant thirty seven percent did not. When it came to
soudomuse Ain and they did a polling with him, that
number one up to eighty three percent of people supported
the death palt, So one in five people who originally
(30:27):
said they didn't support the death penalty supported it for him.
The same scenario with the Oklahoma City bomber, same exact scenario. Nationally,
about sixty two sixty three percent people supported death done.
When it came to him, the numbers shot up to
eighty five percent, So people who didn't support the death
(30:50):
penalty supported it. For those two guys, they gave a
good indication of how because it's tough, a murder happens
in your neighborhood and all of a sudden you never
thought much of the death time, but now you support it.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
But it was it was hard to.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Gauge that on a national scale, And I think those
two cases gave us an opportunity to see how people's
minds change when they're aware of the evil that an
individual is done.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Yeah, and that shows that, you know, it isn't an
absolute in many people's you know, consciousness in terms of
whether they support it.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Or not.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I think when they when their conscience is shocked right
by just these the depravity of you know, this the
behavior of people and what you know, what people can do,
what humans can do. Like we you know, Dan and
I both we see evil all the time. We deal
with quite a bit of evil people and not just
serial killers, but but you know, child predators who have
who have inflicted significant damage you know, to society, right,
(31:52):
And you know it's interesting how you know other countries
as well, don't you know, there's huge variation and how
the death penally gets applied, like in India, for example.
We've had somebody on what was it last year, we
had a criminologist I think that talked about the India, Like,
you know, they've extended the death penalty believed to like
sex crists now, like rape and things like that, and
(32:13):
some states in the United States are trying to do
that as well, even though yeah, the United States Supreme
Court has specifically said that the death penalty only applies
to first degree murdered the taking of a life.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
You know, you have states Florida, Louisiana, other places who
have enacted statutes that said a child sex abuser could
face the death punk Now, of course that'll get challenged
if it's ever applied again. But you know, that begs
the question if the United States Supreme Court has clearly
(32:49):
said that the death penalty does not apply to child rapists,
regardless of how horrific they are. Okay, why I would
a legislator and an entire legislature and governor sign a
law that says you can execute child rapes.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
What's the reason. It's politics? It's politics, Yeah, it's political.
But you know, again, it also would depend on so
that Supreme Court ruling was that in the nineteen seventies when.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
That case, the case I believe is Kennedy versus Louisiana, Okay,
probably around two thousand and nine, okay, because Louisiana had
again enacted child rape death penalty. A guy got convicted,
they sentenced him to death. His case went up to
the Supreme Court, and that's where the Supreme Court said,
once and for all, it's the death peny only applies
(33:44):
to taking a life.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah. Political, they're trying to err right, Yeah. I don't
know if that could get rided back up, Like in
other words, if they enact, say in Florida enacted a
statute that again is in conflict with this precedent, right,
this Supreme Court ruling, as we know, that's the last
of whether you know that could even get rinted back up.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I think that the reason, you know, with the what
they're what some of these states are counting on, is
that we have a different makeup in the United States
Supreme Court. And if we know that this court is
not afraid of overturning preceding.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, interesting times to see if this would change in
the future. I know, if you just do any random
online pull on any given day, you read the headlines
on social media about any sexual predator, offenders, child monsters,
just read the comments they are like execute there's a
(34:38):
strong opinion on that.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Very strong. Well, you know, and of course, in in prison,
there's a there is an unwritten code in prison, right,
As you know, child predators who have been convicted don't
do well. They have to essentially be separated and put
in sensitive med yards, but they still get you know,
sought out, and you know they're at risk for being
being killed. I mean, look at Dahmer. You know Dahmer
was murdered in prison and that was likely the reason.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, so I guess there's still honor among fees.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
There is a code, believe it or not, and we
call them, we call it the prison politics. But you
know there's a code there in there. They don't tolerate
child predators. That that's one thing I can guarantee you.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
So I'm curious about some of your research with people's
final words and thoughts and their last meal. I'm like,
what would be my final meal? Right? What would I
want to order on grub Hub? Or like, you know,
what's your final best meal?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Or how would I want to be put to death?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Now?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Craig introduced fentanyls, so I'm probably gonna go, yeah, well,
you know, I'm going to want an easy way out
as opposed to the firing squad. I'm just kind of
playing it out. I would not want to be hung
in the old days, every time I watched the Wild
West movies and like someone's sitting on a horse and
like the horse runs off the worst nightmare or you
know that.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Could be great painful.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, I said, there's been you know, specifically twenty ten,
there were some interesting final words. One that always jumped
out at me was there was a guy in Arizona
who was being executed. He was originally from Oklahoma, all right,
(36:18):
And if you followed Oklahoma football at all, you know
they're saying, is Boomer Sooner?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
All right?
Speaker 4 (36:25):
So that's what they always say, Boomer Sooner, you know.
Like and so this guy, he's on the gurney, he's
about to be injected with the legal drugs and the
lethal drugs. And they said any final word, and he says,
Boomer Sooner. He was still an Oklahoma football fan to
(36:46):
the end, so, you know, and you'll find that some people,
some guys are remorseful. I mean they you know, they express,
you know, their sorrow and apologize to victims' families. But
some you know, there was another death rowing made in
twenty ten. When they asked him if he had anything
(37:07):
to say, he forgave all the people who caused him
to get the death penalty. So he's saying, I forgive
you prison staff, I forgive you a district attorney, I
forgive you, you know, victims family for putting here. So
and some guys just say, hey, let it rip. That's
(37:29):
a recurring kind of theme. I don't know if they
have heard it from somebody else.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Right about it.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
But there's more than a few inmates when they got
done with whatever they were going to say, they said,
let her rip. So yeah, and it's interesting as well
is victims, the family of victims. You know, there are
some that you know, advocate for life in prison and
(37:57):
not the death penalty for the person who was responsible
for the loved one's debt. That there are some who
are you know, who say I forgave the defendant, But
there are others who you know, I'm glad the SOB's dead,
you know, I hope he burns in hell.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Seventy times was.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
A comment by someone in twenty ten. Like you said, Danny,
you wouldn't want to be hanged, But that's what someone said.
