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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 21. Pedro Medina and the Flame
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Under the Headpiece. Stark, Florida. March 25th, 1997. On the
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morning of March 25th, 1997, Pedro Medina was strapped into
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the chair Jesse Taffaro had died in, and his last
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words were, I'm still innocent. Within seconds of the current,
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smoke came out from under the right side of the headpiece,
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and then a flame. Eugene Morris, the Department of Corrections spokesman,
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put it at 4 to 5 inches and 6 to
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8 seconds, and the court record later settled on a
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4 to 5 inch yellow-orange flame, which lasted 4 to
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5 seconds. Witnesses who spoke to CNN said 5 or
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6 inches, and those UPI interviewed said 6 to 10.
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The Gainesville Sun's reporter said, wrote of a crown of
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foot-high flames. Medina's lawyer, Michael Minerva, said, A solid flame
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covered his whole head, from one side to the other.
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I had the impression of somebody being burned alive. And
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he said the smell came through the glass. There was
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enough smoke that somebody opened a window to the outside.
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The current was shut off in the middle of the
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third cycle, and Medina was pronounced dead at 7.10. That
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same day, Attorney General Bob Butterworth said, people who wish
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to commit murder, they better not do it in the
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state of Florida because we may have a problem with
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our electric chair. And the next day, he asked legislative
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leaders to consider lethal injection. Governor Lawton Childs brought in
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two engineers, Michael Norse and Jay Weikert. The prison had
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first blamed a corroded screen in the headpiece, but the
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engineers found the brass screen was not the cause. and
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traced the fire to using a dry sponge between the
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wet sponge and the conductive screen in the headpiece, made
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worse by a weak saline solution. The trial judge who
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heard the evidence found that the smell in the room
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was burnt sponge, not burnt flesh, that Medina's brain had
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been instantly and massively depolarized within milliseconds, and that he
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suffered no conscious pain, and that October the Florida Supreme
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Court upheld the chair 4-3. Medina had come from Cuba
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in the Muriel boatlift of 1980. On April 4, 1982,
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Dorothy James, an Orlando schoolteacher who'd befriended him, was found
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gagged and stabbed to death in her apartment. Four days later,
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Medina turned up asleep in her car at a rest
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stop on Interstate 10 near Lake City. He admitted he'd
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been in her apartment that night and that the hat
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on the bed near her body was his, and for
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the next 15 years he denied killing her. Her daughter,
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Lindy James, swore in an affidavit that she had never
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believed he did it. Three justices of the Florida Supreme
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Court dissented and said the case called for a hearing
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on evidence that prosecutors had sat on witness statements naming
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another man who'd been threatening Dorothy in the weeks before
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she died. Four justices said no. Pope John Paul II
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asked Florida for mercy, and Medina was the first Cuban
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immigrant the state had executed. Chapter 22. Alan Lee Davis
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and the Photographs the Court Put Online. Stark, Florida. July 8, 1999.
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Alan Lee Davis weighed 344 pounds by the prison's count,
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and he came into the death chamber on the morning
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of July 8, 1999, in a wheelchair. Florida had just
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built a new oak chair. The old one had a
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cracked seat and an arm ready to snap off, prison
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officials told the Miami Herald, and Davis was one of
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several heavy inmates they'd had in mind when they tested
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the replacement. The electrical apparatus inside it was the old chairs.
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Four guards strapped him in, and after the wide leather
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strap went across his mouth, the witnesses heard him make
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two muffled sounds. The warden of Florida State Prison, James Crosby,
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testified later that they sounded like Davis was trying to
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say something, and a lawyer in the room, John Moser,
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heard two screams. Then blood started coming from under the mask.
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The executioner threw the switch at 7.10 by the Times
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Union's and the AP's clocks. Davis's back straightened and his
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hands clenched. The blood kept coming, over the mouth strap,
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down his neck, and out through the buckle holes of
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the chest strap, until the stain on his white shirt
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was the size of a dinner plate. He was pronounced
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dead at 7.15. A spokesman for Governor Jeb Bush said,
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The electric chair functioned as it was designed to function today.
