Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on Revisionist History.
Speaker 2: People had an idea of what had happened. When a
Speaker 2: person gets something in their mind, you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of hard to change.
Speaker 3: I can't remember how soon they figured out that he that,
Speaker 3: you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that,
Speaker 3: but it was, you know, it was pretty obvious, pretty quick.
Speaker 1: Senate does it. The timing makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: He shows up after they've left, Stabs calls, stabs and calls.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no sense in even having a jury
Speaker 2: if you if you're going to be able to overturn
Speaker 2: the jury, if a judge can overturners.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much Tom Hafflan explained to you.
Speaker 4: But he just told me you were okay to talk to.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's very kind, and we're just.
Speaker 4: We're very John Parker's very very dear to me, and
Speaker 4: I'm just very protective. I wouldn't want to do anything
Speaker 4: to hurt he or his family. Yeah, but other than that,
Speaker 4: I'm willing to talk.
Speaker 1: This is Tom Perry Junior, Big Guy Beard from Demopolis, Alabama,
Speaker 1: who on the third Saturday of every month for years
Speaker 1: and years, would spend a day on death row in
Speaker 1: Donaldson prison just outside Birmingham. I called him up because
Speaker 1: John Forest Parker's lawyer told me, if you want to
Speaker 1: understand something more about Parker, talk to Tom Perry.
Speaker 4: I want to tell you something, Malcolm. Then I don't
Speaker 4: need to take over your interview now. But I'm no,
Speaker 4: I'm no really do Gooder. I'm just an old God
Speaker 4: has fallen short every day. I just happened the Lord
Speaker 4: uses me in the penitentiary setting because of my my shortcomings.
Speaker 4: If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Now, you're I can't resist almost everyone I've been talking
Speaker 1: to you with a story so far as Church of Christ.
Speaker 1: I am not in your Methodist what I don't understand
Speaker 1: why you're not Church of Christ. What's going on?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I'm just maybe I like the cocktail
Speaker 4: too much of the Church of Christ.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I'm going to tell you about what
Speaker 1: happened to John Forrest Parker after he was sentenced to death,
Speaker 1: and give you a meditation on a phrase from the
Speaker 1: Jesuit priest James Keenan that I have come back too
Speaker 1: many times sin. It's a failure to bother to care.
Speaker 1: This is the story of someone who bothered to care
Speaker 1: and someone else who couldn't be bothered at all. My
Speaker 1: name is Malcolm Gladwell. This is the Alabama Murders, Episode four.
Speaker 1: The protocol. In the time that you were doing ministry
Speaker 1: at Donaldson, how many men that you were working with
Speaker 1: got executed?
Speaker 4: I believe I've been with thirteen, maybe twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Perry got involved working with people on death row
Speaker 1: through a mentor of his. Ben.
Speaker 4: Shehad like when I first went back, Big Ben Sheriff says, now, look,
Speaker 4: if you come back here and you start coming and
Speaker 4: these guys ask you to go all the way with them,
Speaker 4: you got to be willing to go. And if you're not,
Speaker 4: I understand, but don't come back. And I said, what's
Speaker 4: all the way? He said, well, you know, bet, if
Speaker 4: they're executed, if they have living family, they don't necessarily
Speaker 4: want their family to watch them die or to be
Speaker 4: their only member. But we need somebody there that loves them.
Speaker 4: And if they ask you to be with them, you
Speaker 4: need you can't. You need to be willing to go,
Speaker 4: and if you're not, just don't come. And at the time,
Speaker 4: we had had an execution in Alabama in a very
Speaker 4: long time. And I said, sure, Well, you know I
Speaker 4: didn't know what I was getting into. But I mean,
Speaker 4: and like when I say at twelve or thirteen, Malcolm
Speaker 4: ten or eleven of them, I was praying with their
Speaker 4: families at the time they died.
Speaker 1: What that's a hard thing to go through. Loose thirteen
Speaker 1: thirteen men?
Speaker 4: You like I want. I want to tell you the
Speaker 4: honest to goodness true. I don't want to we joke.
Speaker 4: He gally call it, you know, stupid Christians, but uh,
Speaker 4: I don't. My one little witness I'll give you is
Speaker 4: he gives you the now. When it's over, I usually
Speaker 4: have need somebody to drive me home, But up until then,
Speaker 4: you just have the strength to do it. But it's
Speaker 4: so hard you wouldn't believe. And it affects you.