I wish he was hanged instead of gotten lethal injections.
So yeah, it's across the board with the defendants themselves
and the victims' families.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
What would your final words be?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
I would hope for forgiveness from the family and from
the Lord if I had any chance at the pearly gates.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
So, okay, you're going clean, You're getting right with God. Craig,
what's your final words?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
I did not do this crime. Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Of that, Yeah, I would want to maintain my innocencemember that.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Phone to ring on the wall too. From the Governor's
There was another guy.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
That was interesting, you know, and it's just you know,
you put things in, you try to rationalize thing. So
this guy's name was Kel Colburn Brown, and he he
murdered a woman, terrible crime in the state of Washington.
He was at about the murder a woman, you know,
in the same manner in California, but she escaped. So
(39:27):
they bring him back to Washington and you remember the
Green River, Oh yeah, yeah, So if you remember, they
didn't give him the death penalty because he agreed to
disclose all of his victims and try to find the
authorities find their body.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Right. So this Kel.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Corbyn Brown, he's laying there in the guarney and any
last words and he goes, you know, this isn't fair.
He said, I only killed one person, and the Green
River killed forty five.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I'm getting a death bone. He got life from prison.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So there's a guy still rationalizing moments before he's going
to be put to death.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Never mind he committed murder. It's like I didn't do
that many.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, he could have said, I actually killed more and wait,
let me tell you all about those where you can
find him. And then he just leads on a wild
goose hunt. There's no other victims, just a kid out
of there.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
That would be an interesting approach to trying to stretch
your life span out of it.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
Right, So last mills, I'm curious what I mean, I'm
not sure it makes a huge difference, Like, you know
you're gonna die, like your final meal, Like what is
being brought in here?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
What are they eating any themes?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Is it like taco bell?
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Well, you know, well that's that's not out of the question.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
The interesting thing is, you know, Texas is the most
prolific killer of condemned inmates. Okay, so they put more
people to death than anybody else, more people to death
than all other states can bind. Okay, and what Texas
did a couple of years ago, maybe a little longer.
Now they don't provide a last meal any longer. You
(41:08):
get exactly what everybody else in the prison eats for
your last dinner. But yeah, I mean there's some states.
I mean, you wouldn't believe it. You know, Big Max milkshakes,
two liter bottle of Mountain dew, two quarts of peanut
butter ice cream.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
It's very state to state and there's not a lot
of states that actually carry out executions. I think last
year there were twenty five executions. They were all in
six states, so that there's like a number, you know,
fifty dollars. You know, you can spend fifty dollars on
your last meal, so guys order a steak or like
(41:48):
you said, nachos or Dorito's. I mean, it's it's really
kind of insane to look at it and say, wow,
this is what they were thinking about the last couple
of days of or life a bit.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
McDonald's and some of these fast food companies probably don't
want it. Want it disclosed that these condemned killers are
ordering their food. It's their favorite, you know meal. They
probably were that under the wraps.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, yeah, just what you want a cereal killer saying, boy,
I love Big Max. Yeah, bring me a couple. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Actually that could really do some could really boost some
cells up.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You know, well, you know what.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Though, in this sort of true crime environment that we
all kind of lurk around in, I mean that probably
would I mean, you know, it probably would boost cells
there's no bad policity.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Really, yeah, I think right, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Because remember Luigi and what was he wearing and him
and his attorney had these matching outfits brand and then
the sales went up. It's like, where can I get
that suit? I'm going to look like like that. I
want to buy that to support them, and people can
become all crazed of what their favorite thing is and
go buy it. So you've probably thought about it, Matt,
(43:04):
about why you would want to eat is your final meal?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
You know that would be.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
I couldn't imagine eating knowing that I was going to
die in a couple of hours. I don't know, I
don't I'd say forget it.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Some that probably don't even care, right, I bet you
there's a few that have maybe said they don't want anything,
or oh yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
There's a lot of inmates that turned down their last meal.
And then I think some guys are just like, you
know what, I got a fifty dollars budget. I'm ordering
fifty dollars worth of food. I'm not going to eat it,
but I want them to pay fifty bucks. Might as
well go down with a fight.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, there's no way I would have any appetite. I
wouldn't I couldn't have any interest in consuming any food.
So fascinating conversation, and I want I want you to
let people know where they can find your book and
go to your website. Obviously I got this on Amazon,
(44:10):
but you also have a blog too, so kind of
connect with people and tell people where they can find
and follow you. And we'd love to have you back
on such an interesting conversation. There's so many more questions
I have. I'm just really just thought provoking. It's got
me thinking about just the whole justice system in general,
but like how it plays out across states, and it's fascinating.
(44:34):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Yeah, well it's great. I really appreciate you guys having
me on. You guys do a great job, and I've
always I've been looking forward to this for a couple
of months. But people can find my book, you know,
on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, the publishers McFarland in company.
(44:56):
You can buy directly from McFarland and company as well.
You mentioned my blog. I do write every day, and
I actually have written about probably the last couple hundred
or more executions, So every execution occurs, you know, I
(45:17):
write about it and I post about it, you know.
So I've been doing that since before twenty ten, so
you know, there's a lot there with regard to the
death Tony, and I also write a column for Creators Syndicate.
It's called Crime and Conduct, but it's a weekly column,
so I write about a lot of different things in
(45:38):
the criminal justice system. And as you both said, there's
a lot to write about right now in the courts
and in the capital and every place else. So I
enjoy doing that as well. So I really appreciate coming
on and I hope to do it again sometime.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Absolutely, We've loved to have you back. And Craig's a
professor and teaches, But I think this should be a
textbook that should be introduced in classroom for people that
really want to understand the death penalty capital punishment, because
I do believe there's a lot of misconceptions out there.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Yeah, and we're starting a forensic track in our program,
so yeah, that'd be a good book to definitely include
in the reading. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Well, I'll tell you that that's really interesting that you
both mentioned that is I'm an adjunct professor at a
small liberals college in western Pennsylvania, Till College, and so
I teach constitutional law and do process. But I also
have created a course on the death penalty, using my
book and other materials as the text for the class.
