Speaker 1: Quody Dinars, but Joseph's gotten more. If given the task,
Speaker 1: could we do it. There's so many people out there
Speaker 1: that say that they would do it, but yet there's
Speaker 1: a very small and I mean very small percentage of
Speaker 1: people that have actually ever done it. What I'm talking
Speaker 1: about is, let's see what are some of the euphemistic
Speaker 1: terms pulling switch, pressing the button, or in our case today,
Speaker 1: pulling the trigger. Today we're going to talk about an
Speaker 1: execution that recently took place in the state of South Carolina. Now,
Speaker 1: Brother Dave and I have talked about executions in the past,
Speaker 1: but this one is of particular interest me. So let's
Speaker 1: explore what happens in what failed happened in what summer
Speaker 1: calling a watched execution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
Speaker 1: is body bags fifteen feet, Dave, that's all that separates
Speaker 1: the end of a muzzle from a static target strapped
Speaker 1: to a chair. Fifteen feet. Let's see, that's five yards.
Speaker 1: Being an old high school football player, I always measure
Speaker 1: things in yards because I can visualize that from being
Speaker 1: on a playing field. So it's weird, I think for
Speaker 1: many people, particularly those that deal in the metric system
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. But that's a conversation for another day.
Speaker 1: But for me, you know, I'm thinking five yards away,
Speaker 1: that's it's not very far. And to be handed a
Speaker 1: weapon and be told that at the other end, only
Speaker 1: a five yard shot with a long barreled weapon that
Speaker 1: is rifled hit this target. And boy, did things take
Speaker 1: a bad turn.
Speaker 2: We know, South Carolina, we're dealing with the execution of
Speaker 2: Mikel Maddy. This is a man who actually wrote in
Speaker 2: a letter for his attorneys to share, I'm guilty as hell.
Speaker 2: What I've done is irredeemable. That is directly from the
Speaker 2: subject of today. Mikel Mody was on a crime spree.
Speaker 2: He's twenty one years old. He starts off in Virginia.
Speaker 2: He ends up in North Carolina where he steals a
Speaker 2: vehicle and he actually kills a clerk. He then heads
Speaker 2: down to South Carolina where he tries to use a
Speaker 2: credit card to get gas in his vehicle and he
Speaker 2: spends like forty five minutes trying to do it and
Speaker 2: it's not working because the credit card is not any good. Well,
Speaker 2: the clerk calls cops. Hey, man, there's a guy out
Speaker 2: here trying to get some gas and whatever. And so
Speaker 2: they show up and there's a bit of a you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're after this guy, Mikel Maddy ends up at
Speaker 2: a farm area, not like a corn farm or you know,
Speaker 2: cotton or whatever, but farmland that had been purchased by
Speaker 2: a couple.
Speaker 3: As they're piece of heaven on earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, beautiful area, a little pond and things,
Speaker 2: and there's this shed that they had built on this property.
Speaker 2: Was it was a big deal for them because they
Speaker 2: don't even the couple won't even married. Fifteen months show
Speaker 2: fifteen months and I'm thinking this is just too cool
Speaker 2: for school. And they get married in front of the
Speaker 2: shed that they had built, and that's where Michel Maddy
Speaker 2: ran into the actual victim of this case, Jim Myers,
Speaker 2: a fifty six year old officer of the law. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Mikel Maddy shot him at least eight times, probably more
Speaker 2: and then poured diesel fuel over his body and set
Speaker 2: him on fire. That is what mcelmody admitted to, and
Speaker 2: that's why he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I found this interesting because you know, most
Speaker 1: of the time you have to you know, if you've
Speaker 1: got somebody involved in something like this, the fact that
Speaker 1: he admitted to it. You, I think that many people believe,
Speaker 1: and wrongly believe that for some reason, you're going to
Speaker 1: be shown a level of mercy. Maybe he was thinking
Speaker 1: about that, you know, by the courts, that maybe he'd
Speaker 1: only be looking at potentially life in prison or something.
Speaker 1: But I got to tell you, this guy is police officer,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he's off duty. Not just a police officer.
Speaker 1: He's a captain and had had a long career. You know,
Speaker 1: he's like in his mid fifties, old Joe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: can you imagine you've lived this life. You've been away
Speaker 1: from your family at night, working third watch, and I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking about this guy's life. You know now looking back,
Speaker 1: you know he's worked time away from his family. He's
Speaker 1: probably missed ball games and dance recitals and everything else
Speaker 1: that comes along that we always talk about. And then
Speaker 1: you get to this kind of mucolic place where just
Speaker 1: over the horizon you can see that you're finally going
Speaker 1: to be able to hang up your badge and celebrate
Speaker 1: and you found love and maybe even peace. And then
Speaker 1: this descends upon you, out of all people in the world,
Speaker 1: that this perpetrator could have shown up on the doorstep
Speaker 1: of it's this guy, and this is arguably a just
Speaker 1: an absolute brutal example of overkill of an individual. Why
Speaker 1: would you feel compelled to do this? And you there's
Speaker 1: an interesting point that you brought up, Dave. You use
Speaker 1: the term frenzy with this individual, that he's hill his
Speaker 1: sole focus is to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: And you really wonder because so many people, and you know,
Speaker 1: I hate the why question. I think more importantly, what
Speaker 1: was his end game? Was he just going to, you know,
Speaker 1: descend upon us like the Angel of Death or the
Speaker 1: Black Plague and wipe out as many people as he could?
