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Speaker 3: Thirty five years.
Speaker 4: That's how long Elizabethsonnett's family waited for justice to occur.
Speaker 5: He backhanded is child.
Speaker 6: I don't want the child had done.
Speaker 7: You just don't do that to a child across its faith.
Speaker 3: Thirty five long years. And I entered the call, and
Speaker 3: I got all the information on who done it, who
Speaker 3: was all involved in all the particular.
Speaker 7: The viciousness was there that he could do something like that.
Speaker 3: I don't know who.
Speaker 1: When Elizabeth Sennett was murdered, Patterson Hood, one of the
Speaker 1: lead singers of the legendary Southern rock band the Drive
Speaker 1: By Truckers, was living in the shoals.
Speaker 5: Obviously, it was the big front page story for you know,
Speaker 5: weeks because it was such a horrific Grizzly murderer and
Speaker 5: all of the different As more details started coming out
Speaker 5: about it, you know, it just kept getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: He was twenty four working at a pharmacy in Florence,
Speaker 1: looking for a way out.
Speaker 5: They closed the Ford Plant in nineteen eighty two, which
Speaker 5: was the year I graduated from high school. And when
Speaker 5: it was gone, not only was it gone, but then
Speaker 5: all these other businesses it depended on people who made
Speaker 5: the money working at the Forward Plant. That stuff started going.
Speaker 5: It's really bounced back in the last last fifteen to
Speaker 5: twenty years. The town's almost unrecognizable because of all the
Speaker 5: really positive things that have happened. But in eighty eight
Speaker 5: it was pretty fucking grim.
Speaker 1: Years went by, and the story of what happened to
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Senna stayed with him.
Speaker 5: I don't know why it resonated with me, but I
Speaker 5: first started writing it thinking in terms of writing it
Speaker 5: more as like a short story or a book or
Speaker 5: something like that, and I kind of wrote it in
Speaker 5: that form, and then at some point started and turning
Speaker 5: it into a song.
Speaker 1: The song was called The Fireplace Poker. He released it
Speaker 1: on the album Go Go Boots, which came out in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, maybe you've heard.
Speaker 2: It before, God.
Speaker 7: And answered, make it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Pattison Hood got his inspiration from one of the regulars
Speaker 1: in that Florence drug store. A local police officer told
Speaker 1: him back in nineteen eighty eight he was a.
Speaker 5: Chief of police in Florence, and so he was all
Speaker 5: up in any police business anywhere in the area, whether
Speaker 5: it was in his jurisdiction or not. So he would
Speaker 5: come in and just talk about stuff, and it was
Speaker 5: interesting to hear for sure. He hearized really early on
Speaker 5: that it wasn't like it was like it was supposed
Speaker 5: to be looking like it was.
Speaker 1: What everyone first thought was that Elizabeth Sennatt had been
Speaker 1: murdered by two local kids, Smith and John Force Parker.
Speaker 1: They were the ones who drove out to Kondogs Cemetery
Speaker 1: Road on that March morning. It was Parker's knife found
Speaker 1: in a pond behind the house. They confessed. They were
Speaker 1: charged with capital murder. Everything that would happen in the
Speaker 1: Senate case over the course of the next thirty five years,
Speaker 1: the controversies, the outrage, the moral calamity that would ultimately
Speaker 1: take place in home and prison, was based on the
Speaker 1: assumption that the justice system in Alabama had correctly determined
Speaker 1: who was responsible for what happened that morning, namely, Charles
Speaker 1: Sennett was the mastermind who ordered the hit on his wife,
Speaker 1: and Parker and Smith were the killers. But that's not
Speaker 1: what the Florence police chief told Patterson.
Speaker 7: Hood found five was fall from grasp.
Speaker 3: Still she.
Speaker 7: Tried. No one ever know what she told him, No
Speaker 7: way told her the rare and is biden fifteen wax
Speaker 7: fireplace poker.
Speaker 1: The Reverend came home from work and found the missus dying.
Speaker 1: Life was falling from her grasp, But still she lay
Speaker 1: there trying. No one will ever know what she told him,
Speaker 1: or know what he told her, because the Reverend did
Speaker 1: his wife in fifteen whacks fireplace poker. Wait, the Reverend
Speaker 1: did his.
Speaker 3: Wife in.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to my podcast
Speaker 1: about Things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This episode of the Alabama
Speaker 1: Murders is about the trial of John Forest Parker, one
Speaker 1: of the three young men charged in the killing of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sennett, and all of the ways that the catastrophe
Speaker 1: that unfolded in the shoals the failure cascades set in
Speaker 1: motion by the murder could have been averted. The counterfactual
Speaker 1: version of events, the what ifs episode three a peculiar institution.
Speaker 3: I've had, you know, other cases that technically we're probably
Speaker 3: factually more complex, but this is, Yeah, this is the
Speaker 3: one that I will is still on my mind even
Speaker 3: without chilcoming.