(46:44):
And I've probably taught it three or four times and
we're on schedule for the fall again. So students are
interested in it too. Of the classes that I teach,
it's it's usually has the highest enrollment among the students
there so so yeah, so I have a whole process
of reaching the course, the curriculum on the death balance.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
It's fine.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, that's wonderful. I'd sign up for your class. Fascinating. Well,
I appreciate your time so much, your wealth of information.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Thank you, Craig, thank you, Dana, thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.
(47:43):
That's psychology dr dot com.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
SATs
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist
and your host of the show. Killer Psychologist is for
true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued with the dark side
of psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Killer Psychologist. Today we're going to discuss
capital punishment, which seems to be a hot topic that
can stir up a lot of emotions for people. So
we're going to step into the shadow of the death
chamber with someone who's been closer to death row than
most would dare. Matthew Mangino, a former district attorney, a
(00:45):
criminal justice columnist, and author of The Executioners Toll, which
is a chilling and intimate chronicle of every execution carried
out in America over one unforgettable year. So today we're
going to confront the finality of justice. So who decides
(01:07):
when a life ends? And what really happens when the
sentence leaves no room for mercy or mistakes? So let's
find out.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Welcome Matthew, Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It seems to be such a hot topic that the
people seem to have a strong opinion about. And I
remember back in grad school somebody giving a presentation on
the death penalty, and I found out what little I
really knew about the system and how complex it was,
(01:41):
and it kind of left me scratching my head of saying, hmm,
there's so much more to learn and know about capital punishment.
So I want to hear from you your passion. And
you're prosecutor for many years, what even led to you
to go down this path to explore this topic.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
It's interesting as a prosecutor, I had personally prosecuted death
penalty cases, and I had always been interested in the
death penalty because the death penalty seems it's kind of
like a microcosm of what's going on generally in the
criminal justice system, and you'll see trends with regard to
(02:26):
the death penalty that then sort of overflow into into
the regular criminal justice system in the way cases are
handled and the way defendants and victims are looked at.
The reason I wanted to write about the death penalty
was because when you research the death penalty, you'll see
(02:49):
that a lot of people write about it, and normally
they write from a specific bias. They're either for it
or against it, and they cherry picked cases that really
demonstrate why we need a death penalty as well as
you know why we shouldn't have a death penalty. So
I was trying to think about a way to approach
(03:10):
the death penalty in an unbiased manner. And so what
I thought would be interesting would be to take all
the executions in a single year and look at those cases,
look at the crime itself, the investigations by police, the
trial of pills, you know, right up to last mills
(03:30):
and last words. And I thought by doing that I
would not be cherry picking. I'd have all the cases, good, bad,
whatever supports whoever's position, and then you know, read about it.
And what I did is I mixed in there the
constitutional considerations of the death penalty and the Supreme Court's
(03:53):
treatment of the death penalty and historically how the death
penalty came about at ancient times and is still here
in two and twenty five. And I thought I'd let
readers draw their own conclusions about the death penalty. And
so that was my intent to try to look at
the death penalty in an unbiased manner.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Is there any cases that stick out to you that
just faunt you?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Well, yeah, I mean there are some terrible cases that
I wrote about in this book. There were forty six
executions in twenty ten, and when you compare that with
you know, what's going on right now. I think we
had twenty five executions in twenty and twenty four. Because
(04:42):
of COVID, that number went way down. There are only
eleven executions in twenty and twenty twenty twenty one. But
we're way off the pinnacle of executions in the modern
era of the death penalty, and that was in the
late nineties, you know, ninety nine, I think there were
(05:03):
ninety eight executions in the United States, you know, So
that number's fallen off dramatically. But what's more interesting, Dana,
is that the number of death sentences has dramatically declined
and continues to decline. I think last year there were
(05:24):
twenty six death sentences across the country, and that number
has gone progressively down. There was a time in the
mid nineties, you know, nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six,
there were over three hundred death sentences a year.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Over the last couple of years, we've had twenty five,
twenty six death sentences across the United States. So I
think you can draw from that, at least among jurors
across the country. The death penalty has fallen out of favor.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Wow, And I know Craig and I were just talking
for you came on. But you know, there's some cases
in the media right now that are controversial and where
the death penalties being discussed and whether it will actually
be applied or not. Well, that will be interesting. And
Brian Kolberger which that case, that's a discussion. And then
(06:20):
Luigi Mangioni. You know, the death penalty is a discussion
that comes up, and so you hear a lot of
people talking about it. And I would love to hear
your thoughts on either of those cases.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Well, I think if I'm not mistaken, in both cases
the death penalties being sought. I think the United States
Attorney General just recently approved seeking the death penalty for
Luigi Mangioni and for Coleberger. I believe the death penalty
is on the table as well in Idaho. You know,
(06:56):
so yeah, I mean those are high profile cases that
people know a lot about if you're interested in true crime,
and there certainly is it a surge in interest among
people who are interested in true crime. These cases are
going to be watched, you know, very carefully. And you know,
the death penalty, it's very formalistic in the process. And
(07:19):
that came after the United States Supreme Court decisions in
the mid seventies, you know, because between nineteen sixty seven
and nineteen seventy seven there were no executions in this country.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Zero.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
And then there was a case Firman versus Georgia, in
which the United States Supreme Court said that it didn't
say that the death penalty was unconstitutional. What it said
was the way it was being applied it was arbitrary.