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And the governor's office said the blood was a nosebleed.
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Davis had killed Nancy Wheeler and her two daughters in
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their Jacksonville home on May 11, 1982. Out of work
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for two weeks, he'd picked the house because it looked
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easy to rob. He beat Nancy, who was three months pregnant,
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with a pistol until the grip broke. Christina, a day
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short of her tenth birthday, had her hands tied behind
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her back, and he shot her twice. He shot five-year-old
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Catherine in the back as she ran, then beat her.
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Nancy's husband, John Wheeler, sat in the front row of
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the witness room. This was a necessary thing that had
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to be done, he said afterward, and everyone has to
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understand why. After Davis died, the state photographed him where
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he sat. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled on the
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chair that September, 4-3, Justice Leander Shaw attached the photographs
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to his descent, and since the court posts its opinions
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on its website, the pictures went up with them. The
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color photos of Davis depict a man who, for all appearances,
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was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida,
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Shaw wrote. and execution by electrocution, with its attendant smoke
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and flames and blood and screams, is a spectacle whose
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time has passed. The majority sided with the trial judge,
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who'd found that the nosebleed had started before the current
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was applied, and that Davis suffered instantaneous and painless death
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once the current was applied to him. In October, the U.S.
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Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Florida's chair,
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and Florida carried out no more electrocutions before the legislature acted.
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In a special session in January 2000, the legislature made
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lethal injection Florida's method of execution, 37-0 in the Senate
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and 102-5 in the House, and left the chair as
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a choice an inmate could make. Davis is still the
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last person Florida has electrocuted. Interlude. The rest of the list. 1990-1991.
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Two more men on the Death Penalty Information Center's list
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were electrocuted in Virginia in the years this part covers.
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Wilbert Lee Evans, Virginia, October 17, 1990. On January 27, 1981,
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while being escorted to jail, Evans shot an Alexandria deputy sheriff,
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William Truesdale. The Virginia Supreme Court found he'd faked cooperation
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with prosecutors to engineer an escape. Three years later came
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the Mecklenburg Death Row breakout of May 1984. Six prisoners
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with homemade knives took 12 guards and two nurses hostage,
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and Evans was the man who stopped them from being hurt.
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There will be no killing, and there will be no raping,
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he told the escapees. You've gotten what you want, now go.
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One officer swore, had it not been for Evans, I
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might not be here today. The jury's only reason for
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his death sentence was had been that he'd be dangerous
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in the future, and Justice Marshall, dissenting the day Evans died,
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wrote that a system that could execute him anyway is
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a system that cannot stand. At the first surge of
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current enrichment by the Virginia pilot's account, blood flowed from
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under the leather death mask, streamed down his chin, and
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soaked his shirt. Three Richmond Times dispatch reporters saw it
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come from his eyes, mouth, and nose. On the prison's
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own tape, the narrator's voice breaks at 11.04. The first
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surge of electricity has been administered. Officials said he'd had
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a nosebleed and the chair worked fine. Derek Lynn Peterson, Virginia,
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August 22, 1991. In February 1982, Peterson, another of the
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Mecklenburg Sixes, had shot Howard Kaufman, a Pantry Pride supermarket
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employee in Hampton, who, in the Fourth Circuit's words, was
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offering no resistance. He was executed in Virginia's new chamber
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at Greenville, and the new equipment didn't work the way
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the old had. After the standard cycle, 1,725 volts for
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10 seconds and 240 for about 90, Dr. David Barnes
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put a stethoscope to his chest and told the warden
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he hasn't expired. A few minutes later, he said it again.
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This man has not expired. The witnesses gasped. Seven and
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a half minutes after the first cycle, they sent a
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second one, and he was pronounced dead at 11.13 p.m.
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We're dealing with brand new equipment, the corrections director said.
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Virginia's fix was procedural. From then on, the second jolt
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would follow the first without waiting for a doctor to check.