Speaker 1: Tom Hefflin was John Forrest Parker's attorney. He remembers exactly
Speaker 1: where he was today Elizabeth Sennett was murdered.
Speaker 3: I had been to Red Bay, Alabama, which is on
Speaker 3: the Mississippi border, down the same highway where this happened.
Speaker 3: I may well have seen John Forrest Parker and Kenny
Speaker 3: Smith in their car. I don't know that for a fact,
Speaker 3: but it might well add Then I got the call
Speaker 3: that the court was going to appoint me and Gene
Speaker 3: Handby to represent.
Speaker 1: Heflin is the son of the former US Senator from Alabama,
Speaker 1: Howell Heflin. In his living room, Heflin has a portrait
Speaker 1: of his famous father, and father and son looked very
Speaker 1: much alike. The Heflins have large leonine heads and the
Speaker 1: kind of rumbling southern gravitas. So you were quart appointed attorneys.
Speaker 3: Quarter pointed attorneys?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much of your practice would have been that
Speaker 1: kind of work in those days.
Speaker 3: Zero usual.
Speaker 1: So how did it come about?
Speaker 3: I think we'd had a string of capital murder cases,
Speaker 3: and you know, everybody kind of is expected to serve.
Speaker 1: Parker's trial took place in May of nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: at the Cobra County Courthouse, a graceful white neoclassical building
Speaker 1: on the town square in the center of Tuscumbia.
Speaker 3: All right, we're at the Copper County Courthouse. If we
Speaker 3: look across, you see a three story building with a
Speaker 3: razor wire around it in a fence. That's the county jail.
Speaker 1: Heflin gave my colleague Ben Adaf Haffrey a tour of
Speaker 1: the courthouse.
Speaker 3: We don't have full life.
Speaker 1: The courtroom was small, gray and white. On the wall,
Speaker 1: there's a portrait of the judge in the Parker case
Speaker 1: inga Johnson, long blonde hair, blue eyes.
Speaker 3: So where did you guys there? And so the jury
Speaker 3: box that's interesting, it sort of faces the judge food
Speaker 3: boxes there. Witness would be there, Court Clark over there, obviously,
Speaker 3: judge court reporter here, like some of the jurors would
Speaker 3: have had like a direct view of John like from
Speaker 3: feet away. Yeah, he would have been probably, we probably
Speaker 3: would have sat him there. I think we did well
Speaker 3: inside where we blocked him off to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: Why do you want to block him off, Well, he
Speaker 3: is shackled, you know, that's basically I just don't want
Speaker 3: to emphasize that he is a prisoner at that point,
Speaker 3: even everybody knows he is.
Speaker 1: Most criminal trials, particularly older ones, don't have an audio
Speaker 1: or video record. There's just a transcript created by the
Speaker 1: court reporter. The transcripts can run for thousands of pages,
Speaker 1: and they're their own unique literary Because there's no description
Speaker 1: or elaboration or context. They read us flat banal. It
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of time to learn how to
Speaker 1: use your imagination to fill in the empty spaces. And
Speaker 1: in the case of John Parker, what becomes clear when
Speaker 1: you learn how to fill in those empty spaces is
Speaker 1: that the prosecution's case was really, really weak. The state's
Speaker 1: problem started with Parker sitting there in the docket a
Speaker 1: few feet from the jurors. This was a case about
Speaker 1: a murder for hire, a contract killer, and he just
Speaker 1: didn't look the part of a contract killer. Tell us
Speaker 1: about Parker.
Speaker 3: Parker was like eighteen. Actually a good family, solid people.
Speaker 3: He had had some prior childhood trauma that I think
Speaker 3: probably created a little mittal. He had some drug problems.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about your impressions of him.
Speaker 3: A kid who had been drugged out and didn't know
Speaker 3: what they were doing.
Speaker 1: John Forest Parker had been arrested on multiple occasions for
Speaker 1: minor crimes, breaking into cars, stealing gas. It failed ninth
Speaker 1: grade three times. In one of his psychiatric evaluations done
Speaker 1: after one of his previous arrests, there's this quote. John's
Speaker 1: childhood history includes a brain concussion at the age of two.
Speaker 1: He reportedly was unconscious for thirty six hours following his concussion.
Speaker 1: His parents reported that due to his brain concussion, they
Speaker 1: had not expected very much of John. On the drive
Speaker 1: to Coondog Cemetery Road on the morning of Elizabeth sentence murder,
Speaker 1: Parker and Smith had a bottle of whiskey between them
Speaker 1: on the front seat. Parker injected himself with a healthy
Speaker 1: dose of opioids. On the way over, Charles Sennitt gave
Speaker 1: them some money to buy a gun. They used it
Speaker 1: to buy drugs instead. In every description of the crime,
Speaker 1: they come across as completely clueless. Parker is nineteen, Smith
Speaker 1: twenty two. They're so lackadaisical that after beating and stabbing
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sennet, they threw the knife and the walking stick
Speaker 1: they used into the pond behind her house, when there
Speaker 1: are literally thousands of acres of wooded wilderness on the
Speaker 1: drive back home where something could be thrown away and
Speaker 1: it would never ever be found. Yes, Parker and Smith
Speaker 1: heard Elizabeth Senne badly and took money to commit acts
Speaker 1: of violence. But when we hear the phrase contract killers,
Speaker 1: we think of assassins, mafia hitman Stone called hard bitten lethal,
Speaker 1: These were screwed up kids. One of the biggest points
Speaker 1: of weakness for the prosecution emerged d in the testimony
Speaker 1: of the surgeon who was on duty at Helen Keller
Speaker 1: Hospital when Elizabeth Senate was brought into the er, David
Speaker 1: Parkes McKinley. He was the one who first saw her injuries,
Speaker 1: who tried to save her life, who pronounced her dead.
