WEBVTT
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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. Part 2. The Chair and the Gas Chamber. 1982-1999.
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Nobody was executed in the United States for nearly 10
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years before Utah put Gary Gilmore in front of a
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firing squad in January 1977. In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia,
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the Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty laws
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as the states were applying them. And in 1976, in
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Gregg v. Georgia, it let the rewritten laws stand. Most
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of the states that wanted to start again went back
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to the chairs and gas chambers they already had. Mississippi
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hadn't executed anyone since 1964 when it put Jimmy Lee
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Gray in its gas chamber in 1983. Arizona's chamber had
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sat unused for 29 years when Donald Harding went into it.
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The Death Penalty Information Center's list of botched executions begins here,
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in Virginia in 1982. The next year in Alabama, an
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electrode burst loose from the strap on a man's leg,
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And six years later, in the same prison, the cables
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to the chair were connected wrong. In Georgia, a prison
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official narrated an electrocution onto tape and said into the
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microphone that the man was still alive. And in 1990,
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the sponge in the headpiece of Florida's chair came from
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a store in Stark, and it was synthetic. One by one,
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the states in these chapters moved to lethal injections. Mississippi
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changed its law in 1984, the year after Gray. Arizona's
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voters replaced the gas chamber in November 1992, seven months
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after Harding, on a ballot guide that promised a much quicker,
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less dramatic, and less painful death. In Florida, the day
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after a flame came from under Pedro Medina's headpiece in 1997,
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the Attorney General asked legislative leaders to consider lethal injection.
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In January 2000, Six months after Allen Lee Davis bled
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onto his white shirt in a new oak chair, the
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legislature made the switch. Chapter 13. Frank Coppola and the
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Witness Who Held Back Richmond, Virginia, August 10th, 1982. I'm
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not asking them to kill me, Frank Coppola told a
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Norfolk newspaper columnist in his last days. I'm telling them
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to kill me. He'd been a high school basketball star,
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a Catholic seminarian for a while, and then a Portsmouth, Virginia,
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police officer for two years. On April 22nd, 1978, He,
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his wife Karen, and two others drove to the Newport
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News home of Peyton Hatchell, a used car dealer known
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to keep cash in the house. One of them got
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the front door open by delivering roses to Hatchell's wife, Muriel. Inside,
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Coppola beat her head against the floor, trying to make
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her say where the money was hidden. She died of
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blunt force injuries complicated by aspiration, which means she vomited
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while she was unconscious and it went into her windpipe.
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they left with $ 3, 100 and the rings off her fingers.
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A jury convicted Coppola of capital murder in September 1978
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and sentenced him to death. And in March 1982, he
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told his lawyers to drop every appeal. He said to
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the end, though, that he hadn't committed the murder. On
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the afternoon of August 10th, 1982, a federal appeals judge,
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John Butzner, stayed the execution. That evening, the Supreme Court
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held a conference by telephone and lifted the stay, five
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to two, about half an hour before the 11 p.m.
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time set for it. At the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond,
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Warden James Mitchell read Coppola the order and walked in
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30 paces to the chamber. No reporters were allowed in.
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Six citizen witnesses watched from behind glass, and one of
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them was Samuel Glasscock, a lawyer and Democratic state delegate
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from Suffolk who opposed the death penalty and and had
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volunteered so he could tell his colleagues what he saw.
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The next day, Glasscock told UPI that Coppola looked the
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six of them right in the eye from the chair,
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that his body shuddered as the current hit, and that
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he seemed to die silently. To the Washington Post, he
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described two 55-second surges and a body that heaved slightly
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against the leather straps, and the Post noted that he
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was keeping the most horrible of what he'd seen to
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himself for the family's sake. Coppola was pronounced dead at 11.27.
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The Director of Corrections, Raymond Procunier, released two sentences. Pursuant
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to an order of the Circuit Court of the City
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of Newport News, Frank J. Coppola has been executed in
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the manner prescribed by law. Out of respect to the
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family of the deceased, I will make no further comment
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on the proceedings. Ten years later, Glasscock put the rest
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of it in a sworn affidavit, filed in January 1992
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in a federal lawsuit over Virginia's chair, Bassett v. Virginia.
