Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K selects have chosen how Lethal Injection Works. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the holiday spirit. We released this around Christmas of
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, and it can be a hard one
Speaker 1: to listen to, but since whenever a person is executed,
Speaker 1: the state is actually doing it on your behalf, since
Speaker 1: you're a member of the public, it's probably best to
Speaker 1: know what they're doing in your name. It's an eye
Speaker 1: opening one and a sobering one, and I hope it
Speaker 1: means a lot to you, because it did to me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and this Charles if you Chuck Bryant, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know the podcast. Greetings. This is not
Speaker 1: a capital punishment show, although we will deal with that obviously,
Speaker 1: but we at some point we'll probably do a full
Speaker 1: episode on capital punishment. I would guess, don't you imagine,
Speaker 1: because we have notice on it, and uh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: touch on it here with legal injections. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: coming across some stuff on the electric electric chair that
Speaker 1: to me seems like it deserves its own episode as well.
Speaker 1: It's because it's some nuts. It sounds like we're cooking
Speaker 1: up a sweet. Yeah, the Capital punishman sweet. We come
Speaker 1: up with the best sweets, don't we. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: big deal. You know, it's important. I agree to you,
Speaker 1: you know, um Chuck. About fourteen hours ago, a guy
Speaker 1: named Joseph Paul Franklin. I can't remember what he his
Speaker 1: birth name was, but he legally changed his name to
Speaker 1: Joseph Paul after in honor of Joseph Paul Gebel's, the
Speaker 1: Nutzi propagandist. What a nice guy he must be to
Speaker 1: change his name to that, right, So Missouri just executed
Speaker 1: him at twelve oh one Wednesday. Member was today the
Speaker 1: ninete one of those two, and actually hustler publisher Larry
Speaker 1: Flint was making a big hubbub trying to keep the
Speaker 1: man from being killed, which was somewhat ironic, although not
Speaker 1: really if you followed Larry Flint's career, because he was
Speaker 1: the man who supposedly shot Larry Flint and paralyzed him
Speaker 1: for life. Supposedly was he not convicted of that. No,
Speaker 1: he he confessed to it, and it was quite possible
Speaker 1: the reason that he gave for doing it was because
Speaker 1: um Hustler had had some um, some interracial spread that
Speaker 1: the guy didn't like, and he was targeting interracial couples.
Speaker 1: He shot a couple of black kids in Ohio, I
Speaker 1: believe um. And he was killed in Missouri because he
Speaker 1: randomly picked St. Louis out of the phone book and
Speaker 1: went and found a synagogue and just sat outside and
Speaker 1: took shots at people as they came out of a bar. Mitzvah.
Speaker 1: So he's racist, he's an anti Semite. He also had
Speaker 1: serious mental health issues as well. Um Andy shot Larry
Speaker 1: flinty um, but he was executed. And the whole reason
Speaker 1: that Larry Flint was creating this hubub about not killing
Speaker 1: this guy. One Flint head of famous quote from the
Speaker 1: last news cycle that he didn't think the government should
Speaker 1: be in the business of killing people. So he's against
Speaker 1: capital punishment anyway. You can say it like Larry Flint,
Speaker 1: I don't do a very good Larry Flint. You put
Speaker 1: some marbles in your mouth, you're gonna try. Um. So
Speaker 1: he he just doesn't think that the death penalties a
Speaker 1: good thing. Anyway. He's an abolitionist. You would say, um,
Speaker 1: and then Secondly, he he filed a suit to have
Speaker 1: the name of the supplier of the drug that was
Speaker 1: going to be used in the lethal injection revealed unsealed
Speaker 1: because it's secret and it's not supposed to be secret.
Speaker 1: But as we'll find out, states recently have had to
Speaker 1: scramble to come up with the drugs to execute prisoners
Speaker 1: of the state. Yeah, there's a big thing going on
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about. But that was the most recent
Speaker 1: uh execution in the United States, makes thirty five for
Speaker 1: the year, and all but one of those were lethal injections,
Speaker 1: the other one being the electric chair. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: fast become the go to method for most states in
Speaker 1: many countries. If you're gonna get capital punishment UH going,
Speaker 1: then yeah, probably gonna do it by way of lethal
Speaker 1: injection these days. Yeah, but it's also the newest one too,
Speaker 1: And it came out of this um this well basically
Speaker 1: what amounted to an abolitionist movement in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies that sought to just get rid of the
Speaker 1: death penalty. And that was the third major movement in
Speaker 1: the United States since the late eighteenth century where people
Speaker 1: were just trying to get rid of capital punishment altogether. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did halt at nineteen seventy two after Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ruling firm in the Georgia. Uh, and they are remember
Speaker 1: reading about this later. Obviously I didn't read nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: I would have been very advanced one year old. But
Speaker 1: they said it was cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment,
Speaker 1: violating the eighth Amendment of the Constitution. And then but
Speaker 1: four years later they reversed that and Greg versus Georgia,
Speaker 1: and UM said, you know what, maybe that is cool
Speaker 1: on your usual, so let's come up with a way
Speaker 1: that's not. And they came up with lethal injection. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reason why that cruel and unusual I had
Speaker 1: a lot of traction was because, um, there were hangings before,
Speaker 1: and hangings are very very messy, sting. If the news
Speaker 1: isn't right, the head can pop right off, or if
Speaker 1: the neck isn't broken, the person just hangs there and
Speaker 1: suffocates for a minute or two and then dies. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the electrocution is really really awful too. I
Speaker 1: was reading a list of botched executions, and electrocutions are
Speaker 1: very frequently botched. People their heads catch fire, blood comes out,
Speaker 1: of their eyes. It's really all full stuff. So there
Speaker 1: was this idea that the whole point of this it's retributive.