Speaker 1: The direct examination by the prosecutor is brief and to
Speaker 1: the point. The police had found a knife, a hunting knife,
Speaker 1: in the pond behind the Senate house. This was a
Speaker 1: knife that both Smith and Parker admitted to bringing with
Speaker 1: them to Koondok Cemetery Road. The prosecution just wanted to
Speaker 1: establish the connection between that knife and Elizabeth Sennett's death. Question, doctor,
Speaker 1: can you tell us what you recall about her physical appearance?
Speaker 3: Answer?
Speaker 1: The most striking thing was a multiple stab wounds, particularly
Speaker 1: over the right side of the chest and at the
Speaker 1: base of the neck. There were also some wounds of
Speaker 1: the forehead and scalp. McKinney testified that the cuts on
Speaker 1: the forehead and scalp looked like they were from a
Speaker 1: blunt object. The wounds to the chest and neck were
Speaker 1: caused by a knife. He went on to say, it
Speaker 1: is likely that the chest wounds were by and large
Speaker 1: the cause of her death. Prosecutor thank you doctor. That's
Speaker 1: all halflin knew the prosecution was calling McKinley, so he
Speaker 1: did a little homework beforehand.
Speaker 3: We're starting trial on the Tuesday following Memorial Day. I
Speaker 3: know they're calling state medical examiner was coming up testify
Speaker 3: what the fate wounds were describing. Then they were bringing
Speaker 3: the doctor who treated her in the emergency room there,
Speaker 3: and I called up the doctor and said, what are
Speaker 3: you going to say tomorrow? And we talked about and
Speaker 3: visited kind knew each other.
Speaker 1: What the doctor told him made Heflin realize he could
Speaker 1: lay a trap. So in court, Hefflin gets up and
Speaker 1: a cross examination asks McKinley about the knife. Question, have
Speaker 1: you ever been shown the knife that the state removed
Speaker 1: from the pond in this case? Answer? I have not
Speaker 1: seen it, no, sir. Heflin turns to the prosecutors. Do
Speaker 1: y'all have the knife? This is one of those moments
Speaker 1: when the transcript is of little help. You have to
Speaker 1: fill in the empty space. The prosecutors are anxious. They
Speaker 1: thought the identity of the murder weapon was a settled fact,
Speaker 1: So why does Hefflin want McKinley to see it? They hesitate.
Speaker 1: The judge immediately intervenes, Can I see y'all at the bench.
Speaker 1: Both sides huddle with the judge. The judge says to Hefflin,
Speaker 1: do you just want to show him the knife? Hefflin says,
Speaker 1: uh huh. The judge turns to the prosecutor, why don't
Speaker 1: you get it? More hesitation from the prosecutors. The judge
Speaker 1: repeats herself, y'all go get it. The prosecutor's rummage in
Speaker 1: their evidence box, take it out. Heflin hands it to
Speaker 1: the doctor. I asked Heflin to read aloud from the
Speaker 1: trial transcripts from the crucial moment of his exchange with McKinley.
Speaker 3: You saw the wounds inflicted on miss fresh when she
Speaker 3: came in host, didn't you, Yes, sir as said examining
Speaker 3: that knife, do you have any opinion whether or not
Speaker 3: that was the instrument that could have inflicted those wounds?
Speaker 1: And McKinley answers, simply.
Speaker 3: I would frankly be surprised this was the knife based
Speaker 3: on what I saw, or the sharp project based on
Speaker 3: what I saw on the patient. I don't have any
Speaker 3: further questions.
Speaker 1: The government's own witness testifies that the alleged murder weapon
Speaker 1: isn't actually the murder weapon. The chest wounds are of
Speaker 1: a much smaller knife, Yes, that was. The neck wounds
Speaker 1: are consistent with the large knife that Kenny and John have.