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Part 3. The Needle. 1985-2014. Oklahoma wrote lethal injection into
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its law in 1977. The plan came from the state's
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medical examiner, Jay Chapman, and it called for three drugs,
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an anesthetic to put the prisoner under, a paralytic to
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stop his breathing, and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
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Texas was the first to use it in December 1982,
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and by 2009, it was the primary method in every
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state still carrying out executions. When Austin Surratt went through 8,776
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American executions between 1890 and 2010, the needle came out
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with the highest botch rate of any method he studied,
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a little over 7%. It went wrong in two places,
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and the first was the vein. The chemicals had to
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reach the bloodstream, and a prisoner who had used drugs
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for years, or was a big man, or had veins
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that collapsed— could lie on the gurney for the better
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part of an hour while a team tried his arms,
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then his hands, his legs, his groin, and his neck.
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In 2009, Ohio's team spent two hours on Rommel Broom
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and then sent him back to his cell alive. The
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second place was the drugs themselves. In 1994, the paralytic
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thickened in the tube on its way into John Wayne Gacy.
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and 20 years later, the trouble was getting the drugs
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at all. Ohio ran out of pentobarbital, and in January 2014,
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it executed Dennis McGuire with midazolam and hydromorphone, a combination
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no one in the country had used to kill a prisoner.
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Oklahoma tried midazolam on Clayton Lockett in April, and in July,
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Arizona gave Joseph Wood the Ohio pear. From the time
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the drugs started, McGuire took about 25 minutes to die.
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Lockett took 43 minutes. and Wood took an hour and fifty-seven.
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Chapter 23 Raymond Landry and the Blowout Huntsville, Texas, December 13,
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1988 A little after midnight on December 13, 1988, Texas
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strapped Raymond Landry to the gurney in Huntsville. He was
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the twenty-ninth man the state had executed by lethal injection,
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and by the prison's own account, he was the first
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whose line failed. The former electrician from Lafayette, Louisiana, who
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was 39 and had asked for no witnesses of his own.
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On the night of August 6, 1982, he'd walked into
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the Dairymaid restaurant in Houston as its owner, Cosmas Pritis,
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a Greek immigrant, was closing up with his family. Pritis
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handed over a wallet with more than $ 2, 000 in it,
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and Landry shot him in the head. One of the
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British children testified that Landry had cocked the gun at
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them before their mother stepped in and he slapped her
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into the side of a car. Five eyewitnesses picked him
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out of a lineup. At the trial, when his lawyer
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gave the closing argument, the dead man's widow fainted and
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his brother cried out, and the jury had to be
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taken from the room. Five execution dates had come and
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gone on stays. The Supreme Court turned down the 6th
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on the afternoon of December 12th, with Brennan and Marshall
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dissenting as they did in every Capitol case. On the
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gurney that night, Landry declined to make a last statement,
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though witnesses said he muttered to himself. Then the drugs
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started flowing into a line in the inside of his
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right elbow. About two minutes in, the line let go.
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In the witness room, United Press International's reporter wrote that
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a stream of liquid squirted freely from the IV tube.
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The Dallas Morning News had it spraying across the room
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toward the witnesses. Landry glanced at his arm, then looked
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back at the ceiling, and the execution team pulled a
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white curtain across the glass. For about fourteen minutes, the
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witnesses saw nothing. What they heard, by UPI's account, was
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a low moan believed to be from Landry. When the
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curtain opened again at 12.37, he didn't appear to be breathing,
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and he was pronounced dead at 12.45 a.m. which, by
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the count in the morning news, was 24 minutes after
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the drugs first began and 40 after he was strapped down. Afterward,
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the prison's spokesman, Charles Brown, gave the press the word
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the team used. There was a delay in the execution
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and officials indicated it was what they call a blowout,
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he said. The warden ordered the team to come back
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in and reinsert the catheter and start again. The remainder
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of the substance was introduced. It was the first time
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such a thing had happened, he said, since Texas began
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injecting people in 1982. There was no autopsy, no inquiry,
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and no change to the procedure. Decades later, the Associated
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Press looked back and called it the first of two
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needle blowouts in the Texas death chamber. Ten years on,
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Joseph Cannon's needle came out of his arm, too, and
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the curtain closed again. He's on the list at the
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end of this part. Chapter 24. Ricky Ray Rector and
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the Pecan Pie. Varner, Arkansas. January 24th, 1992. On his
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last night, January 24th, 1992, Ricky Ray Rector ate steak
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and fried chicken in the death house at Cummins and
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set his slice of pecan pie aside on the tray.