Speaker 1: Where are you going to go at that point in time?
Speaker 1: I'm always fascinated in a general sort of way about
Speaker 1: these people that do this sort of thing. It's always
Speaker 1: amazing to me. And can I back up just for
Speaker 1: a second. You had mentioned North Carolina with this clerk,
Speaker 1: and again the perpetrator in this case was not put
Speaker 1: to death or had not been sentenced to be executed
Speaker 1: regarding the event in South in North Carolina. But I
Speaker 1: have kids that I teach, Okay, that work in convenience
Speaker 1: stores and for my money, for my money. It is
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous jobs aside from like food delivery,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing where you don't know who's going
Speaker 1: to be walking in the door. And you know, police
Speaker 1: officers actually refer to convenience stores many times as stopping robs.
Speaker 1: That's what they'll refer to it, because they're easy targets,
Speaker 1: and it is, you know, and there's so many of
Speaker 1: these cases out there where convenience store workers have been killed.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's not a it's not a job
Speaker 1: I would take per se. I guess you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of time to study. You know, you can hang
Speaker 1: out behind the counter and study, but you Dave, you
Speaker 1: never know what's going to walk through the door.
Speaker 2: It's shocking to me as well, Joe, that I look
Speaker 2: at convence I get people who work, the people who
Speaker 2: actually punch a time clock working at a convenience store
Speaker 2: or whatever they have. I just respect them so much,
Speaker 2: I really do, especially when they're going to school, because
Speaker 2: you know, I had to do that too when I
Speaker 2: went to school, I had to work. And those who
Speaker 2: punch a time clock and are they're just doing what
Speaker 2: they have to do to get by, to get to
Speaker 2: the next level. I just think it's a great example,
Speaker 2: and too often we dismiss it, we throw that off
Speaker 2: of the side. But it's like those jobs you do,
Speaker 2: like working at a convenience store as a clerk, regardless
Speaker 2: of the danger, it is a step to someplace else.
Speaker 3: It's not the end all, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's not where you plan on being when you're
Speaker 2: in college at twenty to be in that same place
Speaker 2: twenty years from now. It's a job that has done
Speaker 2: to get you to the next stop in your life.
Speaker 2: And that's when I look at this guy. He's only
Speaker 2: twenty one when he commits this crime, these crimes plural.
Speaker 2: I don't know what he was doing, Joe. I don't
Speaker 2: know what his plan was when he woke up July fourteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. We're talking about, you know, in
Speaker 2: this show about a botched execution, the victim is not
Speaker 2: the victim. You know, technically he is in this story,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't write it, Joe. I could not put
Speaker 2: a victim next to this man's name. He was a
Speaker 2: victimizer who was paying his debt to society, which had
Speaker 2: been your life. Got to give it up. And anyway,
Speaker 2: I don't know what he.
Speaker 1: Was doing, what he left in his wake, though, or
Speaker 1: two people that are stacious, that are they're neither one
Speaker 1: of these individuals were you know, living somewhere in some palace. Okay,
Speaker 1: they don't. They've given everything that they can give. I mean,
Speaker 1: they both wind up, you know, giving their lives, you know,
Speaker 1: to the appetite of this monster. But I can tell
Speaker 1: you this, the monster that all the way back in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, that committed both of these crimes,
Speaker 1: he had a day of reckoning, in a day where
Speaker 1: his life ended with a parent awareness of his death,
Speaker 1: writhing in pain while strapped to a chair. There was
Speaker 1: a there's a running joke in in my family. I
Speaker 1: think it was my daughter that you know, this term was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of used a lot when she was
Speaker 1: a young teenager, and it kind of got adopted by
Speaker 1: our family. And if one of us screwed up something LEXI,
Speaker 1: my daughter would say, way to go, dad, you're ruining
Speaker 1: it for everybody. And and you know, and we would
Speaker 1: we would say that to one another all the way around.
Speaker 1: And that's that's it's a comical remark. It's generally said
Speaker 1: in jest and that sort of thing. But Dave. What
Speaker 1: happened in that execution chamber is literally an example I think,
Speaker 1: at least as far as capital punishment is concerned of
Speaker 1: individuals ruining it for everybody. Uh, let's you know the thing.
Speaker 1: The thing that's so distasteful I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of people is someone has to stand up and you know,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, you know, flip the lever, push
Speaker 1: the button, pulled the trigger, and we have always, i think,
Speaker 1: try to and the execution process has kind of evolved
Speaker 1: in our country. Capital punishment has where individuals are seeking
Speaker 1: to do it as humanly as they possibly can. You know.
