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