1
00:00:15,410 --> 00:00:24,090
Speaker 1: Pushkin, Florence, Alabama, nineteen eighty eight. A preacher has an affair,

2
00:00:24,890 --> 00:00:28,970
Speaker 1: a woman is murdered. It sounds like the beginning of

3
00:00:29,010 --> 00:00:32,690
Speaker 1: one of the many true crime series that saturate the

4
00:00:32,730 --> 00:00:35,850
Speaker 1: podcast world. But when I tell you that I'm teeing

5
00:00:35,930 --> 00:00:40,250
Speaker 1: up the latest series of revisionist history, you know it's

6
00:00:40,250 --> 00:00:46,090
Speaker 1: going to be different. Malcolm Gladwell doesn't do podcast by numbers. Instead,

7
00:00:46,570 --> 00:00:49,810
Speaker 1: he's taking this terrible crime as a jumping off point

8
00:00:50,050 --> 00:00:52,530
Speaker 1: to explore the death penalty in the US.

9
00:00:56,970 --> 00:00:57,970
Speaker 2: The bad news.

10
00:00:58,930 --> 00:01:03,770
Speaker 3: That's how a Wlizabeth said, graded for justice to.

11
00:01:03,770 --> 00:01:08,930
Speaker 4: Occur is still damaging all others. It's still hurts us

12
00:01:08,930 --> 00:01:09,650
Speaker 4: to think about.

13
00:01:10,450 --> 00:01:14,530
Speaker 2: There was this joke that said that it was easier

14
00:01:14,570 --> 00:01:18,370
Speaker 2: to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering

15
00:01:18,410 --> 00:01:21,050
Speaker 2: somebody than it was to be divorced.

16
00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:24,650
Speaker 5: I don't know which one of them, kid, I really don't,

17
00:01:25,930 --> 00:01:29,850
Speaker 5: but I think both of them got what they probably deserved.

18
00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:33,250
Speaker 1: He would say to himself, turned to the right, to

19
00:01:33,290 --> 00:01:35,010
Speaker 1: the victim's family and apologize.

20
00:01:35,130 --> 00:01:37,250
Speaker 3: Turn to the left, tell my family, I love him.

21
00:01:37,650 --> 00:01:41,450
Speaker 2: He was taken out of the cell thinking that his

22
00:01:41,730 --> 00:01:43,410
Speaker 2: execution was imminent.

23
00:01:43,610 --> 00:01:48,730
Speaker 6: Because a cold blooded convicted killer complains about the prodding

24
00:01:48,930 --> 00:02:02,650
Speaker 6: and poking of a small ivy line. Really, we recently

25
00:02:02,850 --> 00:02:06,610
Speaker 6: explored capital punishment in the UK with our episode of

26
00:02:06,650 --> 00:02:09,810
Speaker 6: Cautionary Tales Derek Bentley die.

27
00:02:10,490 --> 00:02:12,770
Speaker 1: So I was keen to find out more about revisionist

28
00:02:12,810 --> 00:02:16,570
Speaker 1: history the Alabama murders, and I am delighted to say

29
00:02:16,570 --> 00:02:19,410
Speaker 1: that Malcolm god Will joins me now. Malcolm, welcome back

30
00:02:19,450 --> 00:02:20,370
Speaker 1: to Cause Me Tales.

31
00:02:20,810 --> 00:02:22,490
Speaker 4: Thank you, Tim, delighted to be here.

32
00:02:22,930 --> 00:02:24,970
Speaker 1: So what drew you to this story, Malcolm?

33
00:02:25,370 --> 00:02:28,170
Speaker 7: I met a woman a friend of a friend, who

34
00:02:28,250 --> 00:02:32,210
Speaker 7: was a trauma specialist, and I thought she was really interesting,

35
00:02:32,890 --> 00:02:35,210
Speaker 7: and so I just started meeting with her once a

36
00:02:35,210 --> 00:02:37,330
Speaker 7: month or so for two two and a half hours,

37
00:02:38,170 --> 00:02:40,250
Speaker 7: and she just told me about her life and her work,

38
00:02:40,290 --> 00:02:45,290
Speaker 7: and she treats torture victims, and then she started doing

39
00:02:45,410 --> 00:02:48,250
Speaker 7: people with suffering from PTSD, and she spent time at

40
00:02:48,290 --> 00:02:51,810
Speaker 7: Guantanamo Bay, and then she started working with people on

41
00:02:51,850 --> 00:02:54,930
Speaker 7: death row because they were often people who had been

42
00:02:55,090 --> 00:02:59,250
Speaker 7: greatly traumatized as children. She'd done something like thirty five

43
00:02:59,730 --> 00:03:01,650
Speaker 7: death row cases that was the course of her career,

44
00:03:01,770 --> 00:03:04,610
Speaker 7: but this was the one that stayed with her and

45
00:03:05,370 --> 00:03:08,690
Speaker 7: immediately when she started to talk about this case, I realized, Oh,

46
00:03:08,810 --> 00:03:10,850
Speaker 7: that's that's why we're doing this.

47
00:03:10,970 --> 00:03:11,170
Speaker 4: You know.

48
00:03:11,810 --> 00:03:15,250
Speaker 7: I always like discovering the purpose for an interview in

49
00:03:15,290 --> 00:03:18,610
Speaker 7: the interview as opposed to before, and this was a

50
00:03:18,650 --> 00:03:21,970
Speaker 7: perfect example of that. When she started to talk about it,

51
00:03:22,010 --> 00:03:24,570
Speaker 7: what she was saying was so powerful and emotional that

52
00:03:25,050 --> 00:03:26,810
Speaker 7: I realized, that's the story I wanted to tell.

53
00:03:27,410 --> 00:03:30,050
Speaker 1: In your conversation with her really really stayed with me

54
00:03:30,090 --> 00:03:32,690
Speaker 1: as well as a listener. There's a real sense of

55
00:03:33,450 --> 00:03:37,090
Speaker 1: place in the season. You take us right into the

56
00:03:37,130 --> 00:03:40,170
Speaker 1: heart of the Bible Belt and this very devout area.