Speaker 1: And years ago, you know, you had judicial hangings and yeah,
Speaker 1: there were botched hangings, but the line share of the
Speaker 1: hangings that occurred were successful. Okay, and I'm talking about
Speaker 1: on the first drop. But you can't imagine. I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of people can't imagine seeing someone that
Speaker 1: is suspended in the air by their neck and they're
Speaker 1: flipping around, and that for many people, that's very distasteful.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you something very quickly? Yeah? Sure, all right.
Speaker 2: When I was a child, I didn't know when you
Speaker 2: hang that the goal of hanging somebody was you know,
Speaker 2: to snap their neck as they fell. I thought that
Speaker 2: it was to strangle them. I really did. I thought
Speaker 2: like they put the noose on and pretty much just
Speaker 2: put their hands tied behind their back, pulled them up
Speaker 2: until they died from you know, their neck being strangled,
Speaker 2: you know, by the rope. I didn't know that it
Speaker 2: was a mathematical thing where they had you know, took
Speaker 2: the weight, height and everything else into consideration when they
Speaker 2: determined where where the news needed to be fashioned and
Speaker 2: how and all that so that when that individual dropped,
Speaker 2: the neck would snap and it would be very quick.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that, Yeah, it don't happen that way,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know that that.
Speaker 1: Was the whole point. And it had been literally perfected
Speaker 1: over a period of time where there was a formula
Speaker 1: that was applied to this. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: go back to Noah, my son had he said, if y'all,
Speaker 1: if y'all, I urge you to sit down and watch
Speaker 1: the movie Napoleon with me and the thing with Joaquin
Speaker 1: Phoenix that came out. I thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's beautifully filmed, and you watch this thing being played out.
Speaker 1: And during that period of time they had developed a guillotine,
Speaker 1: and the guillotine was regarded as like the perfect killing machine.
Speaker 1: The French were even using it. I think there's a
Speaker 1: wood carving or a lithograph. I can't remember what it
Speaker 1: is of the last guillotining that took place in France.
Speaker 1: I think it was in the nineteen twenties, and it's
Speaker 1: like looking over over a wall, and these were spectacles,
Speaker 1: you know, they as time went by, they had tried
Speaker 1: to prevent the public from actually seeing it, and you know,
Speaker 1: they viewed it back then as I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the ancestors did. As it's not just getting rid
Speaker 1: of the individual and making them punished for this or
Speaker 1: punishing them for what they've done their acts, but it
Speaker 1: was also a matter of deterrence because if it happens
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, you're you know, people don't really believe
Speaker 1: that it happened, or they don't see it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: like ingrain in their memory, and of course that memory
Speaker 1: is passed on to the rest of the family. You know,
Speaker 1: if you have a family that is represented by one individual,
Speaker 1: that one individual is going to go back to their
Speaker 1: family and say, you're not going to believe what I
Speaker 1: just saw and this is a price that is paid.
Speaker 1: I watched it. I watched them walk them out, I
Speaker 1: watch them strap them to a pole or you know,
Speaker 1: make them kneel before guillotine or whatever the case might be.
Speaker 1: And that information has passed on. So even if there
Speaker 1: were not people from that person's family present to witness this,
Speaker 1: that one individual goes back set forth like a little
Speaker 1: sailing ship, just you know, setting out this information. Individual saying, Man,
Speaker 1: it ain't worth whatever it is that you want to
Speaker 1: do to lose your life over this was horrific. We've
Speaker 1: lost that. That doesn't exist anymore. That's that's why, that's
Speaker 1: kind of why capital punishment is not truly in its
Speaker 1: pure sense, not an effective deterrent, because you know, they
Speaker 1: go into a blockhouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when did they stop doing it in public? Joe?
Speaker 3: I mean? And why?
Speaker 1: Well, in the early nineteen hundreds, early twentieth century, you
Speaker 1: had individuals that I think up until the nineteen early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, you had public executions by hanging. I don't
Speaker 1: know much about firing squads in the US. I know
Speaker 1: that they did exist, but there was something that took
Speaker 1: place in the American mind where, yeah, we knew that
Speaker 1: we were going to send people away to prisons. We
Speaker 1: knew that they were there, but it was too I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was vic Torrian sensibilities or Edwardian
Speaker 1: sensibilities that you know that changed the mindset of people
Speaker 1: where they did not want to observe the horror of it.
Speaker 1: And let's face it, early nineteen hundreds were brutal. You
Speaker 1: think about World War One and how brutal it was.
Speaker 1: People had had enough death. They didn't want to see
Speaker 1: it now. They didn't want monsters walking on the street either,
Speaker 1: and so I think that it was at that point
Speaker 1: in time where they you know, they kind of covered,
Speaker 1: you know, concealed this look. The first place I ever
Speaker 1: did autopsies Dave on a regular basis was inside of
Speaker 1: a jail. The morgue was actually inside the parish jail.