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During the second application of current, smoke began to flow
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from Mr. Coppola's head and leg, he swore. Soon, flames
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erupted from Coppola's leg near the site of the leg electrode.
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He described smoke rising in sufficient amounts to fill the
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entire death chamber with a smoky haze. an acrid odor
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that I assume was the smell of burning flesh, and
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a sizzling sound that sounded like cooking flesh. Nothing printed
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the week Coppola died mentions fire or smoke. The law professor,
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Deborah Denno, quoted the affidavit in a 1994 Law Review article,
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and that's the account the Death Penalty Information Center's entry
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on Coppola rests on. What Glasscock had said in 1982 was,
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if all of Virginia could have witnessed that as I did,
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they would agree there has to be a better way.
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Chapter 14 John Evans and the Strap That Burned Through Atmore, Alabama,
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April 22nd, 1983 John Louis Evans III walked to Alabama's
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electric chair at Holman Prison, smiling. The Supreme Court had
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lifted a lower court's stay at 7.07 on the evening
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of April 22, 1983. At 8.15, with his head and
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legs shaved and wearing a white prison smock, he was
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led from his holding cell to the chamber 25 feet away.
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I have no malice for anyone, no hatred for anyone,
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he told the warden, J.D. White, and a black veil
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was placed over his face and tied around his head.
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At 8.30, White threw the switch, and 1,900 volts ran
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through him for 30 seconds. His lawyer, Russell Kanan, was
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in the witness room, and the affidavit he swore out
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afterward was later quoted at length by Justice William Brennan
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in a 1985 Supreme Court dissent. Sparks and flames erupted
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from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans' left leg, he wrote.
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His body slammed against the straps holding him in the
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electric chair, and his fist clenched permanently. The electrode apparently
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burst from the strap holding it in place. A large
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puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under
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the hood that covered Mr. Evans' face. An overpowering stench
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of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room.
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Two doctors examined Evans and said he wasn't dead, so
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the leg electrode was strapped back on, and a second,
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30-second jolt went through him. The stench of burning flesh
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was nauseating, Cannon wrote. More smoke emanated from his leg
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and head. The doctors found his heart still beating. Kanan
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turned to the prison commissioner, Fred Smith, who was standing
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in the witness room on an open telephone line to
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Governor George Wallace. I ask for clemency, Kanan said, as
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UPI's Mark Harris, one of the three reporters in the room,
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took it down. I ask you to communicate this to
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the governor. This is cruel and unusual punishment. Smith relayed it,
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then called out, the governor will not interfere Proceed. At 8.40,
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a third charge went through Evans. At 8.44, the doctors
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pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took 14 minutes,
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Kanan's affidavit ends. Later retellings stretch it to 24, but
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the affidavit's own clock, 830 to 844, says 14. Evans
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had asked for the chair himself six years earlier. In
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January 1977, he and Wayne Ritter, a friend from an
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Indiana prison, were in the middle of a two-month run
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of about 30 armed robberies across seven states when they
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walked into Edward Nassert's pawn shop in Mobile. Nassar handed
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Ritter a gun to look at, and Evans pulled his own.
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When Nassar dropped to his hands and knees and crawled
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toward his office, Evans shot him in the back, with
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Nassar's daughters, seven and nine, in the shop. At trial,
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Evans took the stand against his lawyer's advice. He told
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the jury he'd pulled the trigger and would do it again,
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and that he'd rather die by electrocution than to spend
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the rest of my life in the penitentiary. Over six
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years on death row, he swung between demanding death and
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asking for clemency. When it was over, Commissioner Smith said
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that there is no way it could be foreseen that
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a new strap would fail, and Keenan said that John
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Evans was burned alive by the state of Alabama. Ritter
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went into the same chair in August 1987. Chapter 15.