Speaker 1: It's you did something so bad that we as a
Speaker 1: society have decided that you can't live any longer. But
Speaker 1: we as a society aren't as cruel as you are.
Speaker 1: You know, the point isn't to make you suffer. It's
Speaker 1: just to take your life and to do it in
Speaker 1: the most humane way possible. Well, electrocution, hanging, gas chamber,
Speaker 1: none of those really fit the bill. So somebody came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of lethal injection. But this wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time that was proposed that. The first time
Speaker 1: was in the nineteenth century, I think, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a guy named Julius mount Brier, and he
Speaker 1: was a doctor out in New York who said, you know,
Speaker 1: this would work because it would be efficient, humane, and
Speaker 1: it would keep the person from having UM some sort
Speaker 1: of hero status developed around them that sometimes comes from
Speaker 1: people who are hanged. But they went with electrocution instead. Well,
Speaker 1: in two the US became the first country to use
Speaker 1: lethal injection, and like we said, since then it's really
Speaker 1: become predominant UM. I think the current number of states
Speaker 1: that have the death penalty is thirty two as of today.
Speaker 1: But it's tough because states are have been repealing it.
Speaker 1: It's dropping like flies. I don't know about like flies,
Speaker 1: but maybe like honey bees, right, and those are those
Speaker 1: are states that have taken the possibility of capital punishment
Speaker 1: off of their books. Right. So, Um, well, you know
Speaker 1: thirty two or is the number that have the death penalty, right?
Speaker 1: Thirty two have a death penalty, um. Not necessarily meaning
Speaker 1: that they used that in the past year. Necessarily. There's
Speaker 1: something called de facto abolition, which is basically like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on our books, but we haven't used it in
Speaker 1: so long that we might as well not even have
Speaker 1: the death penalty. Um. So chuck, Like we said, lethal
Speaker 1: injection is the it's the most frequently used method in
Speaker 1: the United States, and it's fast becoming the same around
Speaker 1: the world. China picked it up after the United States
Speaker 1: and they replaced their shootings. Um. And that kind of
Speaker 1: led to it seems like almost a domino effect throughout
Speaker 1: Asia of other countries picking it up as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, Taiwan, uh, Guatemala there in Central America. Um,
Speaker 1: they have all gone to lethal injection, and right now,
Speaker 1: I have in two thousand twelve, fifty eight countries used
Speaker 1: lethal injection, down from sixty seven UH and sixty three
Speaker 1: INN and a hundred and forty countries of outlawed the
Speaker 1: death penalty worldwide. So and like you said, states are
Speaker 1: kind of starting to abolish it. Yeah, executions are down
Speaker 1: in general in the United States last year there were
Speaker 1: forty three. This year, like we said, there's been thirty
Speaker 1: five and we're fast closing out the year. Um, but
Speaker 1: lethal injection is the go to method of execution, and
Speaker 1: so we're going to figure out how it works. That's right.
Speaker 1: Right now, there are three thousand, one d and eight
Speaker 1: people as of spring of this year on death row
Speaker 1: or male of course, because you don't find a lot
Speaker 1: of females on death row because they're smart enough to
Speaker 1: not to kill other people generally speaking. Is that what
Speaker 1: it is? Yeah, women are much smarter. Um. A lot
Speaker 1: of these folks have been on death row for decades
Speaker 1: waiting to die. Maybe they're working through the appeals process
Speaker 1: because that all has to happen first. Um, some will
Speaker 1: die on death row without ever going into an execution chamber. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens. Some people commit or try to commit suicide
Speaker 1: before they can be executed after their appeals run out. Sure,
Speaker 1: there's a guy in Georgia who almost successfully killed himself.
Speaker 1: He cut his karated artery um with what I wonder,
Speaker 1: razor that guarded given him. I guess to shave with us.
Speaker 1: Sensibly like the razor and the guy, they rushed into
Speaker 1: the hospital, saved his life and then executed him a
Speaker 1: week later. Wow, it's a funny country. Um. So you're
Speaker 1: on death row, you've exhausted your appeals. Um, you're finally
Speaker 1: going to get that execution order and a date will
Speaker 1: be set in place for that execution. Um. At this point,
Speaker 1: you're going to be moved from death row to a
Speaker 1: place called death watch, and that is basically the that's
Speaker 1: the last stop. That's your holding area for the last
Speaker 1: days or weeks, right. Um. So, death watch is both
Speaker 1: a physical place like it's it's frequently in the same
Speaker 1: part of the prison that the execution chamber is located,
Speaker 1: or it might be in another prison entirely. Some states
Speaker 1: just maintain one execution chamber for the whole state, and
Speaker 1: it's at a certain prison. So you'd be transferred to
Speaker 1: that place. And then death watch also is supposedly they're
Speaker 1: supposed to watch you so you don't commit suicide. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's also your I think rights kind of open
Speaker 1: up a little more. You're you get visits from people. Um.
