#BotchedExecutions | Five Jolts, The Wrong Jacks And A Store Bought Sponge

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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
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and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
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wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
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couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
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through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
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and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
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you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
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are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, Electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Chapter 17. William Vandiver and the Five Jolts.
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Michigan City, Indiana. October 16th, 1985. William Vandiver asked for it.
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At his sentencing in January 1984, he waived his appeal
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of the murder conviction. The Indiana Supreme Court reviewed the
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death sentence anyway, as the law required, and quoted him
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on why. I see no sense in wasting everybody's time.
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At the best that could happen, I would end up
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doing 45 years. The court found the waiver knowing and
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voluntary and set the case back for one purpose only,
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setting a date for Vandiver's death sentence to be carried out.
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On March 20th, 1983, after earlier attempts to poison him
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had failed, Vandiver, his wife Marianne, her mother, and her
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brother attacked Marianne's father, Paul Kimyati Sr., in his bed
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at the family home in Hammond. Vandiver stabbed him in
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the back, in his own words to investigators, at least
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100 times with a fish-filet-ing knife. The court found the
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decapitation that followed was the immediate cause of death. He
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cut the body up with a hacksaw, bagged it, and
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dumped it near Lake Michigan, and he told police he
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had taken a smoke break because of the smell and
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length of the task. His wife got eight years, her
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mother 100, and her brother 55. Indiana hadn't executed anyone
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since Steven Judy in 1981, and the law required it
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to be done before dawn. On the evening of October 15, 1985,
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at the state prison in Michigan City, Vandiver visited with
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his wife and his sister. He said goodbye to Mary
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Ann at about 5.45 and ate a pizza with everything
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on it except anchovies. A telephone line was kept open
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to a federal judge in case he changed his mind
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because a word from him would have stopped it. There
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did not appear to be any change in Vandiver's resolve
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to go through with the electrocution, the prison spokeswoman Nancy
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Broglin said. At 12.02 a.m. on the 16th, he was
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hooded and strapped into the chair, his fists clenched. The
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regulations called for two applications of current, 2300 volts for
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10 seconds, then 500 volts for 20. The prison physician, Dr.
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Roger Saylors, said afterward that the first pair left him
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brain-dead but breathing. So they sent a third surge, 500
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volts for 20 seconds, and his heart was still beating
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at 40 beats a minute. Saylors said he couldn't explain why.
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Then they sent 2,300 volts for five seconds and 500
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for 25, and that killed him. He was pronounced dead
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at 12.20, about 18 minutes after it began by the
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Washington Post's count and 17 by the Death Penalty Information Center's,
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which counted five jolts. His fists had stayed clenched through
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most of it. This is very rare, sailors said. Vandiver's lawyer,
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Herbert Schaps, who had watched and seen smoke and smelled burning, said...
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I think it was outrageous. An AFP dispatch, printed as
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far away as Singapore, said Vandiver took a full five
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electric shocks instead of the two provided for in regulations.
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The Department of Correction conceded the execution did not go
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according to plan, and in November the State Board of
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Correction took it up. Deputy Commissioner Cloyd Schuller told the board,
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the staff did behave in a professional manner. It probably
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was the most difficult task we've had to perform. The chairman,
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Daniel Evans Jr., said Shuler's report was not as complete
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as it should have been, and the board would come
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back to it. Both men agreed the method was the
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legislature's to change, not theirs, and nothing changed. Indiana kept
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its chair until the mid-1990s. Forty years later, in 2025,
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a prisoner's violent movement during an Indiana lethal injection drew questions,
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and the state's reporters reached back to Vandiver as the
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reference point. Seventeen minutes. five bursts of electricity, still breathing
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after the first. Chapter 18. Horace Duncan's and the Wrong
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Jacks Atmore, Alabama, July 14th, 1989 Horace Franklin Duncans Jr.
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was 19, and in an appeals court's words, almost illiterate,
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on the night of May 26, 1980, when he and
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a 17-year-old named Frank Harris raped Lynn McCurry, a mother
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of four, tied her to a tree behind her home
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in Jefferson County, Alabama, and stabbed her 66 times. Harris
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pleaded guilty and got life. The state hospital at Bryce
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had put Duncans in the high mild range of mental
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retardation and court documents gave his IQ as 69, UPI reported.
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Less than three weeks before his execution date, the U.S.
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Supreme Court ruled in Penry v. Lena that the Constitution
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didn't bar executing people with that diagnosis so long as
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a jury got to weigh it, and his lawyer argued
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that his jury had never been told. The courts turned
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him down, and Alabama went ahead on July 14, 1989.