Speaker 1: John Forest Parker was one of those thirteen and maybe
Speaker 1: the one closest to his heart.
Speaker 4: And no, man, I love John Parker. I sure do
Speaker 4: miss it nuts. The only reservations I have about doing
Speaker 4: this is you know that fifteen years it kind of
Speaker 4: makes me miss him a little more.
Speaker 1: The jury in John Parker's trial voted ten to two
Speaker 1: for life without parole, but under Alabama lot at the time,
Speaker 1: a judge was allowed to override a jury's recommendation, and
Speaker 1: this is what the judge, INGA. Johnson did. Johnson sentenced
Speaker 1: Parker to death in nineteen eighty nine. He was remanded
Speaker 1: to Donaldson Prison and placed on death row four ourselves
Speaker 1: in two blocks of twelve, and there Perry began to
Speaker 1: visit him. Making the two hour drive from Demopolis to Donaldson.
Speaker 1: Perry would go with his friend Ben Sherrid. A handful
Speaker 1: of others would join them. When Perry first met Parker,
Speaker 1: Parker wouldn't come out of his cell.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we would take food, and if we took food,
Speaker 4: John would come out to eat. You know, we had
Speaker 4: really good food. But then his first chance, he'd go
Speaker 4: back to his cell. But if we didn't have food,
Speaker 4: John didn't come out. Well, of course we learn as
Speaker 4: I developed my relationship with him. You know, Reverend Senate
Speaker 4: is who hired them. So he did when you said
Speaker 4: religion and preachers, and he wanted nothing to do with it,
Speaker 4: because you know, he still equated that with Reverend Senate.
Speaker 1: Then Perry met Parker's mother. He told her that her
Speaker 1: son wouldn't leave his cell.
Speaker 4: She said he didn't come out and said, no man,
Speaker 4: She said, next month we went every month. She said,
Speaker 4: you tell him his mama said better come out. So
Speaker 4: I had and told him that. He said, I'll be there.
Speaker 4: That he never missed. The next month, he never missed,
Speaker 4: and he and I became very very good friends. And
Speaker 4: he can find it a lot in me.
Speaker 1: So what was he like?
Speaker 4: Now you understand, Malcolm, I do believe that the Good
Speaker 4: Lord changes people. John was very intelligent, very well read,
Speaker 4: heck of a nice guy, just a wonderful person. He's
Speaker 4: just the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with.
Speaker 4: He told me. He said, you know, since then I've
Speaker 4: come in here, I've learned to read better and write
Speaker 4: better and do things better.
Speaker 1: In prison, he was sober and off drugs for the
Speaker 1: first time since he was twelve.
Speaker 4: Spoke very open, with openly with me about his crime,
Speaker 4: and I mean I remember one thing he said, and
Speaker 4: he he was adam it with me. This was very
Speaker 4: difficult for John because he knew they were going to
Speaker 4: give him last words at his execution. And he said,
Speaker 4: you know, I didn't kill miss Stennett. I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I know that, he said, but I was involved, and
Speaker 4: that's a horrible thing I was involved in. And he said,
Speaker 4: I've been in prison, probably not long enough. But he said,
Speaker 4: but I didn't kill him, And he said, we snapped
Speaker 4: out of it. You know, they told us that, you know,
Speaker 4: Reverend Sennet came home and killed her. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Are you aware of that? And he and he said, well,
Speaker 4: I mean, he said, I remember hitting her. And it
Speaker 4: was like a light bulb went off, like what the
Speaker 4: hell are you doing? And he said, but that was horrible.
Speaker 4: And I'm not sure I've been in prison long enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you said, was your were you was? Was
Speaker 1: the ministry part of your visiting explicit? Or how much
Speaker 1: of how much of this were you trying to bring
Speaker 1: the message of Jesus to these men?