57
00:03:41,210 --> 00:03:46,690
Speaker 1: But the Church of Christ features very heavily at the

58
00:03:46,730 --> 00:03:50,170
Speaker 1: beginning of this story, and even by Bible Belt standards,

59
00:03:50,210 --> 00:03:53,330
Speaker 1: the Church of Christ has these very strict rules. And

60
00:03:53,370 --> 00:03:56,530
Speaker 1: you start by introducing us to a minister of the church.

61
00:03:56,650 --> 00:03:58,210
Speaker 1: So tell me about Charles Senate.

62
00:03:59,090 --> 00:04:03,650
Speaker 7: Charles Senate is a Church of Christ minister. You know,

63
00:04:03,690 --> 00:04:08,290
Speaker 7: there are many flavors of American fundamentalist religiosity. This is

64
00:04:08,370 --> 00:04:15,250
Speaker 7: the kind of setic, intellectual, unflinching version. They don't believe

65
00:04:15,250 --> 00:04:19,650
Speaker 7: in any kind of instrumentation. They are people of the book.

66
00:04:19,810 --> 00:04:22,850
Speaker 7: They take everyone in that world take the Bible literally,

67
00:04:22,890 --> 00:04:25,370
Speaker 7: but these guys take it super literally, and they have

68
00:04:25,410 --> 00:04:28,170
Speaker 7: a belief that they are the true Christian Church and

69
00:04:28,170 --> 00:04:31,530
Speaker 7: that everyone else is either soft or a backslider, or

70
00:04:31,650 --> 00:04:37,130
Speaker 7: is misinterpreting the text. There's also no church structure whatsoever,

71
00:04:37,250 --> 00:04:41,330
Speaker 7: no hierarchy. The preacher is incomplete control of his church.

72
00:04:41,330 --> 00:04:42,970
Speaker 7: And I say his because there are no women in

73
00:04:43,010 --> 00:04:45,810
Speaker 7: positions of authority in the Church of Christ. My best friend,

74
00:04:46,210 --> 00:04:48,610
Speaker 7: his father was a Church of Christ minister, so I

75
00:04:48,690 --> 00:04:52,530
Speaker 7: knew all about this denomination quite well. It's centered in

76
00:04:52,610 --> 00:04:58,010
Speaker 7: Texas and Alabama, and I'm Oklahoma, so by southern. So

77
00:04:58,050 --> 00:05:01,410
Speaker 7: our lead character is a Church of Christ minister who

78
00:05:01,450 --> 00:05:06,730
Speaker 7: is doing something that in their world is absolutely unforgivable,

79
00:05:07,010 --> 00:05:11,170
Speaker 7: which is he's having an affair. If you get a divorce,

80
00:05:11,250 --> 00:05:12,810
Speaker 7: you have to leave the church. Like this is.

81
00:05:13,330 --> 00:05:14,330
Speaker 4: These guys are serious.

82
00:05:14,890 --> 00:05:18,410
Speaker 7: They have a kind of grim grim is too strong

83
00:05:18,410 --> 00:05:22,610
Speaker 7: a word, but an incredibly strict moral code. So like

84
00:05:22,690 --> 00:05:26,610
Speaker 7: this is the world. In small On, Alabama, we have

85
00:05:26,690 --> 00:05:29,530
Speaker 7: a preacher who has done the unthinkable. He has had

86
00:05:29,570 --> 00:05:32,250
Speaker 7: an affair with a compregant. And that's where we begin.

87
00:05:32,690 --> 00:05:37,050
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you introduce us quite early on to the

88
00:05:37,090 --> 00:05:41,450
Speaker 1: idea of a failure cascade, one thing leading to another

89
00:05:41,690 --> 00:05:45,490
Speaker 1: and another, And we're not going to discuss the entire

90
00:05:45,530 --> 00:05:49,450
Speaker 1: cascade in this conversation. But the failure cascade begins with

91
00:05:49,970 --> 00:05:53,690
Speaker 1: the affair and then it quickly escalates to a murder.

92
00:05:54,210 --> 00:05:57,530
Speaker 1: Tell us about the murder and how that came about.

93
00:05:57,770 --> 00:06:00,130
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, let me say that there is

94
00:06:00,170 --> 00:06:03,370
Speaker 7: no concept in his entire series more Tim Harford friendly

95
00:06:03,930 --> 00:06:05,250
Speaker 7: than the failure cascade.

96
00:06:05,570 --> 00:06:08,250
Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt seen when I heard you describe this.

97
00:06:10,570 --> 00:06:14,250
Speaker 7: It is straight out of your own playbook. But it's

98
00:06:13,930 --> 00:06:21,370
Speaker 7: this fascinating concept, an engineering thing to describe how an initial,

99
00:06:22,010 --> 00:06:27,090
Speaker 7: very small mistake or misstep or malfunction can balloon into

100
00:06:27,130 --> 00:06:30,490
Speaker 7: something bigger. This whole series is about a failure cascade,

101
00:06:30,610 --> 00:06:34,810
Speaker 7: but begins with this affair that Charles Sennatt is having

102
00:06:35,330 --> 00:06:38,650
Speaker 7: with one of his congregants. And then the next stage

103
00:06:38,690 --> 00:06:43,490
Speaker 7: is that Charles Senen's wife is murdered her home. Is

104
00:06:43,610 --> 00:06:50,250
Speaker 7: she's alone at home and someone breaks in and robs

105
00:06:50,290 --> 00:06:54,370
Speaker 7: the house and stabs her to death. That happens in

106
00:06:54,850 --> 00:06:56,810
Speaker 7: the spring of nineteen eighty eight, and it is the

107
00:06:56,890 --> 00:06:59,850
Speaker 7: first serious step in the cascade.

108
00:07:00,330 --> 00:07:02,170
Speaker 1: And who do the police initially suspect.

109
00:07:02,370 --> 00:07:05,850
Speaker 7: Well, they find they get a tip that two kind

110
00:07:05,890 --> 00:07:09,970
Speaker 7: of wayward kids, John Parker and Kenny Smith, from this

111
00:07:10,090 --> 00:07:14,570
Speaker 7: town of Florence in northwestern Alabama. The VCR stolen from

112
00:07:14,650 --> 00:07:17,290
Speaker 7: the house turns up in one of the kids' homes.