Speaker 1: And guess what sat on the site of literally right
Speaker 1: where the morgue was prior to the morgue being there,
Speaker 1: the parish gallows. So even at a county level back then,
Speaker 1: at parish's the same as counties, there were gallows there.
Speaker 1: And I think that they had done a public execution.
Speaker 1: I think the last one. My history is getting jumbled
Speaker 1: but I think it's like in the eighteen seventies or something,
Speaker 1: so it's always been kind of part and parcel of
Speaker 1: what happens here in our judicial system. People don't agree
Speaker 1: with it, and that's okay not to agree with it.
Speaker 1: I have my questions as well, But if you're going
Speaker 1: to do it, if you're going to do it, there
Speaker 1: is a level of exactitude that has to be in
Speaker 1: place with your process. Who's going to handle the weapons,
Speaker 1: how this thing is orchestrated. Because those that want to
Speaker 1: make execution more efficient and humane, all it takes is
Speaker 1: for one screw up and everybody else is going to
Speaker 1: have to pay the price relative to this, and then
Speaker 1: you're going to go searching for another methodology. We've come
Speaker 1: through so many now, I mean, let's just think about it.
Speaker 1: California used to have gas chamber. That doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: Cruel and unusual, I got admit it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of harsh, all right. You think about the gallows, and
Speaker 1: that's not something that we've seen. One of the things
Speaker 1: that people thought was going to answer this question make
Speaker 1: it humane. Is is actually something that that Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: had a hand in and that's the creation of the
Speaker 1: electric chair. We used it for years and years, but
Speaker 1: there are all these horrible mishaps that occurred along the
Speaker 1: way where it was what they were using was not
Speaker 1: necessarily sufficient to the need. And if you want to
Speaker 1: see the brutality of what happens with electrocution as horrible
Speaker 1: as Ted Bundy was, go look at his at his
Speaker 1: postmortem images and you'll see you'll see how scored his
Speaker 1: his his scalp is, you know. And there are all
Speaker 1: of these stories, some of them might be a bit apocryphal,
Speaker 1: but there are all these stories about people catching fire.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the capital punishment is wrong. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying the problem is is that you don't know
Speaker 1: how any one event is going to direct how the
Speaker 1: rest of the country is going to go. We get
Speaker 1: it away from the electric chair and suddenly they think
Speaker 1: that we've got the perfect thing. We're going to use
Speaker 1: lethal injection. Well, how are you going to facilitate this
Speaker 1: if you can't get the drugs and you have to
Speaker 1: have the right you have to have the right combination
Speaker 1: of drugs, and you've got drug companies that won't sell
Speaker 1: you the drugs, and then there's horror stories with that
Speaker 1: and people can't bear watching it. So isn't it funny?
Speaker 1: How now we've kind of come full circle back to
Speaker 1: a methodology that I know we've covered at least to
Speaker 1: one other case far. We've come full circle back to
Speaker 1: methodology involving firearms where an individual is tied anchored to
Speaker 1: a fixed object, in this case in South Carolina chair
Speaker 1: and you literally have a firing squad where you know
Speaker 1: they're going to send lead core projectiles down range to
Speaker 1: pierce your body. Unfortunately, the problem is is that some
Speaker 1: people apparently can't shoot straight. Three to eight Winchester. It
Speaker 1: is arguably one of the most storied rounds of ammunition
Speaker 1: in American history. It's existed, the thirty caliber rifle round
Speaker 1: has existed forever and ever. I've mentioned this before, but
Speaker 1: it bears, you know, repeating that most of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we use in the civilian world, as far as
Speaker 1: firearms go, it evolved out of the utility that the
Speaker 1: military had. And we've got several permutations of the thirty
Speaker 1: caliber round or approximately thirty caliber that go all the
Speaker 1: way back to I think probably the most significant it's
Speaker 1: probably thirty odd to six that was used, and there's
Speaker 1: been several iterations along the way, and we landed on
Speaker 1: three oh eight. Again that designation for people that don't
Speaker 1: understand calibers, which can be it can be confusing. This
Speaker 1: is the old British system three oh eight. It essentially
Speaker 1: measures out the circumference of the round. That is, how
Speaker 1: big around is this particular round. So if you think
Speaker 1: about it, it's zero point three eight inches and that
Speaker 1: round in particular is still in use today around the world,
Speaker 1: even in our military. Three oh eight. You know, you
Speaker 1: think about the old M fourteen platform, which you know
Speaker 1: still we use a variant of M fourteen in the
Speaker 1: military because many special ops personnel prefer this round over
Speaker 1: five point five six or the two two three caliber
Speaker 1: because it's more robust. It really packs a wallop. But
Speaker 1: this is where South Carolina landed. They landed on three
Speaker 1: oh eight Winchester. And the way their executions are set up,
Speaker 1: this is strictly a voluntary program where if you're part
Speaker 1: of the correctional system, and I don't mean as an inmate,
Speaker 1: but I mean as an employee. Apparently they have and
Speaker 1: they haven't really explained it. They keep some of the
Speaker 1: stuff veiled you have three volunteers that step up and
Speaker 1: they become the executioners. And so they've gone they went
Speaker 1: a long way to kind of perfect I guess, or
Speaker 1: try to account for any kind of problems that might
Speaker 1: arise in an execution. Built out or redesigned what's referred
Speaker 1: to as the death house. They've sent out one photo
Speaker 1: of this thing, and it is actually the chair that
Speaker 1: you can see that the individuals are strapped to. And
Speaker 1: then I guess it's kind of hearkening back to the past.