Speaker 4: Or it was that was that was absolutely central? But
Speaker 4: you gotta understand. I realized quickly that our ministry, more
Speaker 4: important than any words, was a ministry at presence, the
Speaker 4: fact that you showed up every time that prison would
Speaker 4: let you. On the third Saturday, we'd go and they'd
Speaker 4: let us stay two or three hours, but on twice
Speaker 4: a year we would stay for three. We'd go in
Speaker 4: on a Thursday evening, well, going on Friday morning, stay
Speaker 4: all day, and then go on Saturdays, stay all day
Speaker 4: and go on Sundays and that's called a three day
Speaker 4: WEEKI and we would do that twice a year.
Speaker 1: Tom, you, this is a commitment.
Speaker 4: It was a tremendous commitment. But I talked to my
Speaker 4: wife about it. I had young children at the time,
Speaker 4: and my wife says, you know, look, I have to say,
Speaker 4: it makes you a better person, a better day, and
Speaker 4: a better husband. So go forward.
Speaker 1: Their visits went on for twenty three years as Parker's
Speaker 1: appeals wound their way through the legal system. Finally, his
Speaker 1: execution date was set six pm June tenth, twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Parker was moved to home in prison in Atmore, in
Speaker 1: the far south of the state, near Mobile. That's where
Speaker 1: the state's execution chamber is. He was put in a
Speaker 1: special holding cell. In the days letting up to his execution,
Speaker 1: he filed two last appeals in his final week to
Speaker 1: the Alabama Supreme Court and then the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Both failed. On his last day, he skipped breakfast, but
Speaker 1: chose a dinner of fried fish, French fries, and iced tea.
Speaker 1: He gave his mother his gold watch, a mirror, seven stamps,
Speaker 1: and a box of pictures. He gave his two nephews,
Speaker 1: his belt, and his wallet. He died by lethal injection
Speaker 1: at six forty one pm. Tom Perry was there with him.
Speaker 4: And then you know, he was finally gone. But then
Speaker 4: after that, I have to get back on that van
Speaker 4: and I go back to the hotel where about the
Speaker 4: other people had been in there praying with his family,
Speaker 4: and I have to go in and tell him, you know,
Speaker 4: John's gone. He was peaceful, he didn't appear to suffer.
Speaker 1: He didn't appear to suffer. We'll be right back. To
Speaker 1: understand the particulars of John Parker's execution, you have to
Speaker 1: go back to nineteen seventy seven in Oklahoma City. In
Speaker 1: the mid seventies, the Supreme Court had just lifted a
Speaker 1: long moratorium on capital punishment. The court had been concerned
Speaker 1: that existing methods like the electric chair violated the constitutional
Speaker 1: prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Watching someone die on
Speaker 1: the electric chair was like watching a horror movie. Public
Speaker 1: scrutiny was high. The court said that states could only
Speaker 1: bring back the death penalty if they found a more
Speaker 1: socially acceptable and legally rigorous way of applying it.
Speaker 5: So at that point, there were several things going on
Speaker 5: First of all, there were journalists who were threatening to
Speaker 5: litigate so that they could see the next execution, and
Speaker 5: Oklahoma and other states such as Texas were very concerned
Speaker 5: about that. They thought they these executions would be videotaped
Speaker 5: and displayed to the world.
Speaker 1: This is Deborah Deno, who teaches law at Fordham University
Speaker 1: in New York City and is one of the countries
Speaker 1: leading legal experts on capital punishment.
Speaker 5: Number two Ronald Reagan, then Governor Ronald Reagan a few
Speaker 5: years earlier, had sort of made a pronouncement of why
Speaker 5: don't we just execute inmates the way we put horses down?
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, this is what Reagan said. Being
Speaker 1: a former farmer and horse razer, I know what it's
Speaker 1: like to try to eliminate an injured horse by shooting him.
Speaker 1: Now you call the veterinarian, and the vet gives it
Speaker 1: a shot, and the horse goes to sleep. That's it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 5: I think there was a pressure to have a method
Speaker 5: that looked more humane than electrocution and lethal gas. Those
Speaker 5: were the pressures that that was on the state.
Speaker 1: So from the beginning, you know, these are states terrified
Speaker 1: of journalists being able to videotape what's happening, So their
Speaker 1: concern is really with what this looks like to the world.