Speaker 1: You your treatment is a little better. I think you
Speaker 1: you get a room with a view, as it were, um,
Speaker 1: and you're you start the perforation of of dying, of
Speaker 1: saying goodbye, and of coming to terms with the fact
Speaker 1: that it's happening. Yeah, you know, the state of Texas
Speaker 1: has these death watch rooms at um on highway exits,
Speaker 1: most highway exits. You got your gas station, your subway,
Speaker 1: and your yeah, your death watch room. I'm kidding, but
Speaker 1: Texas executes a lot of people, it does. Texas bears.
Speaker 1: They execute a lot. But they're not the only ones
Speaker 1: that have no all sorts of weirdness going on. Apparently
Speaker 1: two percent of counties account for like fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: percent of executions in the United States. It just seems
Speaker 1: like Texas comes up all the time when they're like
Speaker 1: the last time this method was used or the first
Speaker 1: time this method was used a Texas well. Texas was
Speaker 1: the first one to usually the injection like you said exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they kill a lot of people there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not picking on you Texas. I love you guys. No here,
Speaker 1: I've got one Alabama. In Alabama. Uh it is um,
Speaker 1: it takes a unanimous jury to hand down a life sentence,
Speaker 1: but it takes ten of twelve to hand down a
Speaker 1: death sentence. Really Yeah, and a judge can over rule um,
Speaker 1: a jury a life sentence jury Yeah, and say no,
Speaker 1: this person needs a death penalty and they do it frequently. Interesting.
Speaker 1: We'll pick on Georgia two in a minute. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: Georgia was the one that executed the guy after saving
Speaker 1: his life after the suicide attempt. All right, great, Uh,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure we dolled out enough,
Speaker 1: you know, embarrassment for each state. So, um, you're on
Speaker 1: death watch. You can be visited more often, generally by
Speaker 1: friends and family. We're in like the last twenty four
Speaker 1: hours is now? Yeah, Um, your attorneys, spiritual advisors, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get your last meal. That is not a fallacy.
Speaker 1: Whatever you want, they'll prepare for you know that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily true. Well, it depends. Generally they satisfy your desire.
Speaker 1: But when does it not get satisfied. What state doesn't
Speaker 1: do that? Really? Yeah, um, there was a legislation that
Speaker 1: was passed after this one. This one inmate ordered a
Speaker 1: meat Lever's pizza like twenty four tacos, like like this
Speaker 1: awesome spread that Just reading it, I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of hungry for this reading about this this
Speaker 1: man's last meal, and they didn't need any of it.
Speaker 1: Even still, there's probably two dollars for the food, but
Speaker 1: it caused enough outrage in the state legislature that they
Speaker 1: passed the thing where it's like, you can have whatever
Speaker 1: the prison cafeterias cooking that night, that's your last meal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a really great article in Lapham's Quarterly online for
Speaker 1: free called Last Meal. Go check it out. It's just
Speaker 1: basically this awesome history and contemporary evaluation of last meals.
Speaker 1: That's pretty sad it is, but it's really interesting what
Speaker 1: it says. Like there's a guy in Arkansas who was
Speaker 1: executed in the nineties. His name was Verry Leaf fair Child,
Speaker 1: and he pointed out that it doesn't make a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to give a condemned person a last meal.
Speaker 1: He said it was quote like putting gas in a
Speaker 1: car that don't have no motor but like you have
Speaker 1: no need to take in food because you have no
Speaker 1: need to derive the energy from it any longer, because
Speaker 1: you're about to lose your life. Well, it's not about
Speaker 1: deriving energy, it's about enjoying one last thing, right. But
Speaker 1: if you look at if you look at the capital
Speaker 1: punishment system, that's it makes no sense. Yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I say, go read the article little. I'm not getting
Speaker 1: the point across very well. Well, I mean, I see
Speaker 1: what he's saying, but it's not like you gotta fuel
Speaker 1: up for the big day. It's like here, enjoy a steak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm just saying like it flies in the
Speaker 1: face of the rest of the criminal justice system. Oh well, sure,
Speaker 1: enjoy the steak then, you know. And time was they
Speaker 1: used to get you drunk, like beforehand, if you're going
Speaker 1: to get hanged in London, like from the prison to
Speaker 1: the gallows, they would stop and you you'd let you
Speaker 1: drink as much as you want and and then would
Speaker 1: take you super drunk and kill you. Yeah, that's interesting
Speaker 1: because that could provide a more docile um victim or
Speaker 1: a really weepy one which would be really like someone
Speaker 1: who starts causing lots of trouble. You know, yeah, he
Speaker 1: wants to fight one last time. Exactly right. But apparently
Speaker 1: I read somewhere that they sedate criminals. Are they condemned
Speaker 1: here first? So that's kind of like a modern incarnation
Speaker 1: of taking them and getting them drunk, handing them a volume.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true, you know. Okay, so you've had your
Speaker 1: last meal, which may or not be awesome depending on
Speaker 1: where you live. Um, your warden and your chaplain are
Speaker 1: going to visit. They're gonna stay with you till the
Speaker 1: end unless you don't want them there. You can probably
Speaker 1: refuse any kind of religious associations if you want. Um. Witnesses. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to all that. But the witnesses arrive at
Speaker 1: this point. Um, they're kept away from you though. They
Speaker 1: don't get to like walk by and say things to you. No.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, most witnesses are required well
Speaker 1: in Texas, they can take pot shots. Are you there?
Speaker 1: Six shooters? Um? Sorry Texas? Uh. They the witnesses and
Speaker 1: pretty much across the board I'm sure, are required to
Speaker 1: be totally silent the whole time they leave. Are brought
Speaker 1: into the to the execution area. Yeah, not like the
Speaker 1: people outside of prisons who are making lots of noise
Speaker 1: usually right the other protests or or kill them, kill them.