Speaker 1: The chest wounds, which are the fatal wounds, seem to
Speaker 1: be made by a smaller knife, and we can't find
Speaker 1: the smaller knife. That's right from there, you would think
Speaker 1: the reasonable doubts grow were Kenny Smith and John Parker
Speaker 1: actually the ones who stabbed Elizabeth Sennate to death. The
Speaker 1: pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Elizabeth Sennett's body testifies
Speaker 1: she described sentence chess wounds as rapidly fatal. When asked
Speaker 1: about this by prosecutors, she said bluntly, I don't think
Speaker 1: she lived very long after those wounds were inflicted. Once again,
Speaker 1: one of the government's own witnesses undermines their case. Think
Speaker 1: about the timing. At eleven forty four in the morning,
Speaker 1: Charles Sennett calls Ronnie May in hysterics to report that
Speaker 1: his wife has been attacked. At twelve fifteen, the paramedics
Speaker 1: discover that Elizabeth Senate has a pulse. At one pm,
Speaker 1: she arrives at Helen Keller Hospital and she's still alive. McKinley,
Speaker 1: in fact, doesn't pronounce her as dead until two five,
Speaker 1: a full hour later. But according to the prosecution's own
Speaker 1: witness John Parker and Kenny Smith were back home in
Speaker 1: Florence by eleven thirty that morning. It's a thirty to
Speaker 1: forty minute drive from Coondog Cemetery Road to Florence and
Speaker 1: it's pouring rain outside. Timing doesn't work. They must have
Speaker 1: left the Senate's house by at least eleven. There's no
Speaker 1: way Parker and Smith could have inflicted rapidly fatal wounds
Speaker 1: at mid morning if she was still alive at two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon, meaning Smith and Parker must have
Speaker 1: been long gone by the time the fatal wounds were inflicted.
Speaker 1: Later in the trial, another pathologist who had examined the
Speaker 1: Senate autopsy made the same point. Here is heflin questioning him?
Speaker 1: Question if the evidence in this case shows that the
Speaker 1: Cherokee Rescue squad detected a heartbeat on Missus Senate at
Speaker 1: approximately twelve to fifteen pm on March eighteen, nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Based upon your years of experience as a pathologist and
Speaker 1: your review of the exhibits that you just named, do
Speaker 1: you have an opinion as to what time prior to
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen pm the fatal wounds were delivered? Answer within
Speaker 1: a very few minutes. The judge, the jury, the lawyers
Speaker 1: on both sides, the journalists covering the trial are all
Speaker 1: listening to this testimony with its unmistakable implication someone else
Speaker 1: must have stabbed Elizabeth Sennett in the chest with a
Speaker 1: smaller knife, and who was the only person at the
Speaker 1: house at the time of the nine one one call
Speaker 1: Charles Sennet. If Senate does it, the timing makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense. He shows up after they've left, Stabs
Speaker 1: calls Stabs and calls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or even had called and then yeah.
Speaker 1: A knife that doesn't fit, a timeline that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: And if the jury still had any lingering doubts about
Speaker 1: Charles Sennett's culpability.
Speaker 3: There was also what they.
Speaker 1: Heard from Elizabeth Sennett's friend who had a front row
Speaker 1: seat to the inner life of her marriage. That's after
Speaker 1: the break. Susan Moseley was a nurse at a weight
Speaker 1: loss clinic in Muscle Shoals. Elizabeth Senate was one of
Speaker 1: her patients.
Speaker 6: And I noticed she was extremely why introbility, no self staying.
Speaker 6: What was a brilliant.
Speaker 1: Moseley sat down with a local reporter named Lee Hedgebeth,
Speaker 1: who has written about the Senate case and did some
Speaker 1: interviews for us. She shared with him what she remembered
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth in the months leading up to the murder.
Speaker 6: So she would come once a we to the Planic
Speaker 6: and I would boil her. I would weigh her to
Speaker 6: her blood pressure, talk to her about okay, how's your
Speaker 6: wait doing.
Speaker 1: Mosey said that. Elizabeth said it didn't seem happy. She
Speaker 1: would sit in the waiting room with a napkin crushed
Speaker 1: in her fist. One day, Mosey decided to confront her.
Speaker 6: And I said, Liz, and listen to him. You've been
Speaker 6: going up and down and wait. So I'm going to
Speaker 6: close this chart and I'm just gonna turn it down.
Speaker 6: Lunch shut miles, puggade bread and how about you he
Speaker 6: close your eyes and just tell me what you think.
Speaker 6: It's the biggest problem. If you eat coctato, ships will
Speaker 6: holly we every night we'll get baked one. So we
Speaker 6: will do something to just let me know. And I
Speaker 6: never need no bus. And I had the chair Russell
Speaker 6: and I still every shovel and she said I need
Speaker 6: a dope.
Speaker 9: Open your eyes, she said, turn around here, and I'll
Speaker 9: never forget. I've turned to my lap if the lamb
Speaker 9: walked this, and she was standing there, and I'm gonna
Speaker 9: tell you before we go any puddle, I'm gonna shit.
Speaker 2: I've gone to Barls p whaty bells pub about an inch.
Speaker 10: Bute book.
Speaker 6: Well, sure sleep would come.
Speaker 2: All in the chest.
Speaker 6: Pap he thought her butts and legs to a certain
Speaker 6: area where a skirt would.
Speaker 5: Come the black.