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Jimmy Lee Gray and the Steel Pole at Parchman. Parchman, Mississippi.
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September 2nd, 1983. At 12.01 a.m. on September 2nd, 1983,
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on a hot, muggy night at Parchman, Warden Eddie Lucas said,
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let's go, into his handheld radio. Eight minutes later, Jimmy
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Lee Gray was brought into Mississippi's four-by-four-foot steel gas chamber
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in a red jumpsuit, and it took the guards two
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minutes to strap him in by the arms, legs, and chest.
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At 1210, the door sealed. Sheriff John Ledbetter of Jackson
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County signaled the executioner, T. Barry Bruce, who'd handled every
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execution in that chamber since it opened in 1955, UPI reported,
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and who got $ 250 for the job. bruise through the
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lever that dropped cyanide crystals into the acid under the seat.
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Don Lowasser of UPI was in the witness room. A
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white wisp of gas came up between Gray's legs, and
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he sucked in his breath. Within a minute, his head
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fell forward. Then it jerked back. He choked and strained
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against the straps, his fists clenched, and prolonged, agonized groans
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and shuddering gasps could be heard in the witness room.
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Three times his head dropped and he appeared dead, Lowasser wrote,
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but each time it snapped up, striking with an audible
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clang a steel pole running from floor to ceiling behind
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his seat. It went on for eight minutes. Then the
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assistant warden, Joe Cook, came into the witness room and said,
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Gentlemen of the press, let's go. Gray's head was strained
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back against the pole, his eyes open and rolled back,
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his mouth open, his head still moving. Dennis Balsky, one
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of his lawyers, said afterward, that man was breathing when
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I was told to leave. He had been suffering and
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strangling and trying to breathe the entire time I was
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in there. Gray wasn't pronounced dead until 1247. Commissioner Morris
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Thigpen told reporters the doctors had found no heartbeat two
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minutes after the gas started, that what the witnesses saw
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after that was involuntary type movements and reflex actions that
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commonly occur in any person who has died, and that,
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in the doctor's opinion, it was a prompt and easy death.
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A defense lawyer named David Bruck wrote in the New
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Republic that Gray had died banging his head against a
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steel pole in the gas chamber while the reporters counted
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his moans. Eleven, according to the Associated Press. Gray had
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come to Mississippi on parole. In 1968, at 19, in Parker, Arizona,
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He'd killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Elder Louise Prince, and he
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served about seven years before Arizona let him out. On
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June 25th, 1976, in Pascagoula, three-year-old Doresa Jean Scales came
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to his apartment to play with his kittens. He drove
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her out of town on back roads, molested her, and
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held her face in a muddy ditch until she suffocated,
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then threw her body off a bridge into Black Creek. Later,
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in an elevator at police headquarters, he said, If I
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take you to her, will you help me? and led
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the officers to her. His own mother had asked the
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governor not to commute his sentence. He was the first
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man Mississippi had executed since 1964. Years later, a claim
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surfaced in Esquire from a Parchman officer that Bruce had
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been drinking that night. A reviewer called it a rumor,
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and no official finding ever backed it. In 1984, the
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legislature changed the law so that anyone sentenced for a
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capital crime committed after that July 1st would die by
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lethal injection. The men already under sentence stayed with the gas,
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and three more of them went into the chamber before
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Mississippi was done with it in 1989. Chapter 16 Alpha
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Otis Stevens and the 23 Breaths. Jackson, Georgia, December 12th, 1984.
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Georgia recorded its electrocutions. In the death house at the
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Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, a prison official
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stood with a microphone and narrated each one onto tape
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for the department's files. The tapes stayed in the department's
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hands for years until a public defender named Michael Mears
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got hold of them and gave them to a radio producer.
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That's why the execution of Alpha Otis Stevens, just after
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midnight on December 12, 1984, exists in the state's own voice.
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The execution now has begun, the official Willis Marable says
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on the recording. There was one small jerk from the
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condemned at the time the execution was initiated. Stevens had
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escaped from the Houston County Jail in the summer of 1974.