113
00:07:17,850 --> 00:07:21,290
Speaker 7: Somebody turns them in. But then suspicion very quickly falls

114
00:07:21,330 --> 00:07:25,610
Speaker 7: on Charles Senner himself because there's too many inconsistencies in

115
00:07:25,650 --> 00:07:29,090
Speaker 7: his story. Mike, colleague Ben and I spent an evening

116
00:07:29,170 --> 00:07:32,530
Speaker 7: talking to a former law enforcement person who had been

117
00:07:32,570 --> 00:07:36,050
Speaker 7: investigating the case back in nineteen eighty eight named Ricky Miller,

118
00:07:36,610 --> 00:07:39,330
Speaker 7: and he very memorably told us about how quickly law

119
00:07:39,410 --> 00:07:41,970
Speaker 7: enforcement developed suspicions about Charles Sennett.

120
00:07:42,210 --> 00:07:45,450
Speaker 5: The first thing that called our at tension, the best

121
00:07:45,490 --> 00:07:49,690
Speaker 5: I can remember, was he made too many alibis, but

122
00:07:49,850 --> 00:07:52,970
Speaker 5: it was overkilled. You know, he stopped to see people

123
00:07:53,010 --> 00:07:56,330
Speaker 5: they had never seen, and that just threw up a

124
00:07:56,370 --> 00:07:57,530
Speaker 5: red flag to us.

125
00:07:57,890 --> 00:07:58,410
Speaker 4: Why is he.

126
00:07:58,410 --> 00:08:01,450
Speaker 5: Seeing all these people for the first time? That happen

127
00:08:01,450 --> 00:08:04,810
Speaker 5: to me at the time his wife's being murder. You know,

128
00:08:06,290 --> 00:08:09,250
Speaker 5: they could tell you every time everything, every day, What

129
00:08:09,530 --> 00:08:12,890
Speaker 5: had my wife just been murdered in my home? I

130
00:08:12,970 --> 00:08:17,770
Speaker 5: couldn't tell you, my mind's gone, but he knew everything

131
00:08:17,850 --> 00:08:18,450
Speaker 5: in detail.

132
00:08:18,690 --> 00:08:20,610
Speaker 4: That's a red flag.

133
00:08:21,250 --> 00:08:25,090
Speaker 7: He started talking about how she'd been attacked by two men,

134
00:08:25,170 --> 00:08:28,130
Speaker 7: when he would have no reason to know that it

135
00:08:28,170 --> 00:08:30,130
Speaker 7: was more than one person. I mean, it was kind

136
00:08:30,130 --> 00:08:34,490
Speaker 7: of like he's not a high percentile criminal. She hadn't

137
00:08:34,490 --> 00:08:36,930
Speaker 7: thought through anything or didn't figure out how to tell

138
00:08:36,930 --> 00:08:39,610
Speaker 7: his story properly. They quickly established that the two men

139
00:08:40,610 --> 00:08:42,810
Speaker 7: they had been told were involved in this crime had

140
00:08:42,850 --> 00:08:46,890
Speaker 7: a connection, a previous connection to Charles Sennett. And there's

141
00:08:47,290 --> 00:08:49,970
Speaker 7: a moment when the police officer says to him, do

142
00:08:50,050 --> 00:08:51,930
Speaker 7: you know and mentions the name of one of the

143
00:08:51,970 --> 00:08:55,090
Speaker 7: sky Kenney Smith, and he turns bright red, and it

144
00:08:55,130 --> 00:08:55,770
Speaker 7: turns out.

145
00:08:55,650 --> 00:08:59,410
Speaker 1: That he he, in the end, hired these kids.

146
00:08:59,690 --> 00:09:02,770
Speaker 7: Yeah, he is the one who approached these two kids

147
00:09:02,890 --> 00:09:05,730
Speaker 7: and gave them a couple thousand dollars and told them

148
00:09:05,730 --> 00:09:07,650
Speaker 7: to deal with his wife, which they do in a

149
00:09:07,730 --> 00:09:11,810
Speaker 7: kind of spectacularly. In what's interesting about the case is

150
00:09:11,970 --> 00:09:15,810
Speaker 7: there's a version of this case that it ends with

151
00:09:15,890 --> 00:09:19,530
Speaker 7: the apprehension of Charles Sennett and of these two kids,

152
00:09:19,570 --> 00:09:21,770
Speaker 7: and that's it. People go to jail and we walk away.

153
00:09:22,210 --> 00:09:25,290
Speaker 7: But that's not what happens. It just gets it just

154
00:09:25,410 --> 00:09:28,850
Speaker 7: keeps going and going and going, and ultimately, you know,

155
00:09:28,970 --> 00:09:33,650
Speaker 7: the the last and most sort of grotesque act in

156
00:09:33,690 --> 00:09:37,650
Speaker 7: this case does not take place until last year, So

157
00:09:37,770 --> 00:09:43,250
Speaker 7: some thirty five years after the murder thing goes on,

158
00:09:43,650 --> 00:09:45,170
Speaker 7: we're talking about something it goes on forever.

159
00:09:45,810 --> 00:09:48,930
Speaker 1: We've recently heard about the case of Derek Bentley on

160
00:09:49,050 --> 00:09:53,210
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales. One of the men in the frame for

161
00:09:53,250 --> 00:09:58,250
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sennett's murder reminded me of Derek Bentley. He was

162
00:09:58,290 --> 00:10:03,690
Speaker 1: on the scene when a police constable, Sydney Miles, was killed.

163
00:10:04,370 --> 00:10:08,610
Speaker 1: He didn't pull the trigger. It seems unlikely he intended

164
00:10:08,610 --> 00:10:14,850
Speaker 1: any harm. Derek had learning difficulties. He was very easily led,

165
00:10:14,930 --> 00:10:17,970
Speaker 1: and I think there's a hint of that with John Parker.

166
00:10:18,730 --> 00:10:22,650
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I would say it more broadly, any

167
00:10:22,690 --> 00:10:27,610
Speaker 7: systematic discussion of people who are involved in murders like this,

168
00:10:28,490 --> 00:10:32,210
Speaker 7: there's always some history of trauma. I mean, that's who

169
00:10:32,210 --> 00:10:35,010
Speaker 7: commit murders. Both John Parker and Kenny Smith, the two

170
00:10:35,050 --> 00:10:39,210
Speaker 7: people who were ultimately convicted of this crime, they're both

171
00:10:40,010 --> 00:10:44,410
Speaker 7: come from the most the bleakest childhoods. Parker had suffered

172
00:10:44,410 --> 00:10:47,890
Speaker 7: as serious concussion as a toddler, had major learning disabilities,

173
00:10:48,010 --> 00:10:51,250
Speaker 7: was using drugs since he was in his late adolescence.