And so they struck down the death penalty as it
was being applied in states across the country and in
(07:55):
the federal government. It was only a couple of years
until the decision again out of the state of Georgia
said well what happened with states went back and they
rewrote their death penalty law. And the changes that they
made were that no longer would a judge decide whether
to impose the death penalty. A jury would and in
(08:17):
order to make the whole process a little fair and
less arbitrary, that was the idea. The jury would decide
guilt or innocence on the first degree murder charge, and
then there would be a second mini trial, they bifurcated
it then that the jury would decide life or death.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
In those cases.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And so it was a couple of years after the
firm and decision that the death penalty was back. And
you know, interesting because this is in the news a lot.
The first execution in this country after the death penalty
was reinstated. You know what I referred to as the
modern era of the death penalty, and you may recall
was Gary Gilmour, which was a firing squad execution in Utah.
(09:04):
And you know, right now, we've just observed two executions
in the last couple of months in South Carolina by
the firing squad. So it's you know, there was a
lot of the only state that was using the fire
firing squad in any situation was Utah, and they actually
(09:24):
did one in twenty ten when I wrote my book,
Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a firing squad. But
you know, it's sort of you know, it comes around,
you know, goes around. So everybody thought that the firing
squad was our cake and brutal, and now we have
it back and other states have it available if inmates
(09:46):
so choose death row inmates.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So it's really kind.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Of a dramatic turnaround in how we look at executions
of this country.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, so there are some states where an inmate can
choose firing squad.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
South Carolina is one, and they've done it twice.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Now.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Oklahoma has just enacted a statute that makes the execution
by firing squad available if they can't come up with
lethal injection drugs. So if they don't have lethal injection
drugs available, they'll turn to the firing squad. Of course,
Utah continues to have the firing squad as an option.
(10:27):
The interesting thing about the firing squad is that there
have been many different methods of execution used in this country,
you know, from hanging to the electric chair, to the
firing squad, the gas chamber. You know, we're using nitrogen
hypoxy now, and I think Oklahoma has carried an execution
(10:50):
out using nitrogen gas now. So in all those forms
other than the nitrogen which is being used recently, all
those other forms of execution have been vetted by the
United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has never
said that any of those methods was cruel and unusual. Okay,
(11:12):
So that eighth Amendment argument doesn't work. So people have
looked at the death penalt looked at the methods of execution.
You know, we've had botched lethal injections. People were in
terrific pain for extended periods of time until they actually died.
(11:33):
You know, the same with the gas chamber. You know,
we've had people catch on fire with the electric chair,
and back in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century,
you know, a bad hangman caused a lot of pain
for people who were hung across the country. But the
firing squad, if done properly, is final, very quickly. I
(11:58):
mean a matter of seconds. Have multiple people marksmen shooting
into the chest of the condemned person, and guess what,
there's there's not a lot of pain and suffering. It's
you're not gonna sit there for twenty minutes, you know,
bleeding to death. It's almost instantaneous. So some some researchers
have suggested, Hey, the firing squad, well, you might have
(12:21):
thought in the past that it was barbaric and it
was kind of like the wild West. Hey, it might
be it might be the most humane way to carry
out an execution.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I've got to chime in with the you know, and
get your thoughts on this because you know, as you know,
we have a we have an overdose epidemic in the
country with fentanyl and such and it. Of course I'm
not a physician, but it just I what I don't
understand is, you know, lethal injection, the methods that they
use currently, as you stated, we have these ongoing problems
(12:54):
where they can't seem to stop the heart of these
inmates properly. A small amount of fentanyl will seat your
breathing and stop your heart and by the way, you're
going to be euphoric before it ends, and there's absolutely
no pain associated with it. What's not by personal experience.
But my point is people can od quite efficiently without
(13:17):
any trouble whatsoever. It just baffles me that they can't
figure this out, you know, in terms of you know,
with modern medicine, you know, the way we have it.
Does that just baffle you? It baffles me.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
I think, you know, some of the problems exists, and
I just want to go through a couple of them.
So Number one, it's hard to find people, doctors, researchers
who want to try to develop the best way to
stop the human hearts. So sometimes you're you know, you're
(13:50):
you're not dealing with the up upper echelon of researchers
who who are involved in this process. I think the
other issue is, you know, when lethal injection first came
about in most states, if not all, it was a
three drug protocol that they used, okay, and so what
(14:12):
they would use is, you know, they would use a
drug that would essentially make that person fall to sleep,
you know, go into a slumber. The second one was
a paralytic. And the reason that they used the paralytic
is because sometimes it was unsightly to watch a person
(14:35):
being drugged to death.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
They'd gyrate, they'd.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Move, and so the only reason for the paralytic was
to make it more palatable, so to speak, for the witnesses.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
They so they wouldn't be upset by looking at this guy,
you know, gyrating while he's doing to death. And then
and then you had the drug to stop the heart.
And then you know, the company that made these drugs
didn't want to be associated with the death penalty. So
then you were going to you know, compounding pharmacies where
they would make their own drugs that were similar to
(15:11):
what these were. And that's what happened, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
So now some states have gone to a single drug protocol.
But again, you know, the companies that make these drugs
don't want to be associated with so you're you're ending
up in some laboratory in a compounding pharmacy where they're
trying to make a lethal injection drug, and that's why
you have the problems that you do.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, now that Greg's offering fentanyl.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Look, fentanyl's quite readily available in the United States, right,
I mean, and we know that fentanyl in quite small dosings, right,
like I'm talking about street fentanyl. Of course, this would
have to be a pharmaceutical grade, like you know, if
you're going to do it in this in this context.
But I just you know, we know how to use opioid.