Speaker 1: Black the Senate was covered and bruises.
Speaker 2: I got up and have this whole boy. I didn't
Speaker 2: ask no questions. I didn't ask anything. I had to
Speaker 2: butt a little thing back up and now one like that.
Speaker 2: She said, down, you won't talk about this, and she
Speaker 2: began to kill me. This story about her relationship.
Speaker 6: With mister sid. She began to kill me, but she
Speaker 6: was didn't know how, but that he was going.
Speaker 2: To kill her, and that she knew this, and she
Speaker 2: had saved them her money for the bulls, and when
Speaker 2: we were able to attorney, she was going to do this.
Speaker 2: One charge her four hundred dollars. She said, I worried
Speaker 2: about this and worried about this. Once I'll do there,
Speaker 2: she said, I know, I don't think they've all ever
Speaker 2: be three with me with before who kills me.
Speaker 1: She didn't know how, but he was going to kill her,
Speaker 1: and she didn't think she could break free. Mosey said
Speaker 1: she tried to help Elizabeth to find a way to
Speaker 1: leave Charles, leave the marriage. She told Elizabeth, you can
Speaker 1: come and live with me if you want. She tried
Speaker 1: to help her find the words to communicate to her husband.
Speaker 1: It had to end.
Speaker 11: We would say turn Alan literally right off the wood
Speaker 11: thing and say okay, now say say this Charles, we
Speaker 11: need to talk. I cannot continue to be alone with
Speaker 11: all these Ltons. And they go to children lady and
Speaker 11: taught a pego fathers where long's lay shirt a degree there.
Speaker 11: Somebody is going to dig this out.
Speaker 1: Is Mosley gave a deposition to investigators, and her testimony
Speaker 1: was recounted to the jury by Ronnie May from the
Speaker 1: Colbert County Sheriff's office in the flat, effectless tone of
Speaker 1: official speak. But even then, it's impossible to miss the
Speaker 1: power of what she saw. Listen, this is what May said.
Speaker 1: Missus Moseley said that she had been told by Missus
Speaker 1: Senatet that around Christmas of that year, Charles's family came
Speaker 1: to visit and they had come up from Florida. Missus
Speaker 1: Sennett stated that some of the family went hunting. She
Speaker 1: stated that Charles became extremely upset over some conversation between
Speaker 1: he and members of the family, and Missus Sennett stated
Speaker 1: that during that outburst of Christmas with his family members,
Speaker 1: he laid down on the floor and screamed and cried
Speaker 1: and seemed to be paralyzed at different times. Missus Sennett
Speaker 1: stated that this went on for some time at the house,
Speaker 1: and as a result, Charles's family left and returned to Florida.
Speaker 1: Missus Moseley stated that Missus Senate told her during this
Speaker 1: argument that Charles at one point had pulled and waved
Speaker 1: a gun in the direction of his father. On one
Speaker 1: of my visits to the Shoals, I sat in Tom
Speaker 1: Hefflin's living room and tried to make sense of all
Speaker 1: the things that Jerry learned about Charles Sennet, who had
Speaker 1: taken his own life so quickly after his wife's murder.
Speaker 1: I mean, of all of these three potential murderers, Parker
Speaker 1: Smith and Senate Senate is the only one with a
Speaker 1: documented history of violent, highly aggressive behavior. He's the one
Speaker 1: who beat his wife. To me, this is all about
Speaker 1: Charles Sennett, the whole thing. He sets the whole thing
Speaker 1: in motion. He's the charismatic, persuasive adult. He's a predator.
Speaker 1: He really should be the one on trial.
Speaker 3: And without having gone back, maybe we didn't try him
Speaker 3: hard enough.
Speaker 1: This, I think is what was on the police chief's
Speaker 1: mind when he gossiped about the case with patterson Hood,
Speaker 1: lead singer at the drive by truckers at that drug
Speaker 1: store in Florence.
Speaker 5: I can't remember how thing they figured out that he that,
Speaker 5: you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that,
Speaker 5: but it was, you know, it was pretty obvious, pretty quick.
Speaker 5: You know that those guys, they were fuck ups. They
Speaker 5: took what was going to be a simple go in,
Speaker 5: you know, kill her, make it look like a robbery,
Speaker 5: and turned it into this gruesome thing. And she was
Speaker 5: still alive, and so the preacher did what you know,
Speaker 5: be then did? I mean's god, It's just it's just
Speaker 5: such an awful story on every imaginable level, which.
Speaker 1: Is why patterson Hood wrote the crucial verse, very.
Speaker 7: Home word found misus die My was fall from her
Speaker 7: grasp still she tried. No one ever knows what she
Speaker 7: told him. Nobody told her it's the river and is
Speaker 7: my friend fifteen blacks Fireplace Poker.
Speaker 1: To read the John Parker trial transcript with the full
Speaker 1: knowledge of what would happen over the following decades is
Speaker 1: to get angry, especially after what happened next the sentencing.
Speaker 2: What was it like when you were sequestered?