174
00:10:51,730 --> 00:10:55,330
Speaker 7: These are not healthy, well adjusted, advantaged people. These are

175
00:10:55,370 --> 00:11:00,770
Speaker 7: people struggling with a whole series of deficits. And that

176
00:11:00,930 --> 00:11:03,170
Speaker 7: is the rule, as opposed to the exception when it

177
00:11:03,210 --> 00:11:07,450
Speaker 7: comes to homicide, that we're dealing with people who are

178
00:11:07,490 --> 00:11:11,330
Speaker 7: not whole the way they see and deal with the world.

179
00:11:11,530 --> 00:11:14,930
Speaker 1: So eventually, these two young men, John Parker and Kenny

180
00:11:14,970 --> 00:11:20,490
Speaker 1: Smith are tried for murder. So what happens when their

181
00:11:20,530 --> 00:11:22,250
Speaker 1: case reaches court.

182
00:11:22,970 --> 00:11:26,850
Speaker 7: In the keske that we're describing in this story, where

183
00:11:27,610 --> 00:11:31,290
Speaker 7: there is one misstep after another. This is one of

184
00:11:31,290 --> 00:11:34,330
Speaker 7: the crucial stages in the cascade that at the crucial

185
00:11:34,370 --> 00:11:38,090
Speaker 7: moment where the criminal justice system is supposed to deliver justice,

186
00:11:38,530 --> 00:11:43,610
Speaker 7: it fails. And it's really really unclear whether John Parker

187
00:11:43,690 --> 00:11:47,050
Speaker 7: and Kenny Smith, two men convicted in this case, actually

188
00:11:47,850 --> 00:11:51,650
Speaker 7: murdered Elizabeth Senate. In both cases, the jury overwhelmingly says

189
00:11:52,090 --> 00:11:55,130
Speaker 7: we don't have enough certainty hear to recommend the death penalty,

190
00:11:55,170 --> 00:11:57,250
Speaker 7: and in both cases the judge said it and says,

191
00:11:57,250 --> 00:12:00,850
Speaker 7: I don't care. These guys should be executed for their crimes.

192
00:12:01,330 --> 00:12:03,810
Speaker 1: So I was curious about the motivation of the judge

193
00:12:03,970 --> 00:12:08,050
Speaker 1: because in the case of Derek Bentley, the judge in

194
00:12:08,090 --> 00:12:11,570
Speaker 1: that case was was notorious. He was nicknamed the Tiger

195
00:12:11,730 --> 00:12:17,090
Speaker 1: Judge Goddard, and it seems pretty clear that he took

196
00:12:17,570 --> 00:12:21,010
Speaker 1: a perverse pleasure in handing out the death sentence. What

197
00:12:21,210 --> 00:12:24,330
Speaker 1: was going on in the Alabama cases, but the judges

198
00:12:24,410 --> 00:12:27,290
Speaker 1: enjoying the idea of dishing out life and death.

199
00:12:27,850 --> 00:12:33,090
Speaker 7: In the state of Alabama, they have partisan elections for judges,

200
00:12:33,610 --> 00:12:36,290
Speaker 7: So a judge is essentially is a political figure in

201
00:12:36,330 --> 00:12:39,450
Speaker 7: the same way that a congress person is or a

202
00:12:39,490 --> 00:12:43,890
Speaker 7: state senator. If you're in a conservative district running for

203
00:12:44,410 --> 00:12:49,010
Speaker 7: office on the Republican ticket, you're powerfully motivated to be

204
00:12:49,090 --> 00:12:52,330
Speaker 7: seen as tough on crime as you possibly can be.

205
00:12:53,170 --> 00:12:55,650
Speaker 7: And there's no sure way to say that you are

206
00:12:56,170 --> 00:13:00,170
Speaker 7: unflinching in your opposition to crime in the state of Alabama.

207
00:13:00,290 --> 00:13:02,770
Speaker 7: Then to say the jury's wrong, We've got a crack

208
00:13:02,810 --> 00:13:03,730
Speaker 7: down on this murderer.

209
00:13:04,370 --> 00:13:07,730
Speaker 1: That opens up this whole question as to if you

210
00:13:07,850 --> 00:13:11,770
Speaker 1: as a state wish to kill somebody as a punishment,

211
00:13:12,410 --> 00:13:14,930
Speaker 1: how are you going to do it? And this is

212
00:13:14,970 --> 00:13:20,250
Speaker 1: where the details that you were exploring I think astonished me.

213
00:13:20,330 --> 00:13:23,250
Speaker 1: I just assumed, well, I guess you're going to kill someone.

214
00:13:23,250 --> 00:13:24,970
Speaker 1: You're going to kill someone. How hard can it be?

215
00:13:25,570 --> 00:13:26,130
Speaker 1: Not so easy?

216
00:13:26,170 --> 00:13:28,090
Speaker 7: It turns out, well, first of all, it's hard to

217
00:13:28,170 --> 00:13:31,850
Speaker 7: kill people, period. But then if you have to do

218
00:13:31,930 --> 00:13:33,930
Speaker 7: so in a way that sort of meets a certain

219
00:13:34,090 --> 00:13:37,850
Speaker 7: humane standard, then if your job gets even tougher, and

220
00:13:37,890 --> 00:13:39,450
Speaker 7: then you have to do it, if you have to

221
00:13:39,490 --> 00:13:42,370
Speaker 7: do it without the assistance of medical personnel, because of

222
00:13:42,410 --> 00:13:46,130
Speaker 7: course no doctor is going to help you kill someone, right,

223
00:13:46,250 --> 00:13:47,010
Speaker 7: no real doctor.