Speaker 5: That's right the perception world, Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, nineteen seventy seven, a state senator named Bill
Speaker 1: Wiseman takes up the court's challenge. He wants to find
Speaker 1: a way to make capital punishment more humane, and one
Speaker 1: day he gets a call from the Oklahoma State Medical
Speaker 1: Examiner AJ Chapman, who has heard about Wiseman's crusade and
Speaker 1: has an idea. He gives Wiseman a rough outline for
Speaker 1: what would come to be known as lethal injection, two
Speaker 1: drugs in sequence. First a sedative like a barbituate to
Speaker 1: put the prisoner to sleep, then a paralytic something to
Speaker 1: immobilize them. Later, Chapman added a third drug, potassium chloride,
Speaker 1: which is the main ingredient in chemical fertilizer and which
Speaker 1: in elevated doses causes hyperkalemia, which is like flipping the
Speaker 1: powers switch on your heart. Wiseman took Chapman's idea and
Speaker 1: put it before the Oklahoma State Legislature. It passed by
Speaker 1: an overwhelming margin. I'm reading now from an editorial in
Speaker 1: the Vista the student newspaper at Central State University in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Lethal injection is not only less traumatic on the prisoner,
Speaker 1: but it would also be easier on witnesses, for they
Speaker 1: would not have to endure the grizzly site of roasting flesh,
Speaker 1: bulging eyeballs, or squirting blood. But Chapman's protocol was never tested.
Speaker 1: I mean, how could you test it. You're trying to
Speaker 1: kill someone. Everyone you would experiment on would die as
Speaker 1: a result. No one really knew how it worked. In
Speaker 1: his memoirs, published years later, Chapman argued that knowing the
Speaker 1: precise method of action didn't matter, since quote, the properties
Speaker 1: of the drugs were extremely well known. The three drug
Speaker 1: combination was just a variation on a protocol that was
Speaker 1: being used for anesthesia every day in hospitals all around
Speaker 1: the world. But of course that isn't quite true, is it.
Speaker 1: It's not the same procedure that's used for medical anesthesia,
Speaker 1: because the intention of medical anesthesia is to keep the
Speaker 1: patient alive, and the intention of lethal injection is to
Speaker 1: give those same drugs in doses so large that the
Speaker 1: patient dies. That's actually totally different. Did Chapman how much
Speaker 1: thought did he put into this three drug protocol.
Speaker 5: You know, I mean that's a question for him. I
Speaker 5: do know that they came up with this in the
Speaker 5: course of an afternoon.
Speaker 1: We reached out to Chapman for an interview, but he
Speaker 1: declined to talk to us. The Oklahoma protocol would become
Speaker 1: the method of choice in thirty other American states. It's
Speaker 1: even with a minor variation what countries like Canada use
Speaker 1: today for euthanasia. But how exactly does it work? I
Speaker 1: know this seems like a pedantic point, but it is
Speaker 1: the settled position of the United States, in fact of
Speaker 1: most of the world that a mark of a civilized
Speaker 1: society is that its punishment is humane. You can't torture people.
Speaker 1: Even if you've decided to kill a prisoner, you have
Speaker 1: to do it the right way. So, once again, how
Speaker 1: does lethal injection kill people?
Speaker 6: So I was given a stack of autopsies of prisoners
Speaker 6: executed and here in the state of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Joel Zivitt, an anisesiologist at Emory University in Georgia.
Speaker 6: There's an automatic autopsy that was that's performed on these prisoners. Interestingly,
Speaker 6: by the way, the cause of death that's written on
Speaker 6: the death centerficate is homicide.
Speaker 1: Because he's an anestesiologist, and lethal injection is basically the
Speaker 1: homae subtle version of anesthesiology. As if it was approached
Speaker 1: by a group of lawyers who had a client on
Speaker 1: death row. They had a technical question, could he tell
Speaker 1: from looking at the blood work of executed prisoners whether
Speaker 1: they were conscious at the point of death. The operating
Speaker 1: assumption behind lethal injection was that they were unconscious, that
Speaker 1: they would be fully anesthetized when the potassium chloride hit
Speaker 1: their heart. But did we know that for a fact?
Speaker 6: So I just I read the autopsy, read the first
Speaker 6: autopsy and kind of was going through it and saw
Speaker 6: this finding that was surprising, which was that in this
Speaker 6: first one that I read that the lungs were what's
Speaker 6: called heavy.
Speaker 1: This had nothing to do with the question he'd been
Speaker 1: asked to answer. It was completely unexpected.