Speaker 4: We spent eight days over here in the Ramada end.
Speaker 1: Gary Highfield, foreman of the jury in the Parker trial,
Speaker 1: talking to my colleague Ben the daph Haffrey.
Speaker 9: It was good.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, they fed us, and I mean
Speaker 4: we got to go home and get clothes and all
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff and then you know, go down there.
Speaker 4: But uh, they told us prepare for clothes for a week,
Speaker 4: and we got them and you know, went to the hotel.
Speaker 6: I mean it was all good.
Speaker 3: Did you guys hang out when you were.
Speaker 4: We really they told us not to, you know, we
Speaker 4: just kind of We did get to go to the pool.
Speaker 3: We did go to the pool one day.
Speaker 1: Highfield was thirty years old, time married one kid and
Speaker 1: another on the way sold insurance. He says looking back
Speaker 1: that the news coverage of the killing made the job
Speaker 1: of the defense very difficult.
Speaker 4: I think it kind of handcuffed then because people had
Speaker 4: an idea of what had happened. There was so much
Speaker 4: put out there beforehand. And it's when you get something,
Speaker 4: When a person gets something in their mind, you know,
Speaker 4: it's kind of hard to change.
Speaker 1: So when they heard all of the discrepancies about the
Speaker 1: timing and the weapon and the character of Charles Sennett.
Speaker 1: It was hard for them to square that with their
Speaker 1: understanding of John Parker. He had agreed to go out
Speaker 1: to Kundak Cemetery Road, he had admitted he brutally assaulted
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sennate. A dispassionate reading of the child transcripts today
Speaker 1: years later supports the idea that Parker should have been
Speaker 1: acquitted of the murder charge, just gotten something like conspiracy
Speaker 1: to commit murder or assault in the first degree. But
Speaker 1: this was a year after the crime, and it was
Speaker 1: very hard to be dispassionate.
Speaker 4: But I mean, look, in that kind of situation, if
Speaker 4: you had he he meant to kill her with that pipe.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you mean to do something, you may
Speaker 4: not actually be the one that committed the death, the
Speaker 4: actual death, but torturing somebody that bad was.
Speaker 3: Man, it was awful.
Speaker 5: Dude.
Speaker 4: If you if you're not, even if you're not the
Speaker 4: one that taught that was the one that fatally killed her,
Speaker 4: you did you. I mean, it was proven that you
Speaker 4: did every bit of that stuff.
Speaker 6: This lady.
Speaker 4: I mean, she might as well have been dead. But anyway,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's just I mean, I I don't
Speaker 4: even like to think about it too much. I don't
Speaker 4: know which one of them killed her. I really don't,
Speaker 4: but I think both of them got what they probably deserved.
Speaker 4: Lee legally and Moraley.
Speaker 1: They found Parker guilty of murder, so Parker's attorney, Tom
Speaker 1: Heiffeland lost that round, but the prosecution was asking for
Speaker 1: the death penalty, and here the jury hesitated. The picture
Speaker 1: that Hefflin had painted up his client as a mixed
Speaker 1: up kid in over his head had left an impression.
Speaker 1: So the jury voted overwhelmingly ten to two for life
Speaker 1: without parole. The jury didn't think Parker deserved to die.
Speaker 4: I just don't think some of these people that were
Speaker 4: on the jury, they didn't want that to be on
Speaker 4: their conscious the rest of their life. Putting somebody into
Speaker 4: the death penalty.
Speaker 1: At this point, the cascade could have stopped right. A
Speaker 1: cascade is unique as a category of catastrophe because it
Speaker 1: requires multiple stages in sequence. Remember our proverb from episode one,
Speaker 1: you need to nail the shoe, the horse, the rider,
Speaker 1: the message, and the battle for the kingdom to be imperiled.
Speaker 1: And if any of those stages fall out along the way,
Speaker 1: if the rider loses his horse but quickly finds another
Speaker 1: The kingdom is fine. A life sentence for Parker brings
Speaker 1: the whole saga to a close, because it means that
Speaker 1: Kenny Smith would almost certainly get a life sentence as
Speaker 1: well when his time came, and for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: the case would be closed. Justice would be served. The
Speaker 1: rider found another horse. The kingdom is just fine. Except
Speaker 1: that's not what happens why, Because this is Alabama. To
Speaker 1: understand what happens next requires a brief digression into an
Speaker 1: obscure legal doctrine known as judicial override. Judicial override arose
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen seventies in response to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's insistence that states be more rigorous in the way
Speaker 1: they use the death penalty. The court wanteds standards rules,
Speaker 1: so the court divided capital cases into two stages. First,
Speaker 1: a jury was required to rule on the defendant's guilt. Then,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court said it wanted juris to do something
Speaker 1: they don't do in normal criminal cases, decide on the
Speaker 1: appropriate sentence. Alabama's response was to pass the law giving
Speaker 1: the final word to the judge, and if the judge
Speaker 1: wanted to override the jury's decision to turn say life
Speaker 1: for the parole into the death penalty, they could. A
Speaker 1: handful of states did something similar, like Florida, but in
Speaker 1: Florida the law said that the judge had to give
Speaker 1: quote great weight to the jury's decision. In Alabama, a
Speaker 1: judge could do whatever they wanted, and over the next
Speaker 1: forty years, judges did just that. The override was used
Speaker 1: over one hundred times in Alabama, almost always to allow
Speaker 1: a judge to execute someone whose life the jury wanted
Speaker 1: to save, with judges saying all kinds of crazy things
Speaker 1: along the way, like the time an Alabama jury went
Speaker 1: easy on a murderer because he was mentally disabled, and
Speaker 1: the judge overrode them because and unquoting the sociological literature
Speaker 1: suggests gypsies intentionally test low on standard IQ tests. So
Speaker 1: in the Parker trial, the jury rules in the first
Speaker 1: stage that he's guilty, and in the sentencing stage they
Speaker 1: say no death penalty, life without parole. And what happens next.