224
00:13:47,570 --> 00:13:49,370
Speaker 1: That's the difficult bit, right, I mean you said it's

225
00:13:49,370 --> 00:13:52,290
Speaker 1: hard to kill someone. It's probably not physically, Probably isn't

226
00:13:52,330 --> 00:13:56,450
Speaker 1: that hard to kill somebody, But it's this bizarre, almost

227
00:13:56,450 --> 00:13:59,690
Speaker 1: grotesque constraint where you said, well, you know, you've got

228
00:13:59,690 --> 00:14:00,770
Speaker 1: to kill them, but you've got to do it the

229
00:14:00,810 --> 00:14:03,690
Speaker 1: right way. And then that raises the question of well,

230
00:14:03,690 --> 00:14:07,050
Speaker 1: what is the right way? What is the way that

231
00:14:07,210 --> 00:14:09,650
Speaker 1: that is not cruel and unusual? What is the appropriate

232
00:14:09,650 --> 00:14:12,610
Speaker 1: way in which the state can kill somebody? And yeah,

233
00:14:12,690 --> 00:14:16,570
Speaker 1: as you say, there's no doctors, they've sworn the hippocratic oath. Yeah,

234
00:14:16,610 --> 00:14:17,690
Speaker 1: they can't do it.

235
00:14:17,170 --> 00:14:22,330
Speaker 7: It's useful to remember that the guillotine is invented as

236
00:14:22,370 --> 00:14:26,850
Speaker 7: a humane alternative to previous methods of capital punishment. The

237
00:14:26,890 --> 00:14:29,650
Speaker 7: point of the guillotine is like, oh, finally we can

238
00:14:29,810 --> 00:14:34,050
Speaker 7: kill someone cleanly and without undue suffering, you know, in

239
00:14:34,090 --> 00:14:38,610
Speaker 7: a way that's consistent with our beliefs about civil society.

240
00:14:39,090 --> 00:14:41,810
Speaker 7: Like the struggle to come up with a good way

241
00:14:42,570 --> 00:14:44,730
Speaker 7: for the state to kill someone has been going on

242
00:14:44,810 --> 00:14:45,850
Speaker 7: for hundreds of years.

243
00:14:46,210 --> 00:14:48,130
Speaker 1: I'm not a historian of the death penalty, but I

244
00:14:48,170 --> 00:14:51,490
Speaker 1: feel that hanging was was also regarded as relatively clean.

245
00:14:51,530 --> 00:14:54,370
Speaker 1: And then the electric chair presumably that was that was

246
00:14:54,410 --> 00:14:57,250
Speaker 1: that kind of a modern technological method. They didn't introduce

247
00:14:58,050 --> 00:15:00,810
Speaker 1: the electric chair because they thought it would hurt more

248
00:15:01,250 --> 00:15:03,690
Speaker 1: that that was not the aim, and it may have

249
00:15:03,690 --> 00:15:05,250
Speaker 1: been what happened, but it wasn't the goal.

250
00:15:05,890 --> 00:15:06,370
Speaker 4: Yeah.

251
00:15:06,730 --> 00:15:09,730
Speaker 7: When I was doing this my report, I had a

252
00:15:09,770 --> 00:15:13,850
Speaker 7: conversation with a death penalty expert who is personally opposed

253
00:15:13,850 --> 00:15:16,730
Speaker 7: to the death penalty, but she was making the argument

254
00:15:16,770 --> 00:15:19,210
Speaker 7: that it was time to bring back the firing squad.

255
00:15:20,250 --> 00:15:23,650
Speaker 7: Her point was, in this kind of ongoing search for

256
00:15:23,690 --> 00:15:26,250
Speaker 7: the most humane method, we should have stopped with the

257
00:15:26,290 --> 00:15:29,890
Speaker 7: firing squad. It's the best, yeah, because you really do

258
00:15:30,450 --> 00:15:33,410
Speaker 7: diet pretty quickly and consistently under the firing squad.

259
00:15:33,850 --> 00:15:36,810
Speaker 1: Where did the idea of lethal injection itself come from.

260
00:15:37,210 --> 00:15:39,570
Speaker 7: One of the earliest proponents was Ronald Reagan when he

261
00:15:39,690 --> 00:15:43,090
Speaker 7: was governor of California, and he made the observation at

262
00:15:43,090 --> 00:15:47,330
Speaker 7: a time when people were increasingly aware that were concerned

263
00:15:48,010 --> 00:15:50,530
Speaker 7: that the electric chair was a kind of grizzly and

264
00:15:50,570 --> 00:15:55,810
Speaker 7: inappropriate way to execute someone. Reagan famously says, why don't

265
00:15:55,850 --> 00:15:58,490
Speaker 7: we just put murderers down the same way we put

266
00:15:58,530 --> 00:16:03,090
Speaker 7: down horses. That insight, such as it was, catalyzes all

267
00:16:03,170 --> 00:16:06,850
Speaker 7: kinds of people to look for ways of killing people

268
00:16:06,930 --> 00:16:09,650
Speaker 7: through injecting them with lethal drugs, which.

269
00:16:09,450 --> 00:16:13,850
Speaker 1: I think sounds intuitive, But you describe it, it's not

270
00:16:13,970 --> 00:16:16,850
Speaker 1: quite as painless as you might think. No.

271
00:16:17,610 --> 00:16:21,890
Speaker 7: I talked at length to this really extraordinary man named

272
00:16:21,930 --> 00:16:26,690
Speaker 7: Joel Zivett, who's a Canadian intensive care specialist who has

273
00:16:26,850 --> 00:16:30,770
Speaker 7: developed a kind of subspecialty in the death penalty, and

274
00:16:31,810 --> 00:16:34,090
Speaker 7: he was the first person ever to ask the question,

275
00:16:34,370 --> 00:16:36,970
Speaker 7: when you try and execute someone through lethal injection, what

276
00:16:37,170 --> 00:16:41,450
Speaker 7: exactly happens to the person being executed? That is to say,

277
00:16:42,130 --> 00:16:44,330
Speaker 7: how do they die? You're giving them a cocktail of

278
00:16:44,890 --> 00:16:48,690
Speaker 7: lethal drugs, and we had a kind of assumption about

279
00:16:49,290 --> 00:16:52,090
Speaker 7: what drug did what and at what point in this

280
00:16:52,850 --> 00:16:56,130
Speaker 7: protocol these three drugs you're being injected with, what point

281
00:16:56,170 --> 00:16:59,570
Speaker 7: do you die? And he pointed out that our prevailing

282
00:16:59,610 --> 00:17:03,450
Speaker 7: assumption about it was entirely wrong. And what's interesting about