You know, we know that opioid drugs, when misused, they
(16:00):
stop the heart, but well they stop breathing, but then
ultimately that leads to you know, the heart stopping and
that's that's via like an overdose. Right, So and it's
not that hard to do that, It's quite simple. But
I think, like you know, what Matt said is that
we can't just use street drugs, you know, to implement
this kind of a. I still would think that there
would be somebody you know in the pharmaceutical industry or
(16:23):
you know, in the in the in the drug delivery,
you know, industry that would be able to develop a
protocol right like that had an opioid you know, component
to it that you know, because then then you know,
you're not there's there's no pain in suffering generally associated
with this people you know, essentially just they go to sleep,
they check out, and there's no I mean, there would
(16:45):
be no eighth the of an issue with that whatsoever,
I would I would argue, but that's just fascinates me
that you know, it's the same thing. And you know
that's why California, California, like we have the death penalty
in California, but it's not enforced obviously, and they make
those arguments that it's like, you know, we don't have
an efficient way to do this, and I would disagree
with that. We have very efficient ways to do it.
(17:07):
Just look at all the overdose deaths we're seeing right now.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, Pennsylvania is similar. So
Pennsylvania has had the death penalty on the books, you know,
since you know the the you know, pre Constitution pre
United States, but in the modern era of the death penalty,
when the death penalty came back, Pennsylvania has only executed
three people. The last one was in nineteen ninety nine,
(17:32):
Gary Heidnik, who was a serial killer and tortured women.
And the thing about those three, they were all that
are considered volunteers, which means they gave up their right
to appeal and just said, you know, execute me. And
there hasn't been an involuntary execution in Pennsylvania since the
(17:57):
mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So the thing I will give credit to you.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
So so basically what happens is, you know, the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania has made it difficult, you know at
certain times, and you know, different governors have had sort
of unofficial moratoriums on it, Governor Wolf who served two
terms here. But you know Governor Shapiro, and I give
him credit for that. You know, people, you know, politicians
(18:23):
always want to say, well, you know, we want to
make it more efficient, we want to make sure we
don't make mistakes. You know, you're either for it or
you're against it. Is the way I look at the
death penalty and Governor Shapiro, who was a former attorney
general in the state. He came out right after he
got elected and said, listen, I've changed my mind about
(18:43):
the death penalty. I don't think there's an efficient way
to carry out executions. I don't think we can use,
you know, a criminal justice system that it isn't absolute
to ultimately take somebody's life. So I'm opposed to the
death penalty. There won't be any death penalty warrants. I'm
not saying I want to have a study to see
(19:06):
if it can be done better. I'm telling you, as
long as i'm governor, there won't be any executions in
the state of Pennsylvania. So I give them credit for
at least taking a position which can be controversial. You know,
you can certainly be looked at being soft on crime
if you take that position. But I give them credit
for coming on and saying, for me, this is now
(19:28):
a moral issue, it's not a legal issue.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah. I was going to say, that's not his arguments
that you know, there aren't efficient ways or I think
those are just maybe rationalizations for you know, justification for
why it sounds like this was more of a moral
position he was taking, which you know, that's fine. People
have their moral arguments for why they don't believe in
that right. But we and I know Dana probably wants
to ask about this. But you know, since we're both
(19:54):
forensic psychologists, we've worked and I've been on death penalty cases,
you know, where I've I've testified as to you know,
to mitigate to try to get the death penalty off
the table. But the question about like that I always
you know, would like answered and oftentimes is not addressed
in some of these capital cases, is the issue of
is this individual that we have in front of us,
(20:15):
are they a psychopath? Or are they not a psychopath?
And that matters because it matters because we know that
psychopathy is not a treatable condition. If it's not a
disorder that we can we as psychologists have any treatments
that would work to remove that or reduce that that
excess of that severe antisocial personality architecture. So I'm wondering
(20:38):
what you what your thoughts are on that As far
as cases like these cases here, were any of those
folks assessed, you know, psychologically assessed or forensically assessed throughout
that process? Yeah, so I'm sure that they were.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I mean, as you said, I mean, you've been involved in,
you know, the penalty phase of trials where the prosecution
is going to set forth their aggravating factors and the
defense is going to set forth their mitigating factors. You know,
the best example that I have, you know, with this
(21:15):
whole idea of psychopathy or you know someone who's a
sociopath or a psychopath. You know, I spent six years
on the prole Board in Pennsylvania. So after I left
the District Attorney's office, Governor Rendell, who was governor at
the time, appointed me to the pro board. So I
spent a six year term there. And what we did
on the prole board is we would break into panels
(21:37):
across the state and we would interview every you know,
violent offender who was eligible for parole. And you know,
being a district attorney in suburban Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania,
you know, I thought I saw a lot and I
experienced a lot. I didn't scratch the surface until I
(21:57):
got on the pro board and start interviewing people. But
you know, it was interesting. This is not a scientific
this is anecdotal, okay. But you you would be in
an interview with somebody and sometimes you know, guys would
show up for their interview, you know, their hair was
standing up there and taking a shower for a week,
like they didn't even know this was going to happen.
They just walked in the door. But every once in
(22:20):
a while you would get somebody who would come in
there and they would be perfect. They answered every question perfectly,
exactly what you wanted to hear, clean cut, you know, charismatic,
you know, just explaining in detail their their reentry plan
and taking responsibility. And I you know, so you're taking
(22:44):
your notes and you're thinking, and then all of a
sudden it hits you and you say, I'm talking to
a psychopath right.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right, I'm being played. It's too perfect.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
And then you try to like, you know, how can
I ask a question or get into a subject that's going.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
To reveal that and you can't.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
And so that's my experience, and it didn't happen often,
but those times you're like, oh, well, in a lot
of instances, you know, those assessments are not necessarily done
throughout the trial process or even even through the penalty phases.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Like I can speak to the one case that I
was testifying for the defense on which was I was
only testifying as to mitigation or to try to get
the death penalty you know, off the tables in the
penalty phase, and the defendant in this case had only
been evaluated by a previous psychologist and they didn't do
any formal testing. The defense didn't get any formal testing
done for obvious reason, so they had an opinion about
(23:41):
a certain condition that did not involve, you know, the
discussion of antisocial personality disorder, which is what you know,
psychopathy is classified as. But the reason I bring this
up is that this is a discussion that it's from
a public policy standpoint, I think that needs to be
explored more because there is a difference between you know,
whether or not somebody is redeemable or not in terms
(24:03):
of their ability to re enter or to be rehabilitated,
you know, And what we know from the literature is
that psychopaths are not rehabilitatable at this you know, we
don't have evidence that we can rehabilitate them. And there
is a distinction particularly amongst the ones that are you know,
that are deemed dangerous to society, but also dangerous to
the institutional society in which they are residing. In other words,
(24:26):
in the prison, right. So so some argue and again
this is again an argument about you know, why the
death penalty is not appropriate is that you know, you
could give a life sentence and then protect society, you know,
from these individuals. But they're forgetting about something. They're forgetting
about the prison culture and the prison society and the
people that work and within those institutions. And those are
(24:47):
people too, right because their staff and there there are
other inmates that don't necessarily want to be killed. And
I've worked in maximum security prisons and I've worked with psychopaths,
psychopaths who have killed other inmates while in custody, and
they are not you know, they're not on death row.