Speaker 1: They brought in their electric chair and there's a picture
Speaker 1: of it. So you've got the firing squad chair there
Speaker 1: that's facing I would assume towards the wall, because if
Speaker 1: you look behind a veil, you can see what appears
Speaker 1: to be clay stacked up there or maybe sandbags that's
Speaker 1: behind a black curtain, and then you've got the electric
Speaker 1: chair that's literally you're staring at. So that's the image
Speaker 1: that they've put out and it's a very tight space.
Speaker 3: Dave.
Speaker 1: That's that's one of the things about this that when
Speaker 1: this round, if people out there have not heard a
Speaker 1: three h eight round being discharged, this thing would rattle
Speaker 1: your cage. If you've got three of them going off.
Speaker 1: Just the reverberation of the sound in this environment. It's
Speaker 1: not like firing off a twenty two caliber, which is
Speaker 1: very small, it would really get your attention. But this
Speaker 1: is a very confined space. And I'm really amazed by this.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by this because, you know, you think about
Speaker 1: the old idea of a of a firing squad. I
Speaker 1: think about the Kubrick movie Pass a Glory with Kirk
Speaker 1: Douglas and they marched the guys out. They're strapped to
Speaker 1: a post, they're blindfolded, and you've got a whole line
Speaker 1: of soldiers, one line kneeling in the front, the other
Speaker 1: standing in the back, and they're firing at it. Like
Speaker 1: in this thing, it looks like they're firing at a distance.
Speaker 1: They weren't only talking about fifteen feet five yards, man.
Speaker 2: That's a very very small range of fire, Joe. And
Speaker 2: the reason we're actually spending time on it today is
Speaker 2: because even though it is only five yards fifteen feet,
Speaker 2: there was a problem with this execution.
Speaker 3: There was a problem.
Speaker 2: Now did they have I I'm going to ask you
Speaker 2: because I'm curious. I thought that when they an execution
Speaker 2: was done by firing squad, that several people were dummies
Speaker 2: or you know, they were firing blanks pretty much, that
Speaker 2: you had say ten people, of which two or three
Speaker 2: you know, had both live action and the rest were not.
Speaker 2: And so that no, but he knew exactly who did
Speaker 2: the killing, because that seems to.
Speaker 1: Be consider Apparently that's not the way South Carolina is
Speaker 1: doing this, and these people have practiced as well.
Speaker 2: I would think, so, Joe, and fifteen feet is from
Speaker 2: you know nothing. I mean, that's not a first down
Speaker 2: in football.
Speaker 1: This is a very short distance. It's nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not cracking off a shot from a thousand yards here.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting, Dave, is that, you know I
Speaker 1: mentioned the three h eight Winchester A round. This is
Speaker 1: fired through a rifled barrel. Okay, now they don't say
Speaker 1: whether or not the rifles are scoped. I would think
Speaker 1: personally that having at a range of five yards, which
Speaker 1: is just very elemental, I think that a scope would
Speaker 1: probably impede your ability to fire accurately at that short
Speaker 1: of a distance. You'd be much better off with iron sights.
Speaker 2: We're dealing with experts, We're not dealing with people who
Speaker 2: are trying to pass their class to get a certification
Speaker 2: to viral weapon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what the qualification is other than
Speaker 1: being a volunteer with a correction system. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've met some people that work within the correction system
Speaker 1: and they are many times those individuals are the most
Speaker 1: a few, not all, but they've been the most ardent,
Speaker 1: anti capital punished people that you come around. Because when
Speaker 1: you live in an environment with people day in and
Speaker 1: day out, you know, it really humanizes them. It's easy
Speaker 1: for us on the outside to say, yeah, well we
Speaker 1: need to execute this guy. We need to put him away,
Speaker 1: and he never should breathe any more free air. A
Speaker 1: matter of fact, he shouldn't breathe any air at all.
Speaker 1: We're going to end his life. But they've chosen or
Speaker 1: have volunteers that have come up out of this Corrections officers. Uh,
Speaker 1: tough job, one of the most toughest, one of the
Speaker 1: toughest jobs that you can have, because you're going into
Speaker 1: a lockdown situation every single day. I would suffocate. There
Speaker 1: is no way I could do that job. But because
Speaker 1: your corrections officer does not make you an expert with
Speaker 1: a weapon. You know, I'm thinking you know in the
Speaker 1: state of the state of South Carolina. Uh. One place
Speaker 1: that actually produces some of the greatest marksmen in the
Speaker 1: world is right down the road in Paris Island, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: The United States Marine Corps depot down there, Paris Island,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, and you could. I'm thinking that probably
Speaker 1: somebody in recruit training, even when they get toward the
Speaker 1: end of it, Uh, they would they would fare much
Speaker 1: better under these circumstances as far as accuracy goes. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much. I don't know how much train up,
Speaker 1: you know, these corrections officers have had, did somebody get nervous?