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In the witness room at Holman were Duncan's father, a relative,
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his pastor, his lawyer, and a friend named Dale Aukerman,
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who wrote about it in the Washington Post a week later.
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The warden had told them beforehand, you will see two
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flashes of light and then it will be all over.
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Through the heavy glass, Duncan's mouthed, I love you, father,
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to his dad, and I love you to the rest
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of them. Then the generator started. Something was happening, Aukerman wrote,
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but it didn't really seem to be a full electrocution.
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one of the two doctors, John VanLandingham, didn't see the
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strong contraction of the muscles he had seen at two
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earlier electrocutions. When he and the other doctor went in,
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they found Duncans breathing with a normal pulse and a
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strong heartbeat, and VanLandingham swore afterward that he told an
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official that Duncans was not dead. Someone pulled the blinds.
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A prison officer called to a guard at the door,
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and Aukerman heard it as, we're on the wrong jacks.
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The Birmingham News and the New York Times had it as,
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I believe we've got the jacks on wrong. The cables
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to the chair had been connected wrong, and not enough
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current had gone through him to kill him. About nine
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minutes after the first attempt, with the cables switched, the
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generator ran again. This time, his muscles contracted and smoke
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rose from the seat of the chair, Ackerman wrote. Duncan's
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was pronounced dead at 12.27 a.m., 19 minutes after the
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first try. In the witness room, his lawyer, Steve Ellis,
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turned to the family and shouted that they were torturing him.
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He's going through hell in there, a Montgomery Advertiser reporter
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heard him say. Commissioner Morris Thigpen, who'd run Mississippi's prisons
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the night Jimmy Lee Gray died, told reporters, I regret very,
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very much what happened. It was human error. I just
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hope that he was not conscious and did not suffer.
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Lynn McCurry's husband, Alan, had gone to school with Duncans.
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He's not mentally retarded, he said. He's just mean as hell.
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Chapter 19. Jesse Taffaro and the Sponge from a Store
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in Stark. Stark, Florida. May 4th, 1990. Just after seven
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on the morning of May 4th, 1990, In the death
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chamber at Florida State Prison in Stark, the executioner threw
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the switch on Jesse Tafaro, and flames came out from
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under the leather mask over his face. Nine reporters were
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in the room. The Florida Supreme Court later put it
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this way. Smoke and flames instantaneously spurred from his head
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for a distance of as much as 12 inches. The
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12 inches came from a deputy inspector general's affidavit. The
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AP's Ron Word saw about six. and the Florida Times-Union's
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reporter saw three, then five. Ashes fell onto Taffaro's shirt.
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The officials shut off the current, but his chest moved,
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and he seemed to keep breathing. so they sent a
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second jolt, and the flames and smoke came again. A
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third jolt at about 7.10 finished it, and Dr. Frank
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Kilgo pronounced him dead at 7.13. The problem was a sponge.
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For the 21 executions since Florida had resumed them in 1979,
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the headpiece had carried the same natural sea sponge, soaked
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in salt water, so the current would pass through it.
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Before Taffaro, a prison worker had bought a new one
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at a store in Stark, the department's own report said,
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and it was synthetic. The Department of Corrections investigated for
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Governor Bob Martinez and called the result human error. Its
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test as Justice Gerald Kogan described it in a dissent
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that June consisted of cutting a piece from the sponge,
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putting it in a common household toaster, and watching it smoke.
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The prison physician swore that DeFaro felt nothing after the
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first surge. Robert Kirshner, a physician who reviewed the record
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for another condemned inmate's lawyers, concluded that DeFaro wasn't dead
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until the third jolt and may have stayed conscious through
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the first two. The court's majority declined to look into it.
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One malfunction is not sufficient to justify a judicial inquiry
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into the Department of Corrections' competence. Taffaro had been on
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death row 14 years for the killing of Florida Highway
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Patrol trooper Philip Black and a visiting Canadian constable, Donald Irwin,
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at a rest stop on Interstate 95 in Broward County
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on February 20, 1976. Black had found Walter Rhodes asleep
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behind the wheel of a parked car with a pistol
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at his feet. Taffaro was asleep beside him. and Taffaro's girlfriend,
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Sonia Jacobs, said her two children were asleep in the back.
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The paraffin tests afterward came back consistent with having fired
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a gun for Rhodes alone. Rhodes pleaded to second-degree murder
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and testified against the other two, and over the years
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he recanted and then took the recantation back more than once.