Speaker 6: As part of an autopsy, the lungs are removed from
Speaker 6: the body and just flopped on a scale. And all
Speaker 6: these lungs were heavy. Why were they heavy? They were
Speaker 6: heavy because they were full of bloody, frothy fluid. And
Speaker 6: this bloody, frothy fluid could not have gotten into the
Speaker 6: lungs after death.
Speaker 1: If you're dead, your heart has stopped working, so there's
Speaker 1: no way for fluid to get pumped into your lungs.
Speaker 1: It had to have happened while the prisoner was still alive.
Speaker 6: And what was assumed, I think by me and others
Speaker 6: I hadn't really thought about it was that the body
Speaker 6: would be essentially Christine, you know, there wouldn't be this
Speaker 6: kind of destruction of organs within the body. But when
Speaker 6: I went through the whole list, almost eighty percent of
Speaker 6: the time, so eight out of ten times, there was
Speaker 6: this finding of this frothy, bloody fluid. So you could
Speaker 6: cut into the windpipe and the fluid would be just
Speaker 6: frothing right in there without being pardon me, too graphic.
Speaker 6: So the question then was how did it get in there?
Speaker 6: I conferred with a lithologist colleague of mind. We kind
Speaker 6: of puzzled over this for a while, and it occurred
Speaker 6: to us that you know, what we think, what I
Speaker 6: think is that it's actually the way the penta barbitol
Speaker 6: is prepared.
Speaker 1: Pent To barbitol is the first of the drugs used
Speaker 1: in the fatal injection protocol. It's the sedative and it
Speaker 1: has a high pH.
Speaker 6: This is sort of basic chemistry. The pH scale goes
Speaker 6: from one to fourteen. Seven is neutral. The other thing
Speaker 6: important to know about the pH scale is that it's
Speaker 6: a log scale, so it means that every time you
Speaker 6: move one number, you're going up by a factor of ten.
Speaker 6: You know, for a reference, the Richter scale of earthquakes
Speaker 6: is also a log scale. That's why an earthquake of
Speaker 6: four and a half, you know, you kind of you know,
Speaker 6: will maybe shuffle the ground underneath you, but an earthquake
Speaker 6: of eight and a half will split the world in half.
Speaker 6: So it's a huge, powerful difference.
Speaker 1: The body's normal pH is between seven point three five
Speaker 1: and seven point four to five. If you drop below
Speaker 1: seven or rise above eight, you'll probably die. The pen
Speaker 1: to barbitol is between nine and eleven. Now, when pent
Speaker 1: to barbitel is used in ordinary medicine, this fact doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that much. The dose is pretty small. It burns
Speaker 1: a little, but the body compensates.
Speaker 6: But now imagine giving ten times that quantity and pushing
Speaker 6: it into a small vein. It travels rapidly to the heart,
Speaker 6: where the heart comps it immediately into the lungs, and
Speaker 6: it tears the lungs apart. Basically, they get burned from
Speaker 6: the inside and then the separation of air and blood.
Speaker 6: There's a very fine layer of tissue there that gets
Speaker 6: destroyed and the blood just pours into the lungs. And
Speaker 6: I'm sorry as I'm saying this, it's awful, and this
Speaker 6: is what this is how lethal injection actually kills you.
Speaker 6: It kills you by burning your lungs up, and you're
Speaker 6: also paralyzed, so you can't complain that this is happening.
Speaker 6: And then to finish you off, of course, you know
Speaker 6: you're probably begging for the potassium at that point, because
Speaker 6: that finally stops your heart and stops this process. But
Speaker 6: in the meantime, you know this has been gone on
Speaker 6: for a few minutes, so the last thing that you know,
Speaker 6: you may know, is that you're on fire from the
Speaker 6: inside and the blood is filling up your lungs as
Speaker 6: you die. Is this too graphic?