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On August 21st, he and another man were burglarizing Charles
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Asbell's house in Twiggs County when Asbell's father, Roy, drove
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up in his Ford Ranchero. Stevens pulled the older man
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out of his car by the Georgia Supreme Court's account
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and hit him in the face until he begged him
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to stop. He took the several hundred dollars Asbell carried,
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kicked him again, and drove him three miles to a pasture. There,
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Asbell got out and tried to run. Stevens, who was
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6'2'' to Asbell's 5'6, ran him down with a. 357 Magnum,
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took more of his money, placed the pistol in his ear,
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and fired twice. While he was in custody for that,
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he confessed to killing a country store owner named Louise
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Mercer during a robbery the year before. He had 19
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felony convictions, and a jury sentenced him to death in 1975.
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he'd come within hours of the chair once already. In
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December 1983, the Supreme Court stopped it five to four
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the night before so the 11th Circuit could finish with
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another Georgia case about race and death sentencing, and Justice
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Powell wrote nine pages of dissent. A year later, the
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court lifted that stay. On the night of December 11th, 1984,
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it turned down the last two appeals, the final one
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at 1122. By then, Stevens had been shaved for the electrodes,
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and sometime in those last hours, he cut his left
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wrist with a disposable razor he had smuggled in. It
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was minor, very little blood. The prison spokesman, John Seiler,
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told reporters, it was hardly life-threatening. He ate fried shrimp,
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french fries, a salad, a Coke, and pecan pie, and
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he made no final statement. Earlier in the week, he'd
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written to the son of the man he'd killed, asking
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to be forgiven. Fifteen witnesses watched. At 12.18 a.m., the
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first surge went through him. 2,080 volts for two minutes,
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the dose the state said would do it. Officials had
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told the press beforehand that he'd be brain-dead after one.
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On the tape, Marable reports a slight movement from the
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condemned's head, then that it had stopped. The witnesses saw
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more than that. His fingers moved and his head rolled
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back and forth. It was almost like he was trying
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to wake himself up, Lee Howell, a reporter in the room,
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said afterward. Then he started breathing. We counted 23 breaths,
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and they were deep breaths. It was obvious he was alive.
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The doctors had to wait for his body to cool
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before they could touch him. When they examined him at 12.26,
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his head was nodding, and he was breathing regularly. The
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doctors have verified that he is still alive, Marable says
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on the tape. Then the commissioner's voice, repeat the execution.
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Warden Ralph Kemp said it to the witnesses in the
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official language, the execution process is not complete, it will
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be reinitiated at this time. At 1228, the second two-minute
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surge began, and as it did, Marable said into the microphone,
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he appears to be breathing. When it ended, I do
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not detect any movement from the condemned. Stevens was pronounced
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dead at 1237, and Kemp read the time into the record.
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Asked how a man could sit through two minutes at 2,080
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volts and keep breathing, a Georgia prison official gave the
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explanation that stuck to the case. Stevens was just not
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a conductor of electricity. There was no inquiry, and nothing
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in the state's procedure changed. Georgia's chair didn't come into
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the courts in a serious way again for 17 years
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until the state's Supreme Court struck it down and the
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state went to the needle. The tape outlived all of it.
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When David Isay's radio program, The Execution Tapes, aired in 2001,
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it was the Stevens tape. that democracy now introduced as
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the botched execution, the one that had to be re-initiated
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with the condemned man still alive after two minutes of current,
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and the state's own employee saying so into a microphone.
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Thanks for listening. I've been reading from my new book,
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Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
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00:21:35.569 --> 00:21:38.789
and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
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00:21:38.890 --> 00:21:41.089
I used for this episode and for the book it's
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00:21:41.150 --> 00:21:45.119
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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00:21:45.150 --> 00:21:48.960
slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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00:21:49.079 --> 00:21:52.039
for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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00:21:52.059 --> 00:21:54.559
the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
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00:21:54.599 --> 00:21:58.009
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.