283
00:17:03,850 --> 00:17:06,730
Speaker 7: his discovery, apart from how kind of grotesque it is,

284
00:17:07,610 --> 00:17:10,850
Speaker 7: was that we've been used into lethal injection in the

285
00:17:10,970 --> 00:17:14,210
Speaker 7: United States as a method of killing people for whatever

286
00:17:14,370 --> 00:17:17,690
Speaker 7: thirty forty years. No one had ever bothered to ask

287
00:17:17,730 --> 00:17:21,050
Speaker 7: the question how it worked. So there's a level of

288
00:17:21,170 --> 00:17:26,730
Speaker 7: kind of indifference and callousness, and you think it's some

289
00:17:26,810 --> 00:17:30,770
Speaker 7: kind of scientific, thought out process, and it's not. It's

290
00:17:30,810 --> 00:17:34,330
Speaker 7: a bunch of random people who come up with something

291
00:17:34,370 --> 00:17:37,010
Speaker 7: on the back of an envelope and use it to

292
00:17:37,050 --> 00:17:42,490
Speaker 7: execute people. This is if describing what he found out

293
00:17:42,690 --> 00:17:45,170
Speaker 7: about what really happens when you're try and kill someone

294
00:17:45,210 --> 00:17:46,090
Speaker 7: through lethal injection.

295
00:17:47,090 --> 00:17:50,690
Speaker 3: It travels rapidly to the heart, where the heart comps,

296
00:17:50,770 --> 00:17:55,130
Speaker 3: it immediately into the lungs and it tears the lungs apart. Basically,

297
00:17:55,490 --> 00:17:59,570
Speaker 3: they get burned from the inside and then the separation

298
00:17:59,730 --> 00:18:03,930
Speaker 3: of air and blood. There's a very fine layer of

299
00:18:03,970 --> 00:18:07,210
Speaker 3: tissue there that gets destroyed and the blood.

300
00:18:07,090 --> 00:18:08,450
Speaker 4: Just pours into the lungs.

301
00:18:09,730 --> 00:18:13,930
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry as I'm saying this, it's awful, and

302
00:18:14,450 --> 00:18:18,330
Speaker 3: this is what this is how lethal injection actually kills you.

303
00:18:18,730 --> 00:18:22,850
Speaker 3: It kills you by burning your lungs up, and you're

304
00:18:22,890 --> 00:18:27,490
Speaker 3: also paralyzed, so you can't complain that this is happening.

305
00:18:28,370 --> 00:18:30,290
Speaker 3: And then to finish you off, of course, you know

306
00:18:30,370 --> 00:18:34,050
Speaker 3: you're probably begging for the potassium at that point, because

307
00:18:34,050 --> 00:18:39,090
Speaker 3: that finally stops your heart and stops this process. But

308
00:18:39,130 --> 00:18:41,930
Speaker 3: in the meantime, you know this has been gone on

309
00:18:42,090 --> 00:18:46,330
Speaker 3: for a few minutes, so the last thing that you know,

310
00:18:46,410 --> 00:18:49,290
Speaker 3: you may know, is that you're on fire from the

311
00:18:49,330 --> 00:18:53,010
Speaker 3: inside and the blood is filling up your lungs as

312
00:18:53,050 --> 00:18:53,450
Speaker 3: you die.

313
00:18:55,410 --> 00:18:58,610
Speaker 7: I mean, one of the Zibet's points is that because

314
00:18:58,770 --> 00:19:02,690
Speaker 7: you're restrained and you've been given a paralytic you are

315
00:19:02,730 --> 00:19:04,890
Speaker 7: in agony as you are dying of lethal injection, but

316
00:19:04,970 --> 00:19:08,530
Speaker 7: you can't no one's aware of it. You look calm,

317
00:19:09,130 --> 00:19:12,090
Speaker 7: and you can't move and you can't speak. You've been

318
00:19:12,130 --> 00:19:15,930
Speaker 7: given this very powerful drug that renders you mute. It's

319
00:19:15,970 --> 00:19:19,770
Speaker 7: the worst. It's just sort of an unimaginable kind of

320
00:19:19,850 --> 00:19:20,530
Speaker 7: horror story.

321
00:19:20,930 --> 00:19:24,370
Speaker 1: And to loop back to what originally drew you into

322
00:19:24,370 --> 00:19:27,730
Speaker 1: this story, you were talking to Kate Portfield and she

323
00:19:27,850 --> 00:19:31,690
Speaker 1: works with people who have been tortured, and the discovery

324
00:19:32,410 --> 00:19:37,690
Speaker 1: the realization really that to be on death row facing

325
00:19:38,090 --> 00:19:41,770
Speaker 1: execution is a kind of torture, and at least some

326
00:19:41,810 --> 00:19:44,850
Speaker 1: of these methods of execution are themselves a form of torture.

327
00:19:44,930 --> 00:19:47,170
Speaker 1: But we've just not really thought about it that way.

328
00:19:47,810 --> 00:19:49,050
Speaker 4: Yeah.

329
00:19:49,130 --> 00:19:51,450
Speaker 7: The only way that the death penalty I think can

330
00:19:51,530 --> 00:19:55,090
Speaker 7: sustain itself in the modern world is through an act

331
00:19:55,130 --> 00:19:59,090
Speaker 7: of kind of willful indifference on the part of a society.

332
00:19:59,130 --> 00:20:02,690
Speaker 7: You just have to kind of close off any kind

333
00:20:02,730 --> 00:20:05,450
Speaker 7: of empathy or moral awareness of what you're doing. We

334
00:20:05,530 --> 00:20:07,770
Speaker 7: see that all over the place. But I think this

335
00:20:07,850 --> 00:20:10,370
Speaker 7: is something Americans are have proven to be very good

336
00:20:10,370 --> 00:20:12,810
Speaker 7: at when it comes to the use of the death penalty.

337
00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:15,530
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to ask about that now. Who In

338
00:20:15,570 --> 00:20:18,650
Speaker 1: the UK, we haven't had the death penalty for sixty years,

339
00:20:18,650 --> 00:20:20,970
Speaker 1: and in fact, it was the case of Derek Bentley

340
00:20:22,090 --> 00:20:24,050
Speaker 1: that I think was an important turning point in the

341
00:20:24,090 --> 00:20:27,810
Speaker 1: campaign to abolish the death penalty, and in fact, Derek

342
00:20:27,930 --> 00:20:31,610
Speaker 1: was posthumously pardoned in nineteen eighty eight. So that's the

343
00:20:31,690 --> 00:20:33,810
Speaker 1: UK story. But do you think we're ever going to

344
00:20:33,810 --> 00:20:36,050
Speaker 1: see an end of the death penalty in the US

345
00:20:36,370 --> 00:20:37,170
Speaker 1: or anytime soon.