Speaker 1: That's as ugly as this country gets. Man. When you
Speaker 1: see the footage of people outside prisons a controversial executions,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. Uh. And then their final preparations. They're
Speaker 1: gonna give you clean clothes, uh, but you take a
Speaker 1: last shower or shower get dressed. Uh, and then connect
Speaker 1: you to the old e k g um, which is gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, let everyone know if you're gone, if you're
Speaker 1: still with them. Yeah, they hook the e k g
Speaker 1: up to you. It's not hooked anything yet, but they've
Speaker 1: got it like a you're wired exactly. And then what's
Speaker 1: your showered and dressed and wired up with the knee
Speaker 1: KG and the warden and the chaplain are hanging out
Speaker 1: with you. Um. At the predetermined time they will start
Speaker 1: to move you into the execution chamber and um. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the witnesses are there. And let's talk about the witnesses,
Speaker 1: Like the fact that there are witnesses at executions is
Speaker 1: actually the modern incarnation of a very long tradition like
Speaker 1: we used to have public executions in this country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like thousands of people would show up. Sometimes they would
Speaker 1: charge admission. Uh, And eventually that stopped and only a
Speaker 1: select number of people were allowed to witness. But well
Speaker 1: they're still witnesses. You know. Have you read about the
Speaker 1: last public execution? And there was I didn't either, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I thought you're asking no, no, just about it. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Rainey Bethia in Kentucky who was
Speaker 1: hanging in nineteen thirty six for rape and murder I think, um,
Speaker 1: and his execution was attended by twenty people. The big
Speaker 1: reason was it's not because they knew it was the
Speaker 1: last public execution. I think they decided to stop that.
Speaker 1: After this execution, there was a Kentucky basketball game after. Um.
Speaker 1: The sheriff was a woman, So this is going to
Speaker 1: be the first execution in US history ever conducted by
Speaker 1: a woman, and people wanted to go see how badly
Speaker 1: she was going to screw this up. And even though
Speaker 1: she didn't, the press still wrote that she'd fainted. Um,
Speaker 1: that like everything had been botched or whatever. But that's
Speaker 1: why everybody turned out. But there were charges from out
Speaker 1: of town reporters that people were having hanging parties, that
Speaker 1: they were drunk in the streets partying. That basically there
Speaker 1: was just a sense of revelry that shouldn't attend uh
Speaker 1: an execution, and that was the last draw for public
Speaker 1: executions in this country. But it got it got the
Speaker 1: the idea that you need to have other people witness
Speaker 1: a death when this executing somebody, just to make sure
Speaker 1: it's totally transparent. That was carried on with witnesses today
Speaker 1: and executions. Yeah, I mean that's part of it too,
Speaker 1: and part of it is also to give victims closure,
Speaker 1: the families that is of victims. Uh, there will be
Speaker 1: sometimes family members of the prisoner too, and they are
Speaker 1: generally kept apart um, not not always generally. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the prison warden is going to be there. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have medical people on hand of course to make
Speaker 1: sure it all goes as planned, which is pretty controversial
Speaker 1: as we'll find. Uh. You got your spiritual advisor, like
Speaker 1: we talked about, You've got your guards, um, state selected
Speaker 1: witnesses maybe, I mean there might be members of the
Speaker 1: state government there to watch it all go down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got media there. Um. You also have what are
Speaker 1: known as reputable citizens, and those are basically just average
Speaker 1: everyday citizens that witness executions. Is it like a lottery
Speaker 1: or something. No, it's like you kind tech your state
Speaker 1: d O C. And say, hey, I wanna I want
Speaker 1: to witness an execution, and they send you an application
Speaker 1: for him. You explain why you have to be over eighteen.
Speaker 1: You have to explain why you want to do this.
Speaker 1: But apparently the pool is thin enough that they're not
Speaker 1: real selective. As long as you don't say, like, because
Speaker 1: I want to see them like bleed or something like that,
Speaker 1: they they will let you do this. Um. And apparently
Speaker 1: when there was a surgeon executions in the nineties Chuck Um,
Speaker 1: departments of corrections were so hard up because a lot
Speaker 1: of state law says you have to have six reputable
Speaker 1: citizens or twelve reputable citizens, that their pool was running thin.
Speaker 1: So departments of corrections were actually advertising looking for people
Speaker 1: to witness executions newspapers. It's just law. It's just that
Speaker 1: hold over from having the public be a part of
Speaker 1: this state monopoly on violence. It's stupid, but so much
Speaker 1: so that they're trying to force it now. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a problem anymore. It was just in
Speaker 1: the nineties, like they were killing everybody in the nineties. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so you've got your witnesses there. Um, your your execution
Speaker 1: chambers may have um clear glass with a curtain pulled,
Speaker 1: maybe a one way mirror where you can only see
Speaker 1: into the executed, into the condemned. Um. It all depends
Speaker 1: on your state, basically, but it's generally going to be
Speaker 1: a pretty quiet thing no matter where you are. It's
Speaker 1: a whole group of people that are just being utterly
Speaker 1: silent watching you. Or if it's there's too many family members,
Speaker 1: they might have a close circuit feed going on in
Speaker 1: another room. Yeah, if it's like you know, if it's
Speaker 1: not roomy, and apparently in Illinois, if you're a family member,
Speaker 1: the only way you can witness it is via close
Speaker 1: circuit TV in another room in Illinois. In Illinois, all right,
Speaker 1: it's another state. That's a new one. We haven't mentioned Illinois. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't really make fun of them though, I guess
Speaker 1: they're execution chambers. Small. Yeah, you can make fun of
Speaker 1: them their enemy seats in their nice state budget. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got your timeline of events. It's all very much
Speaker 1: scheduled like down to the minute. Um, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: your person properly dressed, you're gonna escort them into the chamber.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this when I was reading this article, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Imagine like just taking a shower too fast, and so
Speaker 1: you just kind of have to sit there on the
Speaker 1: edge of the bed with the warden and whatever spiritual
Speaker 1: adviser they throw at you, waiting to go be executed.