They are lifers, and they commit murder when they're in prison.
And so so that's an interesting thing to think about.
(25:08):
You know, it's like we I think we miss a
lot of these people, like in terms of like figuring
out like who are the really really dangerous ones that
are dangerous even when they're in you know, they're incarcerated
for the rest of their life, right, And that's an interesting.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Argument, it is, and interesting that you bring up, you know,
the subject of the well being of other inmates. One
of the cases that I wrote about in twenty ten,
actually the last execution of twenty ten was a guy
named Mark David Doody okay, and he was in prison.
(25:48):
He was serving two life sentences and really he hadn't
killed that they knew of in the past, but he
was doing life sentences as an habitual violent offender.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
So he got life sentences because he had harmed a
lot of people, okay. And so he's in prison and
he decides that he doesn't want to be in prison anymore.
He knows he's never getting out, but he doesn't really
have the courage to kill himself. So what he does
is he murders his cellmate. Okay, he tricks him into
(26:22):
some story. You know, hey, listen, if I tie you
up and act like I'm harming you, they'll both give
us our own cells, and you know, we'll have our
own space. So, you know, this young guy he's in
the cell with falls forward. He ties him up, and
he strangles him to death and kills Then he gets
a piece of paper and starts writing a letter to
the kid's mother saying, hey.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know your son is a loser. It's not a
big deal.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
You know, that kind of thing. And he tells the
prison officials. He says, listen, he said, execute me, or
I'm going to kill again. And time it may not
be an inmate, it might be personnel here, you know,
and I'm just telling you kill me or I'm gonna
(27:08):
kill again. So you know, when you when you look
at as I said, you know, make your own decision.
You know, that's the case that cries out for the
death penalt right. That's a great, great illustration and example
of this. Yeah, where again, I mean, I'm not making
the argument for or against the death penalty. I'm actually
a little ambivalent about it in many senses. But I
do believe that, like well, what you describe these situations
(27:30):
where we if we have clear evidence that this person
has what we call really severe psychopathy, they pose imminent
danger to life, you know, and that includes people that
in the incarcerated environments. We have to ask the question,
are we doing a disservice to the community by not
putting that person to death? Right in those kind of
(27:52):
rarer cases. I mean, I'm not these are these are
generally fairly rare, but.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
They do happen because I can think of a case
where I had a you know, a guy on my
case slow when I first started working at New Folsom Prison,
which is a maxim security prison in California. And the
guy was in the psychiatric services, you know, which is
a lock up unit that's a prison inside the prison,
as you know. And you know he was in that
lock up unit because he murdered his CELLI just in
a similar way that you just described. And what's interesting
(28:17):
is he murdered the celly because he found out that
the cellmate was convicted of a child sex offense. So
that was his rationale for thing that murder. But you know,
he was already life without so you know, they often
the DA in some of these instances. They sometimes they'll prosecute.
Sometimes they'll decline if the person already has consecutive life
sentences because it may not be you know, feasible to
(28:39):
even bother doing that.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Let me ask you a quick question off the subject, Craig.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Okay, so you.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Worked at fulsome prison, New Folsome, Yes, Oh not the
Johnny Cash. I was always trying to I always wondered
why Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, but he
ended up in fulsome prison in California.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
He did. He played the old false So there's two prisons,
you know, in Fulsome So there's the old there's the
second prison built in California in the eighteen hundred. San
Quentin was the first one, and actually death Row was
at old Fulsom for a while and then it went
to San Quentin. But anyway, the new new prison was
built like in nineteen eighty six, and that's a that's
a max you know, super max, a maxim security facility.
(29:19):
So yeah, Johnny did play there, but there's pictures of him,
you know, playing you know, to the inmates back and
what with the nineteen sixties or it was quite a
while ago, but so yeah, yeah, that's what I mean
about the death It's so nuanced, you know what I mean.
We were talking before we started taping even you know,
(29:39):
one of the things that I found really interesting is
to situations. And the first one was Saddam who sang okay.
So you know, at the time, Saddam Hussein was arrested
and he was going on trial and then you know,
he ultimately was executed. You know, the.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Polling at the time said that about sixty one sixty
two percent of people supported death bone. Okay, So that
meant thirty seven percent did not. When it came to
soudomuse Ain and they did a polling with him, that
number one up to eighty three percent of people supported
the death palt, So one in five people who originally
(30:27):
said they didn't support the death penalty supported it for him.
The same scenario with the Oklahoma City bomber, same exact scenario. Nationally,
about sixty two sixty three percent people supported death done.
When it came to him, the numbers shot up to
eighty five percent, So people who didn't support the death
(30:50):
penalty supported it. For those two guys, they gave a
good indication of how because it's tough, a murder happens
in your neighborhood and all of a sudden you never
thought much of the death time, but now you support it.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
But it was it was hard to.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Gauge that on a national scale, And I think those
two cases gave us an opportunity to see how people's
minds change when they're aware of the evil that an
individual is done.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Yeah, and that shows that, you know, it isn't an
absolute in many people's you know, consciousness in terms of
whether they support it.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Or not.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I think when they when their conscience is shocked right
by just these the depravity of you know, this the
behavior of people and what you know, what people can do,
what humans can do. Like we you know, Dan and
I both we see evil all the time. We deal
with quite a bit of evil people and not just
serial killers, but but you know, child predators who have
who have inflicted significant damage you know, to society, right,
(31:52):
And you know it's interesting how you know other countries
as well, don't you know, there's huge variation and how
the death penally gets applied, like in India, for example.