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He always did that, his lawyers said afterward, because he
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saved dessert for bedtime. When the guards came to take
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him to the chamber, he told them he was saving
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it for later. They found it in the cell after
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he was dead. Rector had shot himself in the head
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11 years earlier, and the man Arkansas executed was what
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was left. On March 22, 1981, after being turned away
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from a private party, he killed a man named Arthur
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Criswell at a restaurant in Conway and wounded two others.
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Two days later, Bob Barton, a Conway police officer who
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knew Rector, came to the house of Rector's mother and
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sat in the living room, talking with her and with
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Rector's sister and nephew. Rector came in the back door
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and said little. After a few minutes, he drew a
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pistol and shot Martin twice, then put the gun to
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his own forehead and fired. The bullet took out about
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three inches of the front of his brain, which a
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federal appeals court later wrote is commonly referred to in
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medical terms as a frontal lobotomy. The surgeons cleaned the
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wound and closed it. And in November 1982, a jury
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sentenced him to death for killing Martin. What followed was
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10 years of courts deciding whether a man who couldn't
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remember his own trial could be executed for it. A
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federal judge, Henry Woods, sent him to the Federal Medical
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Center in Springfield, Missouri for evaluation, and his IQ came
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back at 70, right at the cutoff for mental retardation.
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The examiners found he knew he was on death row.
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and knew why, and that under the Supreme Court's standard,
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that was enough. They also found he would have considerable
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difficulty due to his organic deficits in being able to
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work in a collaborative, cooperative effort with an attorney, which
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the American Bar Association's standards said should matter. Woods wrote
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that those standards were interesting, but had no legal effect.
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The Eighth Circuit agreed with him. When the Supreme Court
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declined the case in June 1991, Justice Marshall dissented, writing
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that it is inhumane to put a man to death
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when he has been rendered incapable of appealing to the
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mercy of the society that has condemned him. On January 16, 1992,
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the Clemency Board voted against Rector, and on the 23rd,
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Governor Bill Clinton denied clemency. Clinton flew home from New
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Hampshire for it. He was running for president, the primary
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there was three weeks off, and his campaign said he
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would not be giving interviews. In 11 years as governor,
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he had scheduled 68 executions, and Rector would be the
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first black prisoner executed in Arkansas since 1960. One account
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that went around afterward had Rector telling his lawyer he
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meant to vote for Clinton in the fall. The execution
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was set for 9 p.m., the AP said. though the
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Encyclopedia of Arkansas gives 915. At 945, a prison spokesman
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told the press it still hadn't happened because the medical
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team couldn't find a vein. The witnesses sat behind a
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drawn curtain and never saw the next part. Over the
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better part of an hour, they heard Rector moaning, and
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they counted eight moans. On the other side of the curtain,
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a team that started as two people grew to five,
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working both sides of his body. He had spindly veins
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that collapsed easily, Amnesty International wrote, and he was a
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big man on medication. He tried to help. Witnesses said
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he seemed cheerful about it, as if the people bending
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over him were nurses doing an ordinary job, and he
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wanted to make it easier for them. He was pronounced
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dead at 10.09. The autopsy counted 10 puncture marks, and
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it recorded that the team had cut into his right
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arm to reach a vein. The state's medical administrator explained
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the moans by the number of people working on him,
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which may have contributed to his occasional outbursts, and put
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the trouble down to his size and his medication. One
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of the officials involved resigned afterward and gave that night
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as his reason. Arkansas changed nothing in its procedure then.
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Sixteen years later, when prisoners challenged the state's method in
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federal court, Rector's autopsy was the exhibit. Ten punctures and
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what their lawyer called the deep gash that was cut
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into his arm, a method she said was medically unacceptable
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under any circumstances. By then, the pie had become the story.