Speaker 1: But the the big thing here, Dave, is that what
Speaker 1: we're being told is that out of three shooters, you've
Speaker 1: only got two defects or bullet holes in the body.
Speaker 1: And I don't see how in the world you could
Speaker 1: have missed, which is I think one of the big questions.
Speaker 1: And not only miss but even the two that entered
Speaker 1: the body were not center mass shots that took out
Speaker 1: the heart. Which is their rationale in this particular case,
Speaker 1: is that if you can go in in these rounds,
Speaker 1: the three oh eight, it's called a what was it
Speaker 1: called again, it's an urban. This particular type of mo
Speaker 1: is a it's like an urban ammunition, ground tap urban ammunition.
Speaker 1: And just so we understand what happens when that round
Speaker 1: strikes dave not to be it's not a through and
Speaker 1: through round. You're not looking. It's not like what you
Speaker 1: would hunt deer with. Necessarily, you're talking about something that
Speaker 1: because they're talking about there's an urban designation on this.
Speaker 1: The idea is that this is like a police sniper
Speaker 1: around that goes in. The projectile actually fragments upon impact
Speaker 1: and it sends these little sharps or the body. And
Speaker 1: what happens is if you're aiming center mass of the heart.
Speaker 1: So if everybody will find their sternum and move just slightly,
Speaker 1: it's not all the way over as far as you
Speaker 1: can go on the left side of the body. Just
Speaker 1: find your sternum, that flat bone right in the center
Speaker 1: of your chest. Move over about an inch and you're
Speaker 1: right on top of your heart. Okay, it's inferior to
Speaker 1: where your sternum is, the sternoclovicular notch up there. Just
Speaker 1: go down about two or three inches and then over
Speaker 1: to the left slightly and you're right on target. They
Speaker 1: missed they missed that area with a rifle round.
Speaker 2: From five yards away, Joe fifteen feet. The only other
Speaker 2: person with any kind of marksmen experience that could miss
Speaker 2: that shot would be Lee Harvey Oswald. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: about it. Everybody else is going to hit something. But
Speaker 2: in this case, we have three shooters or three bullets
Speaker 2: coming towards the subject, and you only have two that
Speaker 2: they can say definitively entered. Two of the bullets entered
Speaker 2: this man's body, and they did not enter in the heart.
Speaker 2: Did they not draw an exit the circle around it?
Speaker 3: You know? Mark?
Speaker 1: Well, here's one of the things that we're hearing. There's
Speaker 1: actually a marker that is placed on the body. And
Speaker 1: again they haven't demonstrated to us in the public what
Speaker 1: this marker looks like. Okay, I've seen, I've seen, you know,
Speaker 1: it's generally portrayed. Well, it's portrayed. Actually, I think I've
Speaker 1: seen newsreels with this from World War Two where they're
Speaker 1: executing war crimes people. Most of those were executed by
Speaker 1: by hanging, but there are some and you'll see there's
Speaker 1: like a white patch of cloth that is pinned approximating
Speaker 1: the heart. Okay, you know, you know where it is,
Speaker 1: and there's actually a physician there. This is the thing
Speaker 1: about it. You've got a physician there that has a stethoscope.
Speaker 1: My question is is the is the physician involved in
Speaker 1: placement of the patch? And I know that some people
Speaker 1: might say, well, that would violate the hipocratic oath. You know, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think that it would. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I think it's an extension of mercy because if you
Speaker 1: know that this is going to happen, there's nothing you
Speaker 1: can do about it. So if you zero in on
Speaker 1: that area, you have a physician or nurse that stand
Speaker 1: there with the stethoscope, they can actually appreciate and locate
Speaker 1: the exact location of the heart and they say, okay, guys,
Speaker 1: put the patch right here. All right, no question about
Speaker 1: it at this point in time. But there has been
Speaker 1: comment There have been comments made that would indicate that
Speaker 1: the patch was misplaced. But even even if it is misplaced, two,
Speaker 1: I would assume to the left, like further away from
Speaker 1: the heart, then you're still even in that location. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine out of the three shooters you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna have what's referred to as a flyer and if
Speaker 1: you ever go to the range, and particularly with handguns,
Speaker 1: people will have flyers every now and then, and that
Speaker 1: means that when you fire, you have a bullet or
Speaker 1: projectile that completely misses the target. You rarely see that
Speaker 1: at a range of five yards. I know in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: I qualified twice a year with a handgun and five yards.
Speaker 1: I think now we have a three yard range as well.