Speaker 1: Of course it is, But that's the point, because the
Speaker 1: reason lethal injections started in the first place was it
Speaker 1: Even the proponents of the death penalty were eager to
Speaker 1: find a method that was humane, that didn't involve fixing
Speaker 1: metal plates to someone's head and frying their brains with
Speaker 1: a of electricity, and Zevit's point is that this is
Speaker 1: not actually more humane, it just looks that way. Death
Speaker 1: penalty advocates were trying to satisfy the constitutional prohibition against
Speaker 1: cruel and unusual punishment, but their innovation only spared the
Speaker 1: suffering of the witnesses to an execution, not the subject
Speaker 1: of the execution. The whole thing was an illusion. But
Speaker 1: even that's not the issue. The real issue is that
Speaker 1: the lethal injection protocol was dreamt up on the back
Speaker 1: of an envelope, and until joel' vivid came along by
Speaker 1: accident fifty years later, none of the people who championed
Speaker 1: lethal injection could get around to wondering just how their
Speaker 1: preferred method worked. And it's not like the evidence wasn't available.
Speaker 1: In many states, there's an autopsy on everyone who's executed.
Speaker 1: The autopsies were just sitting there in a drawer somewhere,
Speaker 1: hundreds of them, and in almost every case they were
Speaker 1: characterized by the same inexplicable finding. Here's what I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Nobody noticed this till you.
Speaker 6: Apparently not.
Speaker 1: Isn't that astonishing.
Speaker 6: Astonishing?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I made a guess though, you know, I guess it's astonishing,
Speaker 6: but you know what you have to be. You have
Speaker 6: to be curious, I suppose, or care or or I mean,
Speaker 6: what's astonishing to me is the fact that it was
Speaker 6: noticed every time by pathologists. No one said anything. It's
Speaker 6: not like a pathologist said, wow, look at this finding
Speaker 6: and brought it to that I'm aware of, like when
Speaker 6: I first had the In my job as an antecycologist intentivist,
Speaker 6: I look at autopsies, but I don't, you know, it's
Speaker 6: not I don't make a living at autopsies. So to
Speaker 6: be sure that I was seeing what I thought I
Speaker 6: was seeing, I sent it to my colleague of mine,
Speaker 6: Mark Edgar, who's a pathologist. I said, look, I've got
Speaker 6: this list. I'm not telling you what this is, okay,
Speaker 6: just tell me what you see, you know, what do
Speaker 6: you see? And and he came back and said, well,
Speaker 6: all these you know, that's all these heavy lungs, like
Speaker 6: there's all this pompiliar demail, Like what what is that?
Speaker 6: Like he saw it immediately without prompture, Like believe is
Speaker 6: evidence free, right, So the people who believe this, you know,
Speaker 6: were immune to evidence or immune to. You know, I
Speaker 6: don't know an impartial appraisal, so and I was surprised.
Speaker 6: I was. I just didn't think of it.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: It's like the failure of imagination, where you just couldn't
Speaker 6: imagine it. But now that it's been seen, of course,
Speaker 6: you can't unsee it.
Speaker 1: Zivitt wrote an academic article describing his findings, thinking he
Speaker 1: had to share what he'd found with the world.
Speaker 6: I've had trouble getting this published. So it's now available
Speaker 6: as something called a pre print, so it's easy to
Speaker 6: find as a pre print, and it goes over this.
Speaker 1: I certainly, why have you had trouble getting it published?
Speaker 6: Because people don't want to publish it. You know, it's
Speaker 6: like it's something that I can't place. You know, it's
Speaker 6: so I don't know, grizzly unusual that put it in
Speaker 6: the medical journal, you know, it just doesn't can't seem
Speaker 6: to find the journal for it.
Speaker 1: We are now at the second stage of the failure
Speaker 1: cascade indifference. We'll be right back. Let us tell the
Speaker 1: story of John Parker's execution a second time. Tom Perry
Speaker 1: was there. Remember he pledged that he was willing to
Speaker 1: go all the way.
Speaker 4: Section day you know. We started. We went in early
Speaker 4: that I think John was executed around six. But we
Speaker 4: go in and it's just a good day. John's family
Speaker 4: was close to us. We tell the family any time
Speaker 4: you need a minute, and you don't want us here.
Speaker 4: It's probably about five or six of us. I think
Speaker 4: they limit the room to fifteen people. On the visting
Speaker 4: we caught the visiting yard, but it's just a little room.
Speaker 4: In fact, my Christian community air conditioned and put in
Speaker 4: new chairs because it was so uncomfortable. It was these
Speaker 4: big metal picnic tables of these little round metal benches
Speaker 4: that were just tortured. We bought some chairs and tables
Speaker 4: and put air conditioning in, you know, so the inmates
Speaker 4: can have some comfortable They visit, but we just visit.