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For years, Clinton's willingness to be in the state that
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night was cited as the moment a Democrat proved he
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wasn't soft on crime. And the account the Death Penalty
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Information Center still cites is the long one Marshall Frady
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wrote for the New Yorker the winter after the executions.
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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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00:21:21.450 --> 00:21:23.670
I used for this episode and for the book it's
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00:21:23.710 --> 00:21:27.680
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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00:21:27.740 --> 00:21:31.519
slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:34.599
for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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00:21:34.619 --> 00:21:37.119
the next section to be shared in the podcast, The
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00:21:37.140 --> 00:21:40.609
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback,
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as well as Kindle Unlimited.
1
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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
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
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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 21. Pedro Medina and the Flame
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Under the Headpiece. Stark, Florida. March 25th, 1997. On the
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morning of March 25th, 1997, Pedro Medina was strapped into
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the chair Jesse Taffaro had died in, and his last
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words were, I'm still innocent. Within seconds of the current,
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smoke came out from under the right side of the headpiece,
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and then a flame. Eugene Morris, the Department of Corrections spokesman,
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put it at 4 to 5 inches and 6 to
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8 seconds, and the court record later settled on a
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4 to 5 inch yellow-orange flame, which lasted 4 to
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5 seconds. Witnesses who spoke to CNN said 5 or
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6 inches, and those UPI interviewed said 6 to 10.
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The Gainesville Sun's reporter said, wrote of a crown of
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foot-high flames. Medina's lawyer, Michael Minerva, said, A solid flame
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covered his whole head, from one side to the other.
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I had the impression of somebody being burned alive. And
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he said the smell came through the glass. There was
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enough smoke that somebody opened a window to the outside.
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The current was shut off in the middle of the
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third cycle, and Medina was pronounced dead at 7.10. That
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same day, Attorney General Bob Butterworth said, people who wish
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to commit murder, they better not do it in the
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state of Florida because we may have a problem with
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our electric chair. And the next day, he asked legislative
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leaders to consider lethal injection. Governor Lawton Childs brought in
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two engineers, Michael Norse and Jay Weikert. The prison had
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first blamed a corroded screen in the headpiece, but the
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engineers found the brass screen was not the cause. and
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traced the fire to using a dry sponge between the
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wet sponge and the conductive screen in the headpiece, made
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worse by a weak saline solution. The trial judge who
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heard the evidence found that the smell in the room
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was burnt sponge, not burnt flesh, that Medina's brain had
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been instantly and massively depolarized within milliseconds, and that he
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suffered no conscious pain, and that October the Florida Supreme
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Court upheld the chair 4-3. Medina had come from Cuba
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in the Muriel boatlift of 1980. On April 4, 1982,
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Dorothy James, an Orlando schoolteacher who'd befriended him, was found
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gagged and stabbed to death in her apartment. Four days later,
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Medina turned up asleep in her car at a rest
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stop on Interstate 10 near Lake City. He admitted he'd
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been in her apartment that night and that the hat
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on the bed near her body was his, and for
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the next 15 years he denied killing her. Her daughter,
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Lindy James, swore in an affidavit that she had never
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believed he did it. Three justices of the Florida Supreme
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Court dissented and said the case called for a hearing
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on evidence that prosecutors had sat on witness statements naming
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another man who'd been threatening Dorothy in the weeks before
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she died. Four justices said no. Pope John Paul II
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asked Florida for mercy, and Medina was the first Cuban
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immigrant the state had executed. Chapter 22. Alan Lee Davis
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and the Photographs the Court Put Online. Stark, Florida. July 8, 1999.
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Alan Lee Davis weighed 344 pounds by the prison's count,
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and he came into the death chamber on the morning
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of July 8, 1999, in a wheelchair. Florida had just
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built a new oak chair. The old one had a
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cracked seat and an arm ready to snap off, prison
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officials told the Miami Herald, and Davis was one of
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several heavy inmates they'd had in mind when they tested
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the replacement. The electrical apparatus inside it was the old chairs.