Speaker 1: That has to be the worst wait ever. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it being much worse than that, because
Speaker 1: they can't be like, wow, we'll just get this started early. No,
Speaker 1: everything is on a very delineated schedule, and they're just
Speaker 1: kind of have to sit there until the time comes
Speaker 1: to go to the execution chamber to get started. I
Speaker 1: just to take a long shower. That stuck out to me. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the longest shower of your life. Um, the saddest shower
Speaker 1: of your life for sure. Uh. You might be rolled
Speaker 1: in and like restrained beforehand and rolled in on a jernie.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're allowed to walk there yourself and then you're
Speaker 1: restrained once you're in there, and at that point they
Speaker 1: are going to go ahead and pre rig you with
Speaker 1: the I V tubes UM to lead you in there,
Speaker 1: and then those once you get in there and you're
Speaker 1: strapped in, they will be fed into what's called an
Speaker 1: anti room where the actual UH death cocktails await and
Speaker 1: the executioner awaits. Yeah, it's like an enclosed room away
Speaker 1: from the eyes of everybody, including the condemned and the witnesses.
Speaker 1: But you have two tubes. Most states required two. There's
Speaker 1: a backup to one to serve as a backup. At
Speaker 1: this point, you have your final statement if you so choose.
Speaker 1: They'll read that out loud on the news that night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be careful what you say. You can go on
Speaker 1: to UM. Are we giving advice to de throw a night.
Speaker 1: It just seccurred to me that we UM. You can
Speaker 1: go on to UH departments of actions websites and most
Speaker 1: of them have last statements on there, and some of
Speaker 1: them are what you'd expect summer eerie, I'm sure, UH.
Speaker 1: And generally the head is unrestrained so they can look
Speaker 1: around and stuff, although sometimes they do have like a
Speaker 1: hood or a sheet. Again, it depends on the state
Speaker 1: and how they do it. So the the condemned is
Speaker 1: strepped into a gurney strapped down, but their heads under restraint.
Speaker 1: They've got tubes leading into their h the ivy needles. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's ready to go. Yeah, I think, uh, now
Speaker 1: it's a good time for message break and then we'll
Speaker 1: get into the actual process after. Okay, So, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's go, time for a solemn moment. Yeah. Um. For
Speaker 1: a long time states, we're using something called a world
Speaker 1: basically and like toronic lethal injection machine, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: It was what co working came up with. Basically, it
Speaker 1: was I'm sure, if not directly based on his model,
Speaker 1: it was at least very similar to it. But then
Speaker 1: they worried about mechanical failures, so they said, no humans
Speaker 1: need to do this. I think they had mechanical failures.
Speaker 1: I can imagine. Um. And so in some states you
Speaker 1: have one executioner and others you have a couple of executioners.
Speaker 1: And there again they're in this anti room where the
Speaker 1: actual drugs are that the i V tubes are leading
Speaker 1: to from the execution chamber into the anti room. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you have a few different ones, a few
Speaker 1: different executioners, they're all putting drugs into i V tubes,
Speaker 1: but they none of the executioners know which one is
Speaker 1: the real I V tube and which one's is leading
Speaker 1: to a mannequin, and that isn't actually a mannequin. Uh
Speaker 1: that that you know, that old trick. Like they used
Speaker 1: to do the same thing with flipping the switch too.
Speaker 1: I think they had like several switches firing squads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they don't want the h the one any one
Speaker 1: person to have that weight. They can always think. I
Speaker 1: guess I had at chance that it was me, you know, alright,
Speaker 1: So I guess we should move on to the drugs
Speaker 1: that are used. Um, it used to almost always be
Speaker 1: a three drug cocktail, but things are getting weird these days.
Speaker 1: I've noticed. Originally it was three drugs. You would have
Speaker 1: an anesthetic, paralyzing agent, and a toxic agent, and those
Speaker 1: were used for years and years, and then due to
Speaker 1: some circumstances, a bunch of different circumstances that converged where
Speaker 1: in some cases down to one like Joseph Paul Franklin
Speaker 1: was killed with just one drug. Well, I looked up
Speaker 1: almost every single execution in two thousand thirteen used a
Speaker 1: single drug pinto barber at all, which is an anesthetic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's basically a substitute when are in short supply
Speaker 1: of other ones. But I did see that it's actually
Speaker 1: illegal to use this drug this way, and the manufacturer
Speaker 1: is Danish and was like, well, no, you can't use
Speaker 1: our drug that way. Right. They started fighting, uh, people
Speaker 1: who sold that drug to like state agencies exactly. Very
Speaker 1: controversial and states were trying to get this stuff anyway
Speaker 1: they could. So since it was banned for use by
Speaker 1: correctional facilities for executions, the ultimate correction, the d A
Speaker 1: was actually rating departments of corrections and taking their drugs. So, um,
Speaker 1: because of this band, because of the drug maker. And
Speaker 1: so first you had the drug maker, um that was
Speaker 1: making pentethal, right yeah. And then people were like, well
Speaker 1: how about this. We have propo fall, that's the anesthetic
Speaker 1: pentethal is, right yeah, and so what they were replacing
Speaker 1: it with was propofol, which is Michael Jackson's milk that
Speaker 1: killed him. Did we hit it right this time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay um. And then the maker of propo fall said, uh, well,
Speaker 1: how if you you can't use that to execute people,
Speaker 1: that's not what we made this for. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: t s, We're gonna use it anyway. And so the
Speaker 1: maker said, if you use that to kill anybody, we're
Speaker 1: gonna cut off supplies to the entire United States, including hospitals,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have an enormous problem on your hands.