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In 1992, a federal appeals court threw out Jacobs' conviction
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because prosecutors had withheld a polygraph report in which Rhodes
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said he couldn't be sure she'd fired at all, and
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that October she took a plea that let her leave
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prison on time served. Taffaro's last words, two years before that,
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were about the two motions he'd filed that morning and
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the judges who ignored them.' I think it's time,' he said,'
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that everyone woke up to see that the same laws
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that can go against crime can go against you tomorrow.'
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Chapter 20. Donald Harding and the Stopwatch in the Gas Chamber. Florence, Arizona.
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April 6th, 1992. Arizona hadn't used its gas chamber in
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29 years when it put Donald Eugene Harding in it
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shortly after midnight on April 6th, 1992. Among the men
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who watched him die was the state's Attorney General, Grant Woods,
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who had come to see the penalty he supported carried out.
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When the witnesses filed in, Harding was strapped in a
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chair in a sealed steel room with the blinds drawn.
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We could see Don Harding in the chair, said Cameron Harper,
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the anchor at Phoenix's Channel 3. Harding looked over to
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his attorneys first and gave them a thumbs up. Then
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he gave a thumbs up to us. Next, he turned
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toward Woods and made gestures that another witness called obscene.
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He did it at least twice by the AP's account,
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once while he was dying. The next day's Phoenix Gazette
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headline was that Woods said he hadn't seen it. Harding
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was 43. In January 1980, he'd killed two salesmen, Robert
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Wise and Martin Concanon, in a Tucson motel room. He
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bound them with strips of bedding, shoelaces, and their own clothing,
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and Concanon was found with a pair of men's dress
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socks pushed to the back of his throat. Both men
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were shot, and Wise was beaten with a lamp. The
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next day, Harding was arrested in Flagstaff with their credit cards.
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A third Arizona killing of a man named Alan Gage
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in a Phoenix motel the day before was laid to him, too,
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and police linked him to others in Arkansas and California.
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He represented himself at trial. The Arizona Supreme Court found
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him competent to do it despite the diagnosis of organic
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brain syndrome because the examiners had found severe antisocial personality
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without psychosis. In his last week, The Ninth Circuit stayed
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the execution, the Supreme Court lifted the stay two days later,
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and the Board of Pardons and Paroles sat for 11
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hours on a Sunday before voting unanimously against him. Cyanide
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pellets dropped into a bowl of sulfuric acid under the chair.
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When the gas hit him, there were some violent spasms
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and he began shaking, Harper said. He had a stopwatch
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on it, and he timed 57 seconds of rapid muscle spasms.
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And then, six minutes and 36 seconds later, his body
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convulsed again, less often. Harding's lawyer, Jim Ballinger, later swore
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in a federal court to what he saw. Harding's face
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red and contorted, as if he were attempting to fight
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through tremendous pain. His jaw clenched, then several quick gulps
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of the fumes, then convulsing violently. arms straining against the straps,
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and the veins in his temple and neck began to
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bulge until I thought they might explode. Carla McClain, of
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the Tucson Citizen, said he'd groaned loudly and began to
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choke to death, his body turning bright red, almost purple. Donaham,
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a prisoner advocate in the room, described a low, guttural
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sound of sheer torment. Ballinger said his own knees shook
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so badly he thought he'd fall, and that he wept.
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Harding was pronounced dead ten and a half minutes after
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the pellets dropped. One reporter was ill for weeks afterward.
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By one account, the Death Penalty Information Center still quotes.
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We put animals to death more humanely than we did
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this man, Harper said. Woods called it a terrible thing
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to witness and said it had taken too long. I
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don't know who came up with this concept of a
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gas chamber in the first place, he told the Gazette.
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Maybe that was innovative a while ago, but it's not today.
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Arizona had put the gas chamber in its constitution in
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the 1930s, after Eva Dugan's hanging as the humane replacement
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for the rope. Within months of Harding, the legislature referred
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a constitutional amendment to the voters to replace gas with
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lethal injection. The official argument in the 1992 ballot guide
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said the new method would result in a much quicker,
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less dramatic, and less painful death. Proposition 103 passed that
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November with more than three-quarters of the vote. The law
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made one exception for prisoners whose crimes came before the
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change who could still choose gas. In 1999, Walter Legrand did,
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and it took him 18 minutes, about seven more than Harding.
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Two years after Harding, a federal judge in California ruled
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that state's gas chamber unconstitutional and cited the Arizona newspaper's
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account of his death as evidence of what the country
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had come to think of the method. Arizona's chamber unconstitutional.
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still stands at Florence. Thanks for listening. I've been reading
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from my new book, Botched Executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. If you'd like a list of sources
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I used for this episode, and for the book it's
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narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
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whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback,
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.