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Four guards strapped him in, and after the wide leather
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strap went across his mouth, the witnesses heard him make
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two muffled sounds. The warden of Florida State Prison, James Crosby,
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testified later that they sounded like Davis was trying to
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say something, and a lawyer in the room, John Moser,
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heard two screams. Then blood started coming from under the mask.
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The executioner threw the switch at 7.10 by the Times
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Union's and the AP's clocks. Davis's back straightened and his
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hands clenched. The blood kept coming, over the mouth strap,
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down his neck, and out through the buckle holes of
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the chest strap, until the stain on his white shirt
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was the size of a dinner plate. He was pronounced
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dead at 7.15. A spokesman for Governor Jeb Bush said,
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The electric chair functioned as it was designed to function today.
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And the governor's office said the blood was a nosebleed.
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Davis had killed Nancy Wheeler and her two daughters in
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their Jacksonville home on May 11, 1982. Out of work
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for two weeks, he'd picked the house because it looked
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easy to rob. He beat Nancy, who was three months pregnant,
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with a pistol until the grip broke. Christina, a day
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short of her tenth birthday, had her hands tied behind
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her back, and he shot her twice. He shot five-year-old
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Catherine in the back as she ran, then beat her.
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Nancy's husband, John Wheeler, sat in the front row of
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the witness room. This was a necessary thing that had
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to be done, he said afterward, and everyone has to
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understand why. After Davis died, the state photographed him where
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he sat. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled on the
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chair that September, 4-3, Justice Leander Shaw attached the photographs
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to his descent, and since the court posts its opinions
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on its website, the pictures went up with them. The
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color photos of Davis depict a man who, for all appearances,
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was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida,
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Shaw wrote. and execution by electrocution, with its attendant smoke
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and flames and blood and screams, is a spectacle whose
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time has passed. The majority sided with the trial judge,
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who'd found that the nosebleed had started before the current
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was applied, and that Davis suffered instantaneous and painless death
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once the current was applied to him. In October, the U.S.
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Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Florida's chair,
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and Florida carried out no more electrocutions before the legislature acted.
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In a special session in January 2000, the legislature made
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lethal injection Florida's method of execution, 37-0 in the Senate
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and 102-5 in the House, and left the chair as
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a choice an inmate could make. Davis is still the
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last person Florida has electrocuted. Interlude. The rest of the list. 1990-1991.
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Two more men on the Death Penalty Information Center's list
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were electrocuted in Virginia in the years this part covers.
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Wilbert Lee Evans, Virginia, October 17, 1990. On January 27, 1981,
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while being escorted to jail, Evans shot an Alexandria deputy sheriff,
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William Truesdale. The Virginia Supreme Court found he'd faked cooperation
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with prosecutors to engineer an escape. Three years later came
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the Mecklenburg Death Row breakout of May 1984. Six prisoners
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with homemade knives took 12 guards and two nurses hostage,
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and Evans was the man who stopped them from being hurt.
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There will be no killing, and there will be no raping,
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he told the escapees. You've gotten what you want, now go.
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One officer swore, had it not been for Evans, I
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might not be here today. The jury's only reason for
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his death sentence was had been that he'd be dangerous
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in the future, and Justice Marshall, dissenting the day Evans died,
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wrote that a system that could execute him anyway is
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a system that cannot stand. At the first surge of
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current enrichment by the Virginia pilot's account, blood flowed from
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under the leather death mask, streamed down his chin, and
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soaked his shirt. Three Richmond Times dispatch reporters saw it
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come from his eyes, mouth, and nose. On the prison's
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own tape, the narrator's voice breaks at 11.04. The first
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surge of electricity has been administered. Officials said he'd had
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a nosebleed and the chair worked fine. Derek Lynn Peterson, Virginia,
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August 22, 1991. In February 1982, Peterson, another of the
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Mecklenburg Sixes, had shot Howard Kaufman, a Pantry Pride supermarket
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employee in Hampton, who, in the Fourth Circuit's words, was
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offering no resistance. He was executed in Virginia's new chamber
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at Greenville, and the new equipment didn't work the way
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the old had. After the standard cycle, 1,725 volts for
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10 seconds and 240 for about 90, Dr. David Barnes
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put a stethoscope to his chest and told the warden
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he hasn't expired. A few minutes later, he said it again.