We've had somebody on what was it last year, we
had a criminologist I think that talked about the India, Like,
you know, they've extended the death penalty believed to like
sex crists now, like rape and things like that, and
(32:13):
some states in the United States are trying to do
that as well, even though yeah, the United States Supreme
Court has specifically said that the death penalty only applies
to first degree murdered the taking of a life.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
You know, you have states Florida, Louisiana, other places who
have enacted statutes that said a child sex abuser could
face the death punk Now, of course that'll get challenged
if it's ever applied again. But you know, that begs
the question if the United States Supreme Court has clearly
(32:49):
said that the death penalty does not apply to child rapists,
regardless of how horrific they are. Okay, why I would
a legislator and an entire legislature and governor sign a
law that says you can execute child rapes.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
What's the reason. It's politics? It's politics, Yeah, it's political.
But you know, again, it also would depend on so
that Supreme Court ruling was that in the nineteen seventies when.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
That case, the case I believe is Kennedy versus Louisiana, Okay,
probably around two thousand and nine, okay, because Louisiana had
again enacted child rape death penalty. A guy got convicted,
they sentenced him to death. His case went up to
the Supreme Court, and that's where the Supreme Court said,
once and for all, it's the death peny only applies
(33:44):
to taking a life.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah. Political, they're trying to err right, Yeah. I don't
know if that could get rided back up, Like in
other words, if they enact, say in Florida enacted a
statute that again is in conflict with this precedent, right,
this Supreme Court ruling, as we know, that's the last
of whether you know that could even get rinted back up.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I think that the reason, you know, with the what
they're what some of these states are counting on, is
that we have a different makeup in the United States
Supreme Court. And if we know that this court is
not afraid of overturning preceding.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, interesting times to see if this would change in
the future. I know, if you just do any random
online pull on any given day, you read the headlines
on social media about any sexual predator, offenders, child monsters,
just read the comments they are like execute there's a
(34:38):
strong opinion on that.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Very strong. Well, you know, and of course, in in prison,
there's a there is an unwritten code in prison, right,
As you know, child predators who have been convicted don't
do well. They have to essentially be separated and put
in sensitive med yards, but they still get you know,
sought out, and you know they're at risk for being
being killed. I mean, look at Dahmer. You know Dahmer
was murdered in prison and that was likely the reason.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, so I guess there's still honor among fees.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
There is a code, believe it or not, and we
call them, we call it the prison politics. But you
know there's a code there in there. They don't tolerate
child predators. That that's one thing I can guarantee you.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
So I'm curious about some of your research with people's
final words and thoughts and their last meal. I'm like,
what would be my final meal? Right? What would I
want to order on grub Hub? Or like, you know,
what's your final best meal?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Or how would I want to be put to death?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Now?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Craig introduced fentanyls, so I'm probably gonna go, yeah, well,
you know, I'm going to want an easy way out
as opposed to the firing squad. I'm just kind of
playing it out. I would not want to be hung
in the old days, every time I watched the Wild
West movies and like someone's sitting on a horse and
like the horse runs off the worst nightmare or you
know that.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Could be great painful.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, I said, there's been you know, specifically twenty ten,
there were some interesting final words. One that always jumped
out at me was there was a guy in Arizona
who was being executed. He was originally from Oklahoma, all right,
(36:18):
And if you followed Oklahoma football at all, you know
they're saying, is Boomer Sooner?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
All right?
Speaker 4 (36:25):
So that's what they always say, Boomer Sooner, you know.
Like and so this guy, he's on the gurney, he's
about to be injected with the legal drugs and the
lethal drugs. And they said any final word, and he says,
Boomer Sooner. He was still an Oklahoma football fan to
(36:46):
the end, so, you know, and you'll find that some people,
some guys are remorseful. I mean they you know, they express,
you know, their sorrow and apologize to victims' families. But
some you know, there was another death rowing made in
twenty ten. When they asked him if he had anything
(37:07):
to say, he forgave all the people who caused him
to get the death penalty. So he's saying, I forgive
you prison staff, I forgive you a district attorney, I
forgive you, you know, victims family for putting here. So
and some guys just say, hey, let it rip. That's
(37:29):
a recurring kind of theme. I don't know if they
have heard it from somebody else.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Right about it.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
But there's more than a few inmates when they got
done with whatever they were going to say, they said,
let her rip. So yeah, and it's interesting as well
is victims, the family of victims. You know, there are
some that you know, advocate for life in prison and
(37:57):
not the death penalty for the person who was responsible
for the loved one's debt. That there are some who
are you know, who say I forgave the defendant, But
there are others who you know, I'm glad the SOB's dead,
you know, I hope he burns in hell.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Seventy times was.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
A comment by someone in twenty ten. Like you said, Danny,
you wouldn't want to be hanged, But that's what someone said.
I wish he was hanged instead of gotten lethal injections.
So yeah, it's across the board with the defendants themselves
and the victims' families.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
What would your final words be?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
I would hope for forgiveness from the family and from
the Lord if I had any chance at the pearly gates.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
So, okay, you're going clean, You're getting right with God. Craig,
what's your final words?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
I did not do this crime. Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Of that, Yeah, I would want to maintain my innocencemember that.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Phone to ring on the wall too. From the Governor's
There was another guy.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
That was interesting, you know, and it's just you know,
you put things in, you try to rationalize thing. So
this guy's name was Kel Colburn Brown, and he he
murdered a woman, terrible crime in the state of Washington.