Speaker 1: And so all of the hospitals contacted the departments of
Speaker 1: the corrections and said, do not use that, like, we
Speaker 1: can't have a propo fall shortage. So now they're turning
Speaker 1: to compounding pharmacies, which are generally regulated mostly by the state,
Speaker 1: not so much by the Feds, and UM, trying to
Speaker 1: get their hands anyway they can on some sort of
Speaker 1: general anesthetic. Uh. And the anesthetic ideally, UM, if they
Speaker 1: were using pentethal or peno barbatal barbaria UM, if you
Speaker 1: were in a hospital and you were put under general anesthesia,
Speaker 1: they would use about a hundred pegrams of this stuff
Speaker 1: delivered over your ten to fifteen seconds, and you would
Speaker 1: be out. It's an anesthetic. You wouldn't be asleep, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be unconscious. You are under general anesthesia, you're not
Speaker 1: feeling anything, You're not anything. So that's a hundred milligrams
Speaker 1: for just general anesthesia. When you're given a lethal injection
Speaker 1: of penal barbitall, they give you five grams, five thousand milligrams,
Speaker 1: not a hundred milligrams, five thousand milligrams of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's enough to kill you flat out. Um, And
Speaker 1: proponents of lethal injection will say they don't feel anything
Speaker 1: after that, right, and again, that should just be enough
Speaker 1: to kill you, which is why a lot of states
Speaker 1: are just using that one drug. Now. Um. In the
Speaker 1: original lethal injection cocktail, that was step one. Once they
Speaker 1: administered the anesthetic, they would flush the lines with saline solution,
Speaker 1: and then um they would introduce the next one, which
Speaker 1: is a paralyzing agent. Yeah. That's basically a the heaviest
Speaker 1: duty muscle relaxant you could ever imagine, because it relaxes
Speaker 1: your muscle so much that your die fragms and lungs
Speaker 1: don't function any longer. Yeah, that's a serious muscle relaxing. Right,
Speaker 1: So you just you stop breathing. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: way to die number two. And that takes about one
Speaker 1: to three minutes for that one to take effect fully.
Speaker 1: So then that one's been kind of abandoned because it's
Speaker 1: been criticized or the use of it's been criticized because
Speaker 1: a lot of people point out that that's really for
Speaker 1: the witnesses because without it, when somebody's dying, a lot
Speaker 1: of times they will writhe, they will gasp for breath,
Speaker 1: they will um, they're back while arch as much as
Speaker 1: it can when it's strapped down to a gurney. When
Speaker 1: you administer a paralyzing agent, none of that happens. So
Speaker 1: the witnesses are like, oh, look, it looks like he
Speaker 1: wanted to die. Look at what a peaceful death that
Speaker 1: man just went through. So it's for the witnesses. And
Speaker 1: then number two, it could also conceivably mask pain. So
Speaker 1: if it's masking pain, then it's also masking a possibly
Speaker 1: inhumane method of execution. So they kind of discontinued the
Speaker 1: paralyzing agent um, but that was traditionally step two. And
Speaker 1: then once that one was administered. So are you getting
Speaker 1: the point here that like they're really going the extra
Speaker 1: mile to make sure you're dead in the nineties through
Speaker 1: lethal injection. Yeah, and you know what, I might as
Speaker 1: well go ahead and get into this. We just put
Speaker 1: our dog down two days ago and they did the
Speaker 1: same thing with that. It's like paralyzing agent. Three different
Speaker 1: things were injected into her. It's like the first go
Speaker 1: to sleep thing, and then the second paralyzer and then
Speaker 1: the final thing like she's gone. But hey, let's just
Speaker 1: inject this just to make sure the hardest stopped. Was it? Okay,
Speaker 1: so it was the toxic agent potassium chloride, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I mean they said it was a trade concoction for
Speaker 1: their company. Okay, so then it probably wasn't potassium chloride
Speaker 1: because I don't think that that's proprietary. But in some states,
Speaker 1: the use of potassium chloride the toxication, which is the
Speaker 1: third one um, that's not even allowed for use on pets,
Speaker 1: but they were using it on inmates because it induces
Speaker 1: cardiac aresque because it could conceivably cause pain. Okay, yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry about your dog, buddy. That's right. I appreciate that,
Speaker 1: And hey, thank you to everyone I put that on
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know while and people were super
Speaker 1: supportive and told a lot of their own stories of
Speaker 1: their pets passing. So I think maybe at some point
Speaker 1: I might put together a little like like you did
Speaker 1: the pet costumes. I might do like a pet memorial
Speaker 1: thing where people can send in that would be very nice,
Speaker 1: memorialized or pets stuff you should know anyway. Um, I
Speaker 1: did find it interesting though, A that I picked this topic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I kept wanting to send you stuff about it, like yeah, yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I was like, and I picked it knowing. I
Speaker 1: guess it was just this weird subliminal thing like maybe
Speaker 1: I was trying to work through it or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I did find interesting the triple drug
Speaker 1: Dale smilarities. I don't think it was the exact same stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's the same process basically, all right, So, um
Speaker 1: death from beginning to end five to eighteen minutes after
Speaker 1: the execution order is given kind of just depends. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's ideally. Remember the execution order is when like
Speaker 1: it's you've moved into the the execution chamber and the
Speaker 1: warden says it's not ringing, the governor is not calling, right,
Speaker 1: so um, that's when they start working on you, like
Speaker 1: putting in the ivy tubes and all that does. Now,
Speaker 1: remember the whole point of um execution the United States
Speaker 1: criminal justice system is not to inflict pain or cause suffering.