1
00:00:02.350 --> 00:00:06.269
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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00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:15.460
and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
4
00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:19.600
wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
5
00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:23.579
couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
6
00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:27.480
through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
7
00:00:28.179 --> 00:00:31.469
Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
8
00:00:31.969 --> 00:00:35.810
and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
9
00:00:36.310 --> 00:00:41.140
you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
10
00:00:41.179 --> 00:00:43.280
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
14
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
15
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and firing squads. Part 2. The Chair and the Gas Chamber. 1982-1999.
16
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Nobody was executed in the United States for nearly 10
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years before Utah put Gary Gilmore in front of a
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firing squad in January 1977. In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia,
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the Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty laws
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as the states were applying them. And in 1976, in
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Gregg v. Georgia, it let the rewritten laws stand. Most
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of the states that wanted to start again went back
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to the chairs and gas chambers they already had. Mississippi
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hadn't executed anyone since 1964 when it put Jimmy Lee
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Gray in its gas chamber in 1983. Arizona's chamber had
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sat unused for 29 years when Donald Harding went into it.
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The Death Penalty Information Center's list of botched executions begins here,
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in Virginia in 1982. The next year in Alabama, an
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electrode burst loose from the strap on a man's leg,
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And six years later, in the same prison, the cables
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to the chair were connected wrong. In Georgia, a prison
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official narrated an electrocution onto tape and said into the
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microphone that the man was still alive. And in 1990,
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the sponge in the headpiece of Florida's chair came from
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a store in Stark, and it was synthetic. One by one,
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the states in these chapters moved to lethal injections. Mississippi
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changed its law in 1984, the year after Gray. Arizona's
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voters replaced the gas chamber in November 1992, seven months
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after Harding, on a ballot guide that promised a much quicker,
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less dramatic, and less painful death. In Florida, the day
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after a flame came from under Pedro Medina's headpiece in 1997,
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the Attorney General asked legislative leaders to consider lethal injection.
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In January 2000, Six months after Allen Lee Davis bled
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onto his white shirt in a new oak chair, the
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legislature made the switch. Chapter 13. Frank Coppola and the
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Witness Who Held Back Richmond, Virginia, August 10th, 1982. I'm
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not asking them to kill me, Frank Coppola told a
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Norfolk newspaper columnist in his last days. I'm telling them
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to kill me. He'd been a high school basketball star,
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a Catholic seminarian for a while, and then a Portsmouth, Virginia,
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police officer for two years. On April 22nd, 1978, He,
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his wife Karen, and two others drove to the Newport
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News home of Peyton Hatchell, a used car dealer known
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to keep cash in the house. One of them got
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the front door open by delivering roses to Hatchell's wife, Muriel. Inside,
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Coppola beat her head against the floor, trying to make
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her say where the money was hidden. She died of
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blunt force injuries complicated by aspiration, which means she vomited
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while she was unconscious and it went into her windpipe.
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they left with $ 3, 100 and the rings off her fingers.
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A jury convicted Coppola of capital murder in September 1978
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and sentenced him to death. And in March 1982, he
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told his lawyers to drop every appeal. He said to
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the end, though, that he hadn't committed the murder. On
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the afternoon of August 10th, 1982, a federal appeals judge,
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John Butzner, stayed the execution. That evening, the Supreme Court
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held a conference by telephone and lifted the stay, five
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to two, about half an hour before the 11 p.m.
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time set for it. At the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond,
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Warden James Mitchell read Coppola the order and walked in
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30 paces to the chamber. No reporters were allowed in.
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Six citizen witnesses watched from behind glass, and one of
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them was Samuel Glasscock, a lawyer and Democratic state delegate
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from Suffolk who opposed the death penalty and and had
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volunteered so he could tell his colleagues what he saw.
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The next day, Glasscock told UPI that Coppola looked the
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six of them right in the eye from the chair,
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that his body shuddered as the current hit, and that
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he seemed to die silently. To the Washington Post, he
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described two 55-second surges and a body that heaved slightly
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against the leather straps, and the Post noted that he
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was keeping the most horrible of what he'd seen to
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himself for the family's sake. Coppola was pronounced dead at 11.27.