Speaker 1: The judge Nka Johnson, the one with a portrait on
Speaker 1: the wall in the courtroom, overrides the jury recommendation and
Speaker 1: sentences Parker to death. Heflin was not exactly surprised when
Speaker 1: you heard her override decision. Your reaction was you saw
Speaker 1: it coming coming?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Do you did she think she? I think she. I
Speaker 3: think she now she's generally a good judge. I think
Speaker 3: she listened. I think she a you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying she had totally prejudged it, but I think she.
Speaker 3: Damn it.
Speaker 1: She doesn't give in her sentencing decision. She doesn't really
Speaker 1: give specific reasons as to why she's overriding the Jerry's recommendation.
Speaker 3: In Alabama, you're not required to.
Speaker 1: The whole thing makes no sense, of course, if the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court wanted the states to make the application of
Speaker 1: the death penalty less arbitrary, how does just handing over
Speaker 1: power to judges to do whatever they want for whatever
Speaker 1: random reason fix the problem. Gary Highfield, the jury foreman,
Speaker 1: is still angry about it.
Speaker 4: What reason did I have to spend a week over
Speaker 4: a week in a jury listening to this when she
Speaker 4: has the right to overturn my decision or decision? I mean,
Speaker 4: I felt like there was no reason for May to
Speaker 4: even be there. That's the problem I have with That's
Speaker 4: the only problem I have with the whole thing, don't
Speaker 4: I mean? I just felt I felt useless spending all
Speaker 4: that time on a jury, and then she has the
Speaker 4: right to come back. I mean, there's no sense even
Speaker 4: having a jury if you're going to be able to
Speaker 4: overturn the jury, if a judge can overternal jury.
Speaker 1: Parker gets sent to death row at Donaldson Prison in Bessemer, Alabama,
Speaker 1: just outside of Birmingham. This is nineteen eighty nine. His
Speaker 1: lawyers keep him alive, filing appeal. After appeal, thirteen years pass,
Speaker 1: he's still alive and he gets one final chance by
Speaker 1: way of a new Supreme Court case. In ring the
Speaker 1: Arizona the court throws out Arizona's practice of allowing judges
Speaker 1: to make sentencing decisions independently of the jury in death
Speaker 1: penalty cases. They said it violates the sixth Amendment, which reads,
Speaker 1: in case you've forgotten, in all criminal prosecutions, the accused
Speaker 1: shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial
Speaker 1: by an impartial jury. If your life is at stake,
Speaker 1: then what happens to you shouldn't be left up to
Speaker 1: the whims of whatever judge you were assigned. Only a
Speaker 1: jury should be allowed to make the call of life
Speaker 1: or death, and that protection is right there in the constitution.
Speaker 1: In response, Indiana, which had an override statute on its books,
Speaker 1: shuts it down. Everyone on death row in Indiana who
Speaker 1: was there because of a judge's override gets their original
Speaker 1: life sentence back. All eyes turned to Alabama. Surely they
Speaker 1: have to follow suit, right, John Parker's going to live.
Speaker 3: When I heard that it was done as John's come,
Speaker 3: my faithing was John was off death row.
Speaker 1: This was two thousand and two. For the next eight years,
Speaker 1: Parker got up every morning waiting for the state of
Speaker 1: Alabama to acknowledge the fact that the law that put
Speaker 1: him on death row was unconstitutional. He waits and waits.
Speaker 1: Do you know when Alabama finally got around to abolishing
Speaker 1: judicial override twenty seventeen, when it was too late to
Speaker 1: make any difference for Parker. In fact, it took Alabama
Speaker 1: forty one years to come to their senses, and then
Speaker 1: they couldn't help themselves. They say this reversal only applies
Speaker 1: to future cases. Anyone who's already on death row because
Speaker 1: of a judge's override in the previous forty two years
Speaker 1: stays on death row. In the years before the Civil War,
Speaker 1: there was a phrase Southern slave owners would use to
Speaker 1: describe their practice of owning their workforce. They called it
Speaker 1: their peculiar institution. Euphemism a nice way of saying that
Speaker 1: things were done a little differently in their part of
Speaker 1: the world. Judicial override is, I think, a very good
Speaker 1: example of another Alabama peculiarity. And if you are at
Speaker 1: all curious about how this particular peculiarity works, I would
Speaker 1: direct you to the discussion that took place on April seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, in a hearing room at the Alabama
Speaker 1: State Capitol in Montgomery.