He was at about the murder a woman, you know,
in the same manner in California, but she escaped. So
(39:27):
they bring him back to Washington and you remember the
Green River, Oh yeah, yeah, So if you remember, they
didn't give him the death penalty because he agreed to
disclose all of his victims and try to find the
authorities find their body.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Right. So this Kel.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Corbyn Brown, he's laying there in the guarney and any
last words and he goes, you know, this isn't fair.
He said, I only killed one person, and the Green
River killed forty five.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I'm getting a death bone. He got life from prison.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So there's a guy still rationalizing moments before he's going
to be put to death.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Never mind he committed murder. It's like I didn't do
that many.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, he could have said, I actually killed more and wait,
let me tell you all about those where you can
find him. And then he just leads on a wild
goose hunt. There's no other victims, just a kid out
of there.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
That would be an interesting approach to trying to stretch
your life span out of it.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
Right, So last mills, I'm curious what I mean, I'm
not sure it makes a huge difference, Like, you know
you're gonna die, like your final meal, Like what is
being brought in here?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
What are they eating any themes?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Is it like taco bell?
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Well, you know, well that's that's not out of the question.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
The interesting thing is, you know, Texas is the most
prolific killer of condemned inmates. Okay, so they put more
people to death than anybody else, more people to death
than all other states can bind. Okay, and what Texas
did a couple of years ago, maybe a little longer.
Now they don't provide a last meal any longer. You
(41:08):
get exactly what everybody else in the prison eats for
your last dinner. But yeah, I mean there's some states.
I mean, you wouldn't believe it. You know, Big Max milkshakes,
two liter bottle of Mountain dew, two quarts of peanut
butter ice cream.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
It's very state to state and there's not a lot
of states that actually carry out executions. I think last
year there were twenty five executions. They were all in
six states, so that there's like a number, you know,
fifty dollars. You know, you can spend fifty dollars on
your last meal, so guys order a steak or like
(41:48):
you said, nachos or Dorito's. I mean, it's it's really
kind of insane to look at it and say, wow,
this is what they were thinking about the last couple
of days of or life a bit.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
McDonald's and some of these fast food companies probably don't
want it. Want it disclosed that these condemned killers are
ordering their food. It's their favorite, you know meal. They
probably were that under the wraps.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, yeah, just what you want a cereal killer saying, boy,
I love Big Max. Yeah, bring me a couple. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Actually that could really do some could really boost some
cells up.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You know, well, you know what.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Though, in this sort of true crime environment that we
all kind of lurk around in, I mean that probably
would I mean, you know, it probably would boost cells
there's no bad policity.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Really, yeah, I think right, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Because remember Luigi and what was he wearing and him
and his attorney had these matching outfits brand and then
the sales went up. It's like, where can I get
that suit? I'm going to look like like that. I
want to buy that to support them, and people can
become all crazed of what their favorite thing is and
go buy it. So you've probably thought about it, Matt,
(43:04):
about why you would want to eat is your final meal?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
You know that would be.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
I couldn't imagine eating knowing that I was going to
die in a couple of hours. I don't know, I
don't I'd say forget it.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Some that probably don't even care, right, I bet you
there's a few that have maybe said they don't want anything,
or oh yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
There's a lot of inmates that turned down their last meal.
And then I think some guys are just like, you
know what, I got a fifty dollars budget. I'm ordering
fifty dollars worth of food. I'm not going to eat it,
but I want them to pay fifty bucks. Might as
well go down with a fight.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, there's no way I would have any appetite. I
wouldn't I couldn't have any interest in consuming any food.
So fascinating conversation, and I want I want you to
let people know where they can find your book and
go to your website. Obviously I got this on Amazon,
(44:10):
but you also have a blog too, so kind of
connect with people and tell people where they can find
and follow you. And we'd love to have you back
on such an interesting conversation. There's so many more questions
I have. I'm just really just thought provoking. It's got
me thinking about just the whole justice system in general,
but like how it plays out across states, and it's fascinating.
(44:34):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Yeah, well it's great. I really appreciate you guys having
me on. You guys do a great job, and I've
always I've been looking forward to this for a couple
of months. But people can find my book, you know,
on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, the publishers McFarland in company.
(44:56):
You can buy directly from McFarland and company as well.
You mentioned my blog. I do write every day, and
I actually have written about probably the last couple hundred
or more executions, So every execution occurs, you know, I
(45:17):
write about it and I post about it, you know.
So I've been doing that since before twenty ten, so
you know, there's a lot there with regard to the
death Tony, and I also write a column for Creators Syndicate.
It's called Crime and Conduct, but it's a weekly column,
so I write about a lot of different things in
(45:38):
the criminal justice system. And as you both said, there's
a lot to write about right now in the courts
and in the capital and every place else. So I
enjoy doing that as well. So I really appreciate coming
on and I hope to do it again sometime.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Absolutely, We've loved to have you back. And Craig's a
professor and teaches, But I think this should be a
textbook that should be introduced in classroom for people that
really want to understand the death penalty capital punishment, because
I do believe there's a lot of misconceptions out there.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Yeah, and we're starting a forensic track in our program,
so yeah, that'd be a good book to definitely include
in the reading. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Well, I'll tell you that that's really interesting that you
both mentioned that is I'm an adjunct professor at a
small liberals college in western Pennsylvania, Till College, and so
I teach constitutional law and do process. But I also
have created a course on the death penalty, using my
book and other materials as the text for the class.
(46:44):
And I've probably taught it three or four times and
we're on schedule for the fall again. So students are
interested in it too. Of the classes that I teach,
it's it's usually has the highest enrollment among the students
there so so yeah, so I have a whole process
of reaching the course, the curriculum on the death balance.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
It's fine.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, that's wonderful. I'd sign up for your class. Fascinating. Well,
I appreciate your time so much, your wealth of information.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Thank you, Craig, thank you, Dana, thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.
(47:43):
That's psychology dr dot com.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
SATs
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