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The Director of Corrections, Raymond Procunier, released two sentences. Pursuant
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to an order of the Circuit Court of the City
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of Newport News, Frank J. Coppola has been executed in
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the manner prescribed by law. Out of respect to the
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family of the deceased, I will make no further comment
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on the proceedings. Ten years later, Glasscock put the rest
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of it in a sworn affidavit, filed in January 1992
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in a federal lawsuit over Virginia's chair, Bassett v. Virginia.
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During the second application of current, smoke began to flow
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from Mr. Coppola's head and leg, he swore. Soon, flames
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erupted from Coppola's leg near the site of the leg electrode.
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He described smoke rising in sufficient amounts to fill the
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entire death chamber with a smoky haze. an acrid odor
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that I assume was the smell of burning flesh, and
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a sizzling sound that sounded like cooking flesh. Nothing printed
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the week Coppola died mentions fire or smoke. The law professor,
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Deborah Denno, quoted the affidavit in a 1994 Law Review article,
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and that's the account the Death Penalty Information Center's entry
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on Coppola rests on. What Glasscock had said in 1982 was,
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if all of Virginia could have witnessed that as I did,
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they would agree there has to be a better way.
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Chapter 14 John Evans and the Strap That Burned Through Atmore, Alabama,
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April 22nd, 1983 John Louis Evans III walked to Alabama's
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electric chair at Holman Prison, smiling. The Supreme Court had
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lifted a lower court's stay at 7.07 on the evening
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of April 22, 1983. At 8.15, with his head and
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legs shaved and wearing a white prison smock, he was
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led from his holding cell to the chamber 25 feet away.
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I have no malice for anyone, no hatred for anyone,
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he told the warden, J.D. White, and a black veil
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was placed over his face and tied around his head.
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At 8.30, White threw the switch, and 1,900 volts ran
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through him for 30 seconds. His lawyer, Russell Kanan, was
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in the witness room, and the affidavit he swore out
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afterward was later quoted at length by Justice William Brennan
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in a 1985 Supreme Court dissent. Sparks and flames erupted
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from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans' left leg, he wrote.
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His body slammed against the straps holding him in the
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electric chair, and his fist clenched permanently. The electrode apparently
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burst from the strap holding it in place. A large
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puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under
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the hood that covered Mr. Evans' face. An overpowering stench
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of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room.
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Two doctors examined Evans and said he wasn't dead, so
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the leg electrode was strapped back on, and a second,
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30-second jolt went through him. The stench of burning flesh
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was nauseating, Cannon wrote. More smoke emanated from his leg
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and head. The doctors found his heart still beating. Kanan
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turned to the prison commissioner, Fred Smith, who was standing
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in the witness room on an open telephone line to
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Governor George Wallace. I ask for clemency, Kanan said, as
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UPI's Mark Harris, one of the three reporters in the room,
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took it down. I ask you to communicate this to
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the governor. This is cruel and unusual punishment. Smith relayed it,
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then called out, the governor will not interfere Proceed. At 8.40,
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a third charge went through Evans. At 8.44, the doctors
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pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took 14 minutes,
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Kanan's affidavit ends. Later retellings stretch it to 24, but
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the affidavit's own clock, 830 to 844, says 14. Evans
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had asked for the chair himself six years earlier. In
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January 1977, he and Wayne Ritter, a friend from an
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Indiana prison, were in the middle of a two-month run
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of about 30 armed robberies across seven states when they
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walked into Edward Nassert's pawn shop in Mobile. Nassar handed
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Ritter a gun to look at, and Evans pulled his own.
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When Nassar dropped to his hands and knees and crawled
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toward his office, Evans shot him in the back, with
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Nassar's daughters, seven and nine, in the shop. At trial,
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Evans took the stand against his lawyer's advice. He told
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the jury he'd pulled the trigger and would do it again,
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and that he'd rather die by electrocution than to spend
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the rest of my life in the penitentiary. Over six
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years on death row, he swung between demanding death and
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asking for clemency. When it was over, Commissioner Smith said
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that there is no way it could be foreseen that
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a new strap would fail, and Keenan said that John
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Evans was burned alive by the state of Alabama. Ritter
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went into the same chair in August 1987. Chapter 15.