346
00:20:37,970 --> 00:20:40,610
Speaker 7: Well, you know, it's very hard to be optimistic about

347
00:20:41,090 --> 00:20:46,090
Speaker 7: moral progress, you know states right now. But the death

348
00:20:46,130 --> 00:20:49,730
Speaker 7: penalty is slowly going away. But there's two things that

349
00:20:49,770 --> 00:20:52,690
Speaker 7: are hindering out. One is the unresolved conflict between the

350
00:20:52,730 --> 00:20:57,290
Speaker 7: two arguments that are used against the death penalty. One

351
00:20:57,410 --> 00:21:01,450
Speaker 7: is that we execute people who don't deserve to die,

352
00:21:01,450 --> 00:21:07,970
Speaker 7: who either innocent or moderately guilty, as you describe Derek Bentley,

353
00:21:08,050 --> 00:21:10,450
Speaker 7: or are impaired in some way and not fully responsible

354
00:21:10,490 --> 00:21:11,050
Speaker 7: for their actions.

355
00:21:11,210 --> 00:21:13,050
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was the sense with Bentley that he had

356
00:21:13,050 --> 00:21:16,130
Speaker 1: done something wrong, but he didn't deserve death. He hadn't

357
00:21:16,330 --> 00:21:19,330
Speaker 1: he hadn't committed this grotesque crime of murdering a police officer.

358
00:21:19,810 --> 00:21:24,130
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's argument one, and that's the easier one. The

359
00:21:24,210 --> 00:21:27,930
Speaker 7: harder one is should you execute people who, in a

360
00:21:28,010 --> 00:21:33,330
Speaker 7: kind of colloquial sense, deserve to die, right, the cold blooded,

361
00:21:33,850 --> 00:21:37,570
Speaker 7: vicious murderer. And what happens if if all you make

362
00:21:37,650 --> 00:21:41,090
Speaker 7: is argument one. Then you leave the proponent of the

363
00:21:41,090 --> 00:21:43,970
Speaker 7: death penalty with the opening to say, well, let's just

364
00:21:43,970 --> 00:21:47,290
Speaker 7: do a better job of implementing it, and you're not

365
00:21:47,370 --> 00:21:49,730
Speaker 7: confronting the fact that ultimately you have to say say

366
00:21:49,730 --> 00:21:53,610
Speaker 7: that there are people who are evil and in every

367
00:21:53,730 --> 00:21:57,490
Speaker 7: conceivable sense and unmistakably guilty, and who have violated every

368
00:21:57,810 --> 00:22:03,250
Speaker 7: social compact. But we have to affirmatively decide as a

369
00:22:03,690 --> 00:22:06,490
Speaker 7: society whether we want to stoop to their level or not.

370
00:22:08,210 --> 00:22:14,250
Speaker 7: And that is that's second part that America struggles with, right, yeah,

371
00:22:14,530 --> 00:22:17,330
Speaker 7: argument what is not sufficient to end the death bentley

372
00:22:17,370 --> 00:22:18,650
Speaker 7: in the United States?

373
00:22:19,570 --> 00:22:22,490
Speaker 1: Is that why you called the series the Alabama Murders

374
00:22:22,930 --> 00:22:26,730
Speaker 1: because yes, legally speaking, there was only one murder, Elizabeth Sennett.

375
00:22:27,370 --> 00:22:33,130
Speaker 7: Yeah, we felt that the subsequent executions of the two

376
00:22:33,650 --> 00:22:37,530
Speaker 7: men found guilty in Elizabeth Senna's murder qualify as murders.

377
00:22:38,130 --> 00:22:40,210
Speaker 4: There are state murders, but they're murders.

378
00:22:40,410 --> 00:22:44,370
Speaker 1: And though the States should not be lowering itself to

379
00:22:44,490 --> 00:22:46,850
Speaker 1: the level of the common murderer, we should be better

380
00:22:46,890 --> 00:22:47,170
Speaker 1: than that.

381
00:22:48,250 --> 00:22:48,650
Speaker 4: Yeah.

382
00:22:49,170 --> 00:22:51,610
Speaker 7: Yeah, But like I say, it's hard to make arguments

383
00:22:51,610 --> 00:22:53,250
Speaker 7: about what we're better than.

384
00:22:54,130 --> 00:22:57,530
Speaker 4: Yeah, right now, in the United States.

385
00:22:57,890 --> 00:23:02,010
Speaker 1: We ended our episode Derek Bentley Must Die with a

386
00:23:02,090 --> 00:23:06,410
Speaker 1: quote from England's chief hangman Pierpoint.

387
00:23:06,770 --> 00:23:07,970
Speaker 4: I have his book.

388
00:23:08,530 --> 00:23:13,050
Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting fellow. What he said was, I do not

389
00:23:13,290 --> 00:23:16,930
Speaker 1: now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions

390
00:23:16,970 --> 00:23:20,290
Speaker 1: I carried out has in any way acted as a

391
00:23:20,370 --> 00:23:25,770
Speaker 1: deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved

392
00:23:25,810 --> 00:23:29,850
Speaker 1: nothing except revenge.

393
00:23:30,010 --> 00:23:30,770
Speaker 6: Do you agree?

394
00:23:31,410 --> 00:23:32,170
Speaker 4: I do agree.

395
00:23:32,290 --> 00:23:39,450
Speaker 7: It's funny he's such a compromised authority does a death penalty. Yeah,

396
00:23:39,490 --> 00:23:44,730
Speaker 7: And I'm still hung up on how that's the lesson

397
00:23:45,010 --> 00:23:48,490
Speaker 7: He chose to draw from his lifetime of work of

398
00:23:48,610 --> 00:23:53,450
Speaker 7: executing people to wonder about his deterrent effect, as opposed

399
00:23:53,490 --> 00:23:57,370
Speaker 7: to reflect on what it's said about his society, about

400
00:23:57,970 --> 00:24:02,370
Speaker 7: what it felt like to be responsible for so many deaths.