Speaker 10: Helus.
Speaker 8: Gentlemen, I want to welcome you to the House Judiciary Committee.
Speaker 8: We're glad to have each and every one of you
Speaker 8: here with us today.
Speaker 10: Thank Misterior member.
Speaker 8: Mister England, you want to talk about twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Representative England is Chris England, that rarest of species
Speaker 1: in Alabama. A Democrat represents Tuscaloosa. He was the co
Speaker 1: sponsor of the legislation back in twenty seventeen that ended
Speaker 1: judicial override. Now he wants to make an amendment to
Speaker 1: that law, House Bill twenty seven.
Speaker 10: What this bill does or seeks to do, is to
Speaker 10: make that application retroactive, so that I believe thirty three
Speaker 10: individuals that are currently sitting on death row as a
Speaker 10: result of override could be resentenced.
Speaker 1: Representative England says, we've all finally agreed that judicial override
Speaker 1: violates the constitutional right to a jury trial in death
Speaker 1: Bendley cases. So we should go back and restore the's
Speaker 1: decision in the case of all those people who are
Speaker 1: only on death row, because it took us forty years
Speaker 1: to realize that back in nineteen seventy five, we made
Speaker 1: a big mistake.
Speaker 8: Mister England. I hear what you're saying, and I understand
Speaker 8: that an individual tride today would be would be subject
Speaker 8: to a different set of laws, and I've got you.
Speaker 8: But the individuals that were shod part of the time
Speaker 8: we changed the law were subject to those laws that
Speaker 8: were in effect at that time, and the law that
Speaker 8: was in effect at that time allowed judicial override, and
Speaker 8: these judges and their discretion overrode.
Speaker 1: Then comes this priceless bit of nonsense.
Speaker 8: God squarely, it's very difficult for me to second yes
Speaker 8: or an effect override that which the judge overwrote.
Speaker 1: At this there are lots of nods up and down
Speaker 1: the committee This is the Alabama peculiarity. I have Southern
Speaker 1: friends who get mad correctly at the way Northerners always
Speaker 1: bring up slavery or get all worked up because people
Speaker 1: drive around with Confederate flags. But come on, this isn't
Speaker 1: a random thing. This is a characteristic. There is something
Speaker 1: in the psyche of places like Alabama that really, really,
Speaker 1: really doesn't want to address the consequences of past moral failures.
Speaker 8: Hi, is there is there a motion to give this
Speaker 8: bill a favorable report?
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 10: In a second.
Speaker 8: Okay, we've had plenty of discussion. You asked for a rogue.
Speaker 8: I'll go ahead, Brandy.
Speaker 1: Maybe you see where this is going. They vote it down,
Speaker 1: there will be no overriding of the override. It seems
Speaker 1: really clear to me that John Forest Parker didn't kill
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sennett. He was back home in Florence when she
Speaker 1: received the stab wounds that killed her. He should never
Speaker 1: been convicted of murder, but he was. And if he
Speaker 1: was going to be convicted, he should have served out
Speaker 1: the sentence given to him by a jury of his
Speaker 1: peers without parole. But he didn't. And once he was
Speaker 1: on death row, Alabama should have ended the practice that
Speaker 1: robbed him of a just result, but they didn't get
Speaker 1: around to it for over forty years, and even then
Speaker 1: they couldn't bring themselves to override the override. John Forrest
Speaker 1: Parker never stood a chance next time on the Alabama murders.
Speaker 12: This is how lethal injection actually kills you. It kills
Speaker 12: you by burning your lungs up. So the last thing
Speaker 12: that you know, you may know, is that you're on
Speaker 12: fire from the inside and the blood is filling up
Speaker 12: your lungs as you die. Is this too graphic?
Speaker 13: He Look, if you come back here and start coming
Speaker 13: and these guys ask you to go all the way
Speaker 13: with them, you gotta be willing to go. And I said,
Speaker 13: what's all the way? And he said, you know, if
Speaker 13: they're executions and if they ask you to be with them,
Speaker 13: you need you can't. You need to be willing to go,
Speaker 13: and if you're not, just don't come.
Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by ben Da dapfh Haffrey, Lucy Sullivan,
Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by ben Da Dafh Haffrey,
Speaker 1: and Lee Hedgsbeth. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Kate Ferby. Our Executive producer is Jacob Smith. Engineering
Speaker 1: by Nina Bird Lawrence, Production support from Luke LeMond. Original
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Garra with Paul Brainard and Jimmy Bodd.
Speaker 1: Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorsky. H'm Malcolm
Speaker 1: Glabam