Speaker 1: It's simply to take that person's life and the most
Speaker 1: humane efficient means possible. Right, So what happens if you
Speaker 1: can't find a vein. That happens very frequently. There's all
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cases of um, the condemned helpfully
Speaker 1: UM saying we'll try this vein over here. I think
Speaker 1: this one, this one feels pretty good. Try this one.
Speaker 1: Like helping these people like stick them to put these
Speaker 1: lethal drugs in them. Sure, um so. And that particularly
Speaker 1: is the case with IVY drug users who have lots
Speaker 1: to collapse veins. UM. It's also chucked part of the
Speaker 1: problem when you don't have experienced medical personnel, which is
Speaker 1: one of the big controversies of lethal injection because if
Speaker 1: you notice, it has a lot of the trappings of
Speaker 1: a medical proceed but it completely flies in the face
Speaker 1: of medicine because the hippocratic oaths says, first, do no harm. Well,
Speaker 1: carrying out or even assisting in an execution is doing harm.
Speaker 1: So the American Medical Association tried to pass the resolution saying, UM,
Speaker 1: we're going to take the license of anybody who's involved
Speaker 1: in an execution, and all the states said, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do that. We're going to protect the doctor's licenses
Speaker 1: because we need these people. And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: conundrum you know, like, do you not have anything to
Speaker 1: do with an execution and let some prison guard try
Speaker 1: to find a vein and stick this person for sixty
Speaker 1: minutes and prolong the point from okay, start executing to
Speaker 1: death so this person is more aware and anxious and
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Or do you kind of throw your
Speaker 1: hippocratic oath to the side and help this person's execution
Speaker 1: go as painlessly and humanely as possible. Yeah, finding a
Speaker 1: veins not too tough though. I was reading like, watched um,
Speaker 1: watched uh executions and that's that's the number one that
Speaker 1: they can't find a vein where they feeding these people,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're not using heroin in prison, are they? No?
Speaker 1: But I think if you used heroin for a significant
Speaker 1: portion of your life, your veins are collapsed forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think they grow back. So it's generally though
Speaker 1: a prison guard or somebody that works with the prison though,
Speaker 1: that actually administers it. Right, Yeah, okay, that's what thought.
Speaker 1: And plus also there's another thing too, if if they're
Speaker 1: not good at um delivering the drugs, if they're not
Speaker 1: practiced at that um, the flow of the drugs, if
Speaker 1: you push it in too fast, can cause a lot
Speaker 1: of pain and suffering. That's one right, that's another one too,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why, Um, some states require that
Speaker 1: medical staff be on hand to assist with these things.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's really no humane way to put someone,
Speaker 1: you know, so that's that's kill somebody, Like you can't
Speaker 1: affixiate someone with feathers. Okay, No, And it's true. But
Speaker 1: I was looking around like, Okay, if lethal injection isn't
Speaker 1: even considered humane, which a lot of people say, like,
Speaker 1: it's not there, it's possibly there's a lot of pain. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the drugs that's being used these days is
Speaker 1: called medazzy lamb, and it's a sedative. It's not an anesthetic.
Speaker 1: So if you put somebody out with it, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they can't feel pain any longer. Um. But
Speaker 1: that's due to this shortage of pental barbitrall um. People
Speaker 1: are using that. So they're saying, wait, we're using untested drugs.
Speaker 1: These people are possibly feeling excruciating pain, but you can't
Speaker 1: tell because we're using a paralyzing agent. What There's got
Speaker 1: to be another way to do this, And some people
Speaker 1: recently have been speaking up and saying heroin I know,
Speaker 1: but I think, uh, there's probably a few seconds when
Speaker 1: you're introducing the pento barbital where they're like, all right, yeah, um, no,
Speaker 1: it's called inert gas asphyxiation. Okay, So when you suffocate, um,
Speaker 1: apparently the pain and discomfort is caused by not being
Speaker 1: able to expel CEO two. Um. With inert gas ex asphyxiation,
Speaker 1: you are inhaling gas. It's not oxygen, say, pure nitrogen gas,
Speaker 1: but you're still capable of exhaling CEO two, which means
Speaker 1: that the whole process should be painless, right, and unconsciousness
Speaker 1: takes effect in a couple of seconds, death a few
Speaker 1: more seconds after that. So they think it's possible that
Speaker 1: they may have figured out a the most humane method
Speaker 1: of capital punishment around inert gas asphyxiation. How do they
Speaker 1: like practicing that? No? But I suspect that if if
Speaker 1: this kind of reform thing continues going on, we'll see
Speaker 1: inert gas chambers pretty soon. Yeah. You know, the old
Speaker 1: firing squad is instantaneous. Probably it's done right. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it rarely is done right. That's the thing. What do
Speaker 1: you mean rarely it's done right? Give me a statistic. Well, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: how many shooting firing squads percentage wise aren't done properly?