Speaker 4: We sing a little bit, then they say we're getting
Speaker 4: two louds, so we have to quit singing. But we
Speaker 4: just talk and visit and get to know some of
Speaker 4: John's family that we had not met before. So John
Speaker 4: and anybody else can have a soft drink anything they want.
Speaker 4: One thing I will tell you that I think goes unsaid.
Speaker 4: The death squad, the officers that perform it and act more.
Speaker 4: They do everything in their power to make it as dignified.
Speaker 4: Anything they could do for John and any of the
Speaker 4: twelve or thirteen I've been with, within reason, they would
Speaker 4: do to make that last day as good as they
Speaker 4: could for the inmate. They don't get enough credit for that.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's certain rules they can't break, but anything
Speaker 4: they do within reason they do it. But anyway, so
Speaker 4: we go, and then you can tell when the clock
Speaker 4: starts getting and we'll have, you know, we'll do some
Speaker 4: serious praying and then we will call it circle up.
Speaker 4: That's something we would do on our weekends. Before we leave.
Speaker 4: We make a big circle and we pray out for
Speaker 4: you for me with the song. Surely the presence, Surely
Speaker 4: the presence of the Lord is in this place. I
Speaker 4: can feel his mighty power and his grave. You know,
Speaker 4: I can hear the brush of angels wings, I see
Speaker 4: glory on each face. Surely the presence of the Lord.
Speaker 1: They sang that a couple of times together for a prayer.
Speaker 1: Then they made their way to the execution chamber.
Speaker 4: We're over here, and the Senate family's over there, and
Speaker 4: John's in the middle, and there's glass and I can
Speaker 4: see them, but I can't hear them and they can
Speaker 4: see me and John's in the middle, and you know,
Speaker 4: and then he looks up at me, you know, and
Speaker 4: he says, you know, I love you, brother, and I
Speaker 4: thank you for everything you did for me, and you know,
Speaker 4: take care of my mom and dad. I promised him
Speaker 4: I would continue to communicate and follow up with him.
Speaker 7: And.
Speaker 4: And then he says, with the Senate family, I'm sorry
Speaker 4: I got involved in this situation a hundred times. I
Speaker 4: wish they're gonna taken him back. I was strong out,
Speaker 4: I was young, and I was stupid, and I hope
Speaker 4: that you know, what happens today can give you, you know,
Speaker 4: some peace. And then when they started, you know, he
Speaker 4: was a lethal injection and he rolled his hand that
Speaker 4: that's sort of a symbol. We get to hang with him,
Speaker 4: but when we split up, they won't let me more
Speaker 4: physical contact. When we leave, and as we go, we
Speaker 4: you know, that was our that was our deal. It
Speaker 4: means I love you, So that was our sign. And Cairos,
Speaker 4: you know, I love you brother. He rolled his hands
Speaker 4: up on there and did that, and then you know,
Speaker 4: I watched his uh bottom jaw. I remember it just
Speaker 4: seeing it start quivering and it, and you know it was.
Speaker 4: It takes a lot longer than you think.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does take a lot longer than you think. First,
Speaker 1: one hundred milli leaders of a sedative. After the sedative,
Speaker 1: Alabama's regulations require that quote, the team member position at
Speaker 1: the condemned inmate's left side, will assess the consciousness of
Speaker 1: the condemned inmate by applying graded stimulation as follows. The
Speaker 1: team member will begin by saying the condemned inmates name.
Speaker 1: If there's no response, the team member will gently stroke
Speaker 1: the condemned inmate's eyelashes. If there is again no response,
Speaker 1: the team member will then pinch the condemned inmate's arm.
Speaker 1: John Parker, John Parker, Stroke, Stroke, Pinch, Pinch. Then comes
Speaker 1: sixty mili leaders of row coronium bromide that's the muscle relaxant.
Speaker 1: Then one hundred and twenty mili leaders of potassium chloride
Speaker 1: that's supposed to stop the heart. Remember what Tom Perry said.