401
00:24:03,330 --> 00:24:05,930
Speaker 1: As making the series made you think differently about the

402
00:24:05,930 --> 00:24:07,170
Speaker 1: death penalty, margam.

403
00:24:07,610 --> 00:24:11,050
Speaker 7: Well, I was never a fan. It has lowered my

404
00:24:12,770 --> 00:24:17,490
Speaker 7: estimation of state authority. We keep in Revision's history returning

405
00:24:17,530 --> 00:24:20,490
Speaker 7: to Alabama because it's just such a bizarre place. It

406
00:24:20,570 --> 00:24:23,970
Speaker 7: is the place where sort of every contradiction of American

407
00:24:24,610 --> 00:24:30,210
Speaker 7: history and society is concentrated, and it's amateur hour at

408
00:24:30,370 --> 00:24:32,810
Speaker 7: one turn after another as we tell the story, you're

409
00:24:32,810 --> 00:24:35,410
Speaker 7: destruck by the fact that they don't know what they're

410
00:24:35,450 --> 00:24:39,250
Speaker 7: doing and they don't care. Yeah, not even trying to

411
00:24:39,330 --> 00:24:42,410
Speaker 7: keep up appearances. You know, to be a Canadianist to

412
00:24:42,450 --> 00:24:47,330
Speaker 7: believe that government is at least moderately competent and well meaning,

413
00:24:48,210 --> 00:24:50,450
Speaker 7: that most high minded and brightest of the people I

414
00:24:50,490 --> 00:24:53,810
Speaker 7: went to college with went into government, and like you

415
00:24:53,810 --> 00:24:57,730
Speaker 7: look at Alabama, you're like most high minded and competent

416
00:24:57,770 --> 00:24:59,050
Speaker 7: people did not go into government.

417
00:24:59,130 --> 00:25:01,690
Speaker 1: One thing that really struck me listening to a statement

418
00:25:01,770 --> 00:25:07,450
Speaker 1: by one of the officials after a particularly controversial episode

419
00:25:07,530 --> 00:25:12,250
Speaker 1: in Alabama's history of actal punishment, and the point he

420
00:25:12,330 --> 00:25:16,370
Speaker 1: made was or there are people out there who are

421
00:25:16,410 --> 00:25:20,530
Speaker 1: trying to prevent us doing these executions, and they sympathize

422
00:25:21,290 --> 00:25:25,770
Speaker 1: with the criminals. Some of them are international. I just thought,

423
00:25:25,810 --> 00:25:29,970
Speaker 1: oh wow, it's an unusually clear example of using some

424
00:25:30,090 --> 00:25:33,930
Speaker 1: kind of tribalism as an alternative to thinking through the issues,

425
00:25:34,410 --> 00:25:37,970
Speaker 1: rather than justifying what we've done or possibly acknowledging that

426
00:25:38,130 --> 00:25:41,050
Speaker 1: something has gone wrong. Instead, there are people out there,

427
00:25:41,450 --> 00:25:45,970
Speaker 1: many of them abroad, who love criminals and they're trying

428
00:25:46,010 --> 00:25:50,050
Speaker 1: to take away your death penalty. Gosh as a really

429
00:25:50,090 --> 00:25:52,370
Speaker 1: striking stance for him to take.

430
00:25:52,930 --> 00:25:56,770
Speaker 7: Their willingness to jump to that kind of language and

431
00:25:57,250 --> 00:26:01,290
Speaker 7: attitude is Beth taking as opposed to examining what they're doing.

432
00:26:02,250 --> 00:26:04,850
Speaker 4: Alabama's a weird place. I will say, I love the state.

433
00:26:04,890 --> 00:26:05,570
Speaker 4: I love going there.

434
00:26:05,690 --> 00:26:08,370
Speaker 1: No, you made that quite clear. Actually you thought it

435
00:26:08,450 --> 00:26:11,210
Speaker 1: was straighten. You thought that the government was behaving in

436
00:26:11,210 --> 00:26:13,290
Speaker 1: a shameful way. But there was a real affection for

437
00:26:13,850 --> 00:26:14,810
Speaker 1: the place and the people.

438
00:26:15,530 --> 00:26:15,730
Speaker 4: Yeah.

439
00:26:18,290 --> 00:26:22,210
Speaker 1: I loved listening to the whole season of The Alabama

440
00:26:22,290 --> 00:26:25,090
Speaker 1: Murders malcom I. When I started listening, I was thinking, Oh,

441
00:26:25,090 --> 00:26:28,090
Speaker 1: this is really cool. They've done a really good job.

442
00:26:28,130 --> 00:26:29,930
Speaker 1: I love the music, I love it, I love the

443
00:26:29,930 --> 00:26:31,850
Speaker 1: way they've done this. And by the end, I wasn't

444
00:26:31,890 --> 00:26:35,010
Speaker 1: thinking at all about the way anybody had done anything.

445
00:26:35,050 --> 00:26:39,210
Speaker 1: I was completely in the moment. It really changed the

446
00:26:39,250 --> 00:26:43,010
Speaker 1: way I saw the death penalty, and I thank you.

447
00:26:43,130 --> 00:26:47,130
Speaker 1: It's an amazing piece of journalism. So just tell people

448
00:26:47,130 --> 00:26:48,690
Speaker 1: where can they find it.

449
00:26:48,690 --> 00:26:53,090
Speaker 7: It's in the Revisionist History feed. It's out now wherever

450
00:26:53,090 --> 00:26:56,010
Speaker 7: you get your podcasts. It's called The Alabama Murders seven

451
00:26:56,050 --> 00:26:59,890
Speaker 7: part series. You can subscribe to pushkin plus and binge

452
00:26:59,890 --> 00:27:02,210
Speaker 7: it all at once, or you can listen to it piecemeal.

453
00:27:02,250 --> 00:27:03,930
Speaker 4: Over the course of the next two weeks.

454
00:27:04,250 --> 00:27:07,050
Speaker 1: I have been talking to Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm, thank you

455
00:27:07,130 --> 00:27:08,370
Speaker 1: very much, thank you.

456
00:27:08,410 --> 00:27:12,330
Speaker 4: Tim D