Speaker 1: But five yards is really nothing. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: shooting center mass, which are taught to do center mass
Speaker 1: at a static target. This guy's static. He ain't moving anywhere, okay,
Speaker 1: and so you have a weapon that is meant to
Speaker 1: hit the target at long range. It's high velocity. I'm
Speaker 1: failing to understand what happened. What's fascinating about this day
Speaker 1: is that the corner for this particular county and this happens.
Speaker 1: I've been involved in autopsies involving executed individuals. The corner
Speaker 1: in this particular county is assigned to request the examination
Speaker 1: of the dead. This is a homicide, okay, there's no
Speaker 1: other way. You know, you and I have spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time recently talking about manner and cause of death.
Speaker 1: There's no other way you can classify this. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a homicide. Even though it's state sanctioned, this is
Speaker 1: a homicide. So in most states, if you have a
Speaker 1: violent homicide like this, it's required that you do an autopsy.
Speaker 1: And there's another reason you need to do it on
Speaker 1: somebody that is dying at the hands of state. It's
Speaker 1: going to be thorough. It's the most thorough autopsy you've
Speaker 1: ever seen. I mean things places in the body are
Speaker 1: dissected that we would not normally do. It takes a
Speaker 1: long time to conduct one of these autopsies. But apparently
Speaker 1: the pathologists that did the autopsy on this case opined
Speaker 1: that two of the rounds entered the body at the
Speaker 1: same spot. Okay, now, I've seen this happen by an
Speaker 1: individual firing at close range with a handgun and they
Speaker 1: score two hits in the same defect. But and it's
Speaker 1: pretty you can still delineate it. Sometimes they're not perfectly
Speaker 1: matched up. But you've got a physician that's saying pathologists
Speaker 1: that's saying that none, no, no, we've got two rounds
Speaker 1: that enter the same location, and we've got a second one,
Speaker 1: you know, that is off by itself. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that they don't go into a lot of scriptors
Speaker 1: as to what organ systems were impacted. I can only
Speaker 1: assume that perhaps the lung, the left lung, and it
Speaker 1: has been implied at least that the heart was clipped
Speaker 1: in some way by one of these rounds, but it
Speaker 1: was not to the point where death was instantaneous, because
Speaker 1: what the report is is that as soon as the
Speaker 1: order was given for the squad to fire simultaneously. Witnesses
Speaker 1: stated that this guy being executed screamed out simultaneously, as
Speaker 1: he's not screaming out in pain at that moment time,
Speaker 1: he is screaming out okay, and he is shot. Well
Speaker 1: about forty seconds later, they heard him moan. Okay, most
Speaker 1: of the time with an execution where somebody has shot
Speaker 1: center mass into the heart, they're not going to make
Speaker 1: another move. They're dead. That's the efficiency of firing squads. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. Forty seconds later they heard him moan,
Speaker 1: and approximate a total of seventy seconds after the actual shooting,
Speaker 1: he's heard to kind of whimper again and then dies.
Speaker 1: That's not what you want in an execution, okay, you
Speaker 1: want this thing to be sudden and swift and merciful.
Speaker 1: And I know people are saying, well, he doesn't deserve mercy.
Speaker 1: I understand that. But the argument here is the following.
Speaker 1: If a group of people screw this up, then you're
Speaker 1: going to be out walking around the weeds looking for
Speaker 1: another means of execution. I mean, what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: We're going back to the guillotine now, you know, because
Speaker 1: this case, Dave, and there's already been a lawsuit filed,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that in just a second, this
Speaker 1: case from now on regarding capital punishment is going to
Speaker 1: be cited. Okay, It'll be cited as being cruel and unusual,
Speaker 1: all right. So it's the idea, it's the idea of
Speaker 1: these individuals not doing their job effectively that's problematic. The
Speaker 1: family retained the services of a fellow that I've personally met,
Speaker 1: that I've known. Matter of fact, he was I think
Speaker 1: he was. He was actually in to become the chief
Speaker 1: medical Examiner in Atlanta. That's how I met him, and
Speaker 1: I was working there. His name's Jonathan Arden, and he
Speaker 1: was he was a medical examiner with the Office of
Speaker 1: Chief Medical Examiner in New York. I think he was
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. As well, two major offices. And
Speaker 1: this guy is really he's really sharp, hell of a
Speaker 1: nice guy and very proficient at what he does. But
Speaker 1: you know, Dave, he he actually stated he got to
Speaker 1: review all of these materials. And the big thing about
Speaker 1: it is this, he said that there were no X
Speaker 1: rays done, The detail in the autopsy with the wound
Speaker 1: tracks was not to his way of thinking, was not
Speaker 1: sufficiently described, and they didn't examine the clothing. Now, you
Speaker 1: don't examine the clothing on a gunfire related death. You're
Speaker 1: going to skew your data. Okay, there's no mention of it.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Art.
Speaker 3: What's the purpose for doing the clothing?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, let's think. Let's just think about it this way.
Speaker 3: Brother.