Speaker 4: It was tasteful. He didn't appear to suffer.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, and no, he didn't appear to suffer. That's
Speaker 1: because he was strapped down to a gurney and sedated
Speaker 1: and given a paralytic so he couldn't struggle or cry
Speaker 1: out even if he wanted to. But of course he suffered.
Speaker 1: His lungs were burning up from the inside, and he
Speaker 1: had a long, extended moment of absolutely excruciating pain.
Speaker 4: Of course, his parents break down and they hugged me,
Speaker 4: and then I walk out. Then I basically I have
Speaker 4: a very good friend. He kind of takes me and
Speaker 4: takes care of me because I break down after I
Speaker 4: talk to the family. But did that kind of describe
Speaker 4: it for you? It's a hard, hard day in many ways,
Speaker 4: it's a joyous day up until because you just see
Speaker 4: this goodness everywhere up until as far as John was concerned.
Speaker 4: Have you ever seen a picture of John? No, I
Speaker 4: haven't told him. I've got It's funny. I keep this
Speaker 4: from my office right by my license.
Speaker 1: You keep that that memorial right here, and I've got
Speaker 1: next to your license.
Speaker 4: Yeah, actually in the frame. I stick it in the
Speaker 4: frame and I keep it here. So well, this is
Speaker 4: this is uh you can see me a much younger version. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it was June of twenty ten. This is
Speaker 4: John's father, pe D Parker, his mother Joan Parker. That's
Speaker 4: his brother Bert and John in the middle, and that
Speaker 4: was the day of his execution. The institution took the
Speaker 4: pictures for us. That means a lot. They don't give
Speaker 4: them three or four pictures in the entire family, one
Speaker 4: of me and their family photograph. I mean that. That's
Speaker 4: why I cherished this. Now, Malcolm, I'm trusting you because
Speaker 4: I don't want anything to degrade or insult John's memory.
Speaker 4: So please don't do that. I will not John Tom
Speaker 4: Hefflin told me you were okay, or I wouldn't have
Speaker 4: spoken to you because I would be heartbroken. Yeah, something
Speaker 4: defamatory about John. No, no, no, don't please don't do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't don't be You should have no concern.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'm trusting you now, Malcolm, not to do
Speaker 4: that to John and his memory.
Speaker 1: Tom Perry was the one who bothered to care. If
Speaker 1: you're wondering why people get so upset about the death penalty,
Speaker 1: it's this. It's that the people who are in favor
Speaker 1: of it like to believe that it represents some great
Speaker 1: symbolic manifestation of society's judgment, but in fact their method
Speaker 1: of choice is something that some guy dreamt up in
Speaker 1: an afternoon, and no one ever got around at checking
Speaker 1: symbolic manifestations of society. Judgment should not be dreamt up
Speaker 1: on the back of an envelope. And if you're wondering
Speaker 1: why we're spending so much time on this, it's because
Speaker 1: the story of the long day in maw of the
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Senne case is about to get worse, much worse
Speaker 1: next time on revisionist history.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Just got home from work and you know
Speaker 4: they come And he said, well, mom, can you come?
Speaker 1: He said, the police are here.
Speaker 5: Then I went to at Moore, which is where Holman
Speaker 5: is visited with Kenny.
Speaker 3: That morning we were still waiting for the Eleventh Circuit's decision.
Speaker 6: What is taught either at nursing school or as an
Speaker 6: emt or as a doctor cannot be lifted into the
Speaker 6: death chamber, like it's not the same place. If these
Speaker 6: people are not patients, you know, they're not collaborators to you.
Speaker 7: It's been a great deal of media covering, both local
Speaker 7: and national, about what happened in Kenney Smith's execution chamber.
Speaker 7: Much of that coverage has seemingly been openly sympathetic to
Speaker 7: Smith in his cause, even with some going so far
Speaker 7: as to advocate for the abolishment of.
Speaker 4: The death penalty.
Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Ben the daf Haffrey,
Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by Bend, Daph Haffrey
Speaker 1: and Lee Hedgebeth. Our editor is Karen Schakerji, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Kate Furby. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Production
Speaker 1: support from Luke LeMond, Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence, original
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Kira with Paul Breinerd and Jimmy Bodd.
Speaker 1: Sound design and additional music by Jake Krsky. I'm Malcolm Verlan.
Speaker 1: You can get this entire season now add free by
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