Speaker 1: So I would probably say the vast majority. Really yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: you're trying to again, if you're doing something humanly and efficiently,
Speaker 1: you want to remove human error. So um, finding a
Speaker 1: vein introducing the drug at a proper rate, like all
Speaker 1: of these things are subject to human error, right, shooting
Speaker 1: a bullet at somebody from fifty feet or whatever. That's
Speaker 1: get all kinds of human error involved in it. I
Speaker 1: would say, go read a And I'm not an activist.
Speaker 1: I'm not being an activist here. Um, go read this
Speaker 1: article called um on the possible pain from various methods
Speaker 1: of execution. I believe it's what it's called. There's a
Speaker 1: guy in the eighties who basically went around and said,
Speaker 1: let me get all the evidence I possibly hand from
Speaker 1: the different types of execution that people are put through
Speaker 1: to figure out how much pain and how frequently they
Speaker 1: feel pain, how much they feel as well. And he
Speaker 1: came up with this amazing study. And firing squads are
Speaker 1: not they're bloody, they're not they're not good. Well, I
Speaker 1: know they're bloody, but I didn't know that they were
Speaker 1: butched so that people lived most of the time after
Speaker 1: being shot by eight dudes in the head. But that's
Speaker 1: another thing. They don't aim for the head a lot
Speaker 1: of times. Only one guy has a bullet where the
Speaker 1: aims the chest, chest, so you're shot through the heart.
Speaker 1: Is that like all countries across the border. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I'm just saying I would say, go read
Speaker 1: that study. My money's on inert gas. Inert gas definitely,
Speaker 1: not on firing squads. The guillotine. Well, that came out
Speaker 1: of that one reform movement from the late eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: That's as instant as it gets. No, it's not. Do
Speaker 1: you not remember our Yeah, we said it's possible that
Speaker 1: the head is alive for a couple of seconds. Four seconds.
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't even know you right now.
Speaker 1: I got one last one, all right? Um, So there
Speaker 1: is a huge disparity and the death penalty as a
Speaker 1: whole um among races. So it turns out of capital
Speaker 1: cases feature a black or Hispanic defendant and then um
Speaker 1: with victims. There's a big race disparity too. Uh, in
Speaker 1: death penalty cases in the United States. I think either
Speaker 1: last year in the last few years, seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the victims have been whitecent have been black, six percent
Speaker 1: have been Hispanic. For the victims, so it's um disproportionately
Speaker 1: doled out against people who have killed white people than
Speaker 1: it is to people who have killed black or Hispanic people.
Speaker 1: And other was like two percent or something like that. Interesting,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? So lethal injection, man,
Speaker 1: that was a weird one. Huh uh, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: this is touchy stuff, you know. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about lethal injection, um, you can type
Speaker 1: that into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener, mate,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this what a long strange trip
Speaker 1: has been because that's what Whitney called it. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: I'm Whitney and I'm a twentysomething band teacher from Provo, Utah.
Speaker 1: My husband, also a band teacher, introduced me to your
Speaker 1: show in two thousand nine when he was commuting one
Speaker 1: hour each way to Park City every day. When I
Speaker 1: started my current job last year, I started listening to
Speaker 1: you guys after I realized how crappy radio was and
Speaker 1: I exhausted the music on my iPod. I started one
Speaker 1: on episode one, and just today caught up with a
Speaker 1: werewolf podcast. Yeah not bad. I was excited and sad
Speaker 1: all at the same time. We heard that a lot. Actually,
Speaker 1: I know you get lots of emails and you're probably
Speaker 1: sick of them, but I felt like I had to
Speaker 1: write once I caught up. During the last school year,
Speaker 1: I had my first child, started my new job, and
Speaker 1: moved twice, the second move being into our first home.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, with all this change, I started to
Speaker 1: get pretty stressed and even depressed. On top of all this,
Speaker 1: I teach beginning band to six and seventh grade kids.
Speaker 1: My job is very exciting. I love it, but I
Speaker 1: can get frustrated and even develop road rage at times.
Speaker 1: Stupid kids. Your podcast was my sanity through all this, dudes.
Speaker 1: I was able to focus my mind on exciting things
Speaker 1: like Barbie dolls and serial killers, and it all made
Speaker 1: my day a little bit brighter. So I just want
Speaker 1: to say how much I appreciate all the podcasts. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm learning, keeping my mind, engage, and enjoying
Speaker 1: your banter. And I think my eighteen month old daughter
Speaker 1: also enjoys since she's heard your voices since she was
Speaker 1: just a tiny thing. I hope you keep making them.
Speaker 1: Whitney Werner, thanks a lot, Whitney from probo Utah band
Speaker 1: Teaching and we are shaping young minds, eighteen month old minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in utero even we've heard people for some reason play us.
Speaker 1: Forget teaching your kids line language, just have them listen
Speaker 1: to Stuff you should Know exactly. Yeah. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: want to let us know how we have helped your
Speaker 1: life out or how we've influenced the development of your child,
Speaker 1: it's a good one. You can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, You can send
Speaker 1: us an email, and as always, check us out at
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