Speaker 1: If you've got if you've got somebody wearing a scrub top,
Speaker 1: you know, like many prisoners do you know, having an
Speaker 1: orange orange jumpsuits or scrubtops or whatever, that clothing from
Speaker 1: a forensic standpoint, is like another layer of skin. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: and this could apply to knife wounds as well. But
Speaker 1: when you you fire three through it, it will be
Speaker 1: a another indicator of point of impact relative to a round.
Speaker 1: And you haven't examined the clothing. I mean, that's like
Speaker 1: forensic pathology one O one. You know, before you actually
Speaker 1: ever strip the body down, you're going to take detailed
Speaker 1: photographs of everything that the person was wearing while they're
Speaker 1: still wearing it, okay, and you to try to orient everything.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: And then you said, no X rays, why not take
Speaker 2: you're doing an autopsy, why not do X rays?
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. And here's here's another thing that
Speaker 1: comes in with the three O eight round. What did
Speaker 1: I say earlier? And you had actually reminded me of this.
Speaker 1: This is not like my revelation here you actually had
Speaker 1: had It's a fragmented round. And you know the beauty
Speaker 1: of fragmented rounds that are demonstrated on X ray. It's
Speaker 1: it's shocking, you know when you this, because when you
Speaker 1: open up a body, all right, just so folks understand,
Speaker 1: when you open up a body and it's been greatly traumatized,
Speaker 1: you're going to see a mass of hemorrhage, pulled blood,
Speaker 1: ripped tissue, all those sorts of things. X rays cut
Speaker 1: through all of that. You don't see that mass hemorrhage.
Speaker 1: What you see, particularly with a fragmented round, which is
Speaker 1: the intention of this urban round, that you will see
Speaker 1: a little lead storm, okay, and it will be if
Speaker 1: the bullet acts like it does not all bullets. It's
Speaker 1: just like Holow points. All Holow points don't necessarily deploy, okay.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll just pass right through the body. The hope
Speaker 1: is that it will deploy and it doesn't exit out
Speaker 1: and harm somebody else. That's the point of the sniper round.
Speaker 1: So if you shoot somebody and they're in a window
Speaker 1: and they're holding hostages, you want the round to wind
Speaker 1: up in their body and not penetrate the body, but
Speaker 1: you want to kill them so that you know the
Speaker 1: hostages get hurt. It doesn't pass through another wall and
Speaker 1: into another home or somebody bystander or something like that.
Speaker 1: The extra here is mind blowing or the absence of it,
Speaker 1: and Arden makes reference to that. He also makes reference
Speaker 1: to the idea that out of all of his years
Speaker 1: of doing autopsies, and I can tell you his count
Speaker 1: is huge, all right, he has. It's such a rare
Speaker 1: occurrence that you would have two rounds go through the
Speaker 1: same defect in the body. You know, it's a real
Speaker 1: head scratcher, you know, as far as I guess, as
Speaker 1: far as doctor Arden is going.
Speaker 2: To ask you something that Joe, yeah, man, if there
Speaker 2: are two again marksmen, all three are, I'm going to
Speaker 2: assume they are marksmen, that these are good shots, even
Speaker 2: though it is only five yards away. I'm going to
Speaker 2: assume they've done their homework and these three cats are
Speaker 2: we don't worry about them hitting the target. But to
Speaker 2: have two bullets go into the same track, that means
Speaker 2: that all three of them missed the mark, and that
Speaker 2: two of them missed the mark in the exact same spot.
Speaker 2: I would buy it more if they were in the
Speaker 2: right spot, that there were two going in there.
Speaker 3: That would make a whole lot more sense to me
Speaker 3: than missing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we come back to this idea of placement of
Speaker 1: the marker. Was the marker misplaced and they happened to
Speaker 1: hit the same spot through the marker, and because of
Speaker 1: the anatomical disorientation here, you know, you you happen to
Speaker 1: have two really good shots that were off target. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's that's hugely problematic here, because you
Speaker 1: want to be able to think at the end of
Speaker 1: the day that people that do research on these sorts
Speaker 1: of things as gruesome as it is, but it is
Speaker 1: it's something that we study. You begin to think about
Speaker 1: effectiveness of rounds that are being utilized for a variety
Speaker 1: of different purposes, in this case, ending the life of
Speaker 1: a cop killer who took this poor man out in
Speaker 1: the shed that he and his wife new wife had
Speaker 1: built with their hands, shoots him eight nine times, saturates
Speaker 1: his body in diesel fuel, and sets him on fire. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem I think arises is that, to me, in
Speaker 1: one way, your lack of preparedness and your lack of
Speaker 1: attention to detail dishonors his memory. Just think about that,
Speaker 1: just for a second, because you cannot be efficient enough
Speaker 1: to be counted upon to do your job. That's seventy
Speaker 1: seconds that this individual lived after the shooting could be
Speaker 1: seventy seconds that might change the way we all view
Speaker 1: capital punishment. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
Speaker 1: h