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Jimmy Lee Gray and the Steel Pole at Parchman. Parchman, Mississippi.
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September 2nd, 1983. At 12.01 a.m. on September 2nd, 1983,
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on a hot, muggy night at Parchman, Warden Eddie Lucas said,
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let's go, into his handheld radio. Eight minutes later, Jimmy
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Lee Gray was brought into Mississippi's four-by-four-foot steel gas chamber
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in a red jumpsuit, and it took the guards two
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minutes to strap him in by the arms, legs, and chest.
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At 1210, the door sealed. Sheriff John Ledbetter of Jackson
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County signaled the executioner, T. Barry Bruce, who'd handled every
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execution in that chamber since it opened in 1955, UPI reported,
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and who got $ 250 for the job. bruise through the
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lever that dropped cyanide crystals into the acid under the seat.
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Don Lowasser of UPI was in the witness room. A
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white wisp of gas came up between Gray's legs, and
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he sucked in his breath. Within a minute, his head
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fell forward. Then it jerked back. He choked and strained
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against the straps, his fists clenched, and prolonged, agonized groans
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and shuddering gasps could be heard in the witness room.
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Three times his head dropped and he appeared dead, Lowasser wrote,
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but each time it snapped up, striking with an audible
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clang a steel pole running from floor to ceiling behind
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his seat. It went on for eight minutes. Then the
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assistant warden, Joe Cook, came into the witness room and said,
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Gentlemen of the press, let's go. Gray's head was strained
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back against the pole, his eyes open and rolled back,
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his mouth open, his head still moving. Dennis Balsky, one
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of his lawyers, said afterward, that man was breathing when
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I was told to leave. He had been suffering and
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strangling and trying to breathe the entire time I was
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in there. Gray wasn't pronounced dead until 1247. Commissioner Morris
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Thigpen told reporters the doctors had found no heartbeat two
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minutes after the gas started, that what the witnesses saw
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after that was involuntary type movements and reflex actions that
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commonly occur in any person who has died, and that,
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in the doctor's opinion, it was a prompt and easy death.
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A defense lawyer named David Bruck wrote in the New
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Republic that Gray had died banging his head against a
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steel pole in the gas chamber while the reporters counted
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his moans. Eleven, according to the Associated Press. Gray had
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come to Mississippi on parole. In 1968, at 19, in Parker, Arizona,
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He'd killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Elder Louise Prince, and he
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served about seven years before Arizona let him out. On
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June 25th, 1976, in Pascagoula, three-year-old Doresa Jean Scales came
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to his apartment to play with his kittens. He drove
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her out of town on back roads, molested her, and
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held her face in a muddy ditch until she suffocated,
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then threw her body off a bridge into Black Creek. Later,
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in an elevator at police headquarters, he said, If I
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take you to her, will you help me? and led
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the officers to her. His own mother had asked the
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governor not to commute his sentence. He was the first
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man Mississippi had executed since 1964. Years later, a claim
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surfaced in Esquire from a Parchman officer that Bruce had
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been drinking that night. A reviewer called it a rumor,
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and no official finding ever backed it. In 1984, the
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legislature changed the law so that anyone sentenced for a
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capital crime committed after that July 1st would die by
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lethal injection. The men already under sentence stayed with the gas,
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and three more of them went into the chamber before
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Mississippi was done with it in 1989. Chapter 16 Alpha
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Otis Stevens and the 23 Breaths. Jackson, Georgia, December 12th, 1984.
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Georgia recorded its electrocutions. In the death house at the
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Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, a prison official
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stood with a microphone and narrated each one onto tape
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for the department's files. The tapes stayed in the department's
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hands for years until a public defender named Michael Mears
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got hold of them and gave them to a radio producer.
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That's why the execution of Alpha Otis Stevens, just after
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midnight on December 12, 1984, exists in the state's own voice.
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The execution now has begun, the official Willis Marable says
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on the recording. There was one small jerk from the
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condemned at the time the execution was initiated. Stevens had
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escaped from the Houston County Jail in the summer of 1974.
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On August 21st, he and another man were burglarizing Charles
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Asbell's house in Twiggs County when Asbell's father, Roy, drove
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up in his Ford Ranchero. Stevens pulled the older man
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out of his car by the Georgia Supreme Court's account
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and hit him in the face until he begged him
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to stop. He took the several hundred dollars Asbell carried,
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kicked him again, and drove him three miles to a pasture. There,
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Asbell got out and tried to run. Stevens, who was
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6'2'' to Asbell's 5'6, ran him down with a. 357 Magnum,
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took more of his money, placed the pistol in his ear,
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and fired twice. While he was in custody for that,
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he confessed to killing a country store owner named Louise
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Mercer during a robbery the year before. He had 19
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felony convictions, and a jury sentenced him to death in 1975.
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he'd come within hours of the chair once already. In
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December 1983, the Supreme Court stopped it five to four
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the night before so the 11th Circuit could finish with
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another Georgia case about race and death sentencing, and Justice
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Powell wrote nine pages of dissent. A year later, the
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court lifted that stay. On the night of December 11th, 1984,
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it turned down the last two appeals, the final one
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at 1122. By then, Stevens had been shaved for the electrodes,
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and sometime in those last hours, he cut his left
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wrist with a disposable razor he had smuggled in. It
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was minor, very little blood. The prison spokesman, John Seiler,
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told reporters, it was hardly life-threatening. He ate fried shrimp,
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french fries, a salad, a Coke, and pecan pie, and
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he made no final statement. Earlier in the week, he'd
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written to the son of the man he'd killed, asking
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to be forgiven. Fifteen witnesses watched. At 12.18 a.m., the
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first surge went through him. 2,080 volts for two minutes,
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the dose the state said would do it. Officials had
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told the press beforehand that he'd be brain-dead after one.
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On the tape, Marable reports a slight movement from the
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condemned's head, then that it had stopped. The witnesses saw
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more than that. His fingers moved and his head rolled
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back and forth. It was almost like he was trying
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to wake himself up, Lee Howell, a reporter in the room,
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said afterward. Then he started breathing. We counted 23 breaths,
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and they were deep breaths. It was obvious he was alive.
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The doctors had to wait for his body to cool
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before they could touch him. When they examined him at 12.26,
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his head was nodding, and he was breathing regularly. The
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doctors have verified that he is still alive, Marable says
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on the tape. Then the commissioner's voice, repeat the execution.
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Warden Ralph Kemp said it to the witnesses in the
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official language, the execution process is not complete, it will
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be reinitiated at this time. At 1228, the second two-minute
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surge began, and as it did, Marable said into the microphone,
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he appears to be breathing. When it ended, I do
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not detect any movement from the condemned. Stevens was pronounced
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dead at 1237, and Kemp read the time into the record.
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Asked how a man could sit through two minutes at 2,080
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volts and keep breathing, a Georgia prison official gave the
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explanation that stuck to the case. Stevens was just not
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a conductor of electricity. There was no inquiry, and nothing
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in the state's procedure changed. Georgia's chair didn't come into
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the courts in a serious way again for 17 years
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until the state's Supreme Court struck it down and the
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state went to the needle. The tape outlived all of it.
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When David Isay's radio program, The Execution Tapes, aired in 2001,
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it was the Stevens tape. that democracy now introduced as
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the botched execution, the one that had to be re-initiated
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with the condemned man still alive after two minutes of current,
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and the state's own employee saying so into a microphone.
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Thanks for listening. I've been reading from my new book,
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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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00:21:41.150 --> 00:21:45.119
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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00:21:45.150 --> 00:21:48.960
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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00:21:54.599 --> 00:21:58.009
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.