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This man has not expired. The witnesses gasped. Seven and
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a half minutes after the first cycle, they sent a
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second one, and he was pronounced dead at 11.13 p.m.
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We're dealing with brand new equipment, the corrections director said.
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Virginia's fix was procedural. From then on, the second jolt
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would follow the first without waiting for a doctor to check.
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Part 3. The Needle. 1985-2014. Oklahoma wrote lethal injection into
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its law in 1977. The plan came from the state's
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medical examiner, Jay Chapman, and it called for three drugs,
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an anesthetic to put the prisoner under, a paralytic to
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stop his breathing, and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
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Texas was the first to use it in December 1982,
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and by 2009, it was the primary method in every
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state still carrying out executions. When Austin Surratt went through 8,776
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American executions between 1890 and 2010, the needle came out
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with the highest botch rate of any method he studied,
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a little over 7%. It went wrong in two places,
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and the first was the vein. The chemicals had to
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reach the bloodstream, and a prisoner who had used drugs
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for years, or was a big man, or had veins
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that collapsed— could lie on the gurney for the better
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part of an hour while a team tried his arms,
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then his hands, his legs, his groin, and his neck.
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In 2009, Ohio's team spent two hours on Rommel Broom
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and then sent him back to his cell alive. The
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second place was the drugs themselves. In 1994, the paralytic
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thickened in the tube on its way into John Wayne Gacy.
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and 20 years later, the trouble was getting the drugs
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at all. Ohio ran out of pentobarbital, and in January 2014,
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it executed Dennis McGuire with midazolam and hydromorphone, a combination
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no one in the country had used to kill a prisoner.
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Oklahoma tried midazolam on Clayton Lockett in April, and in July,
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Arizona gave Joseph Wood the Ohio pear. From the time
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the drugs started, McGuire took about 25 minutes to die.
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Lockett took 43 minutes. and Wood took an hour and fifty-seven.
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Chapter 23 Raymond Landry and the Blowout Huntsville, Texas, December 13,
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1988 A little after midnight on December 13, 1988, Texas
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strapped Raymond Landry to the gurney in Huntsville. He was
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the twenty-ninth man the state had executed by lethal injection,
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and by the prison's own account, he was the first
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whose line failed. The former electrician from Lafayette, Louisiana, who
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was 39 and had asked for no witnesses of his own.
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On the night of August 6, 1982, he'd walked into
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the Dairymaid restaurant in Houston as its owner, Cosmas Pritis,
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a Greek immigrant, was closing up with his family. Pritis
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handed over a wallet with more than $ 2, 000 in it,
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and Landry shot him in the head. One of the
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British children testified that Landry had cocked the gun at
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them before their mother stepped in and he slapped her
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into the side of a car. Five eyewitnesses picked him
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out of a lineup. At the trial, when his lawyer
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gave the closing argument, the dead man's widow fainted and
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his brother cried out, and the jury had to be
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taken from the room. Five execution dates had come and
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gone on stays. The Supreme Court turned down the 6th
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on the afternoon of December 12th, with Brennan and Marshall
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dissenting as they did in every Capitol case. On the
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gurney that night, Landry declined to make a last statement,
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though witnesses said he muttered to himself. Then the drugs
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started flowing into a line in the inside of his
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right elbow. About two minutes in, the line let go.
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In the witness room, United Press International's reporter wrote that
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a stream of liquid squirted freely from the IV tube.
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The Dallas Morning News had it spraying across the room
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toward the witnesses. Landry glanced at his arm, then looked
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back at the ceiling, and the execution team pulled a
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white curtain across the glass. For about fourteen minutes, the
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witnesses saw nothing. What they heard, by UPI's account, was
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a low moan believed to be from Landry. When the
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curtain opened again at 12.37, he didn't appear to be breathing,
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and he was pronounced dead at 12.45 a.m. which, by
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the count in the morning news, was 24 minutes after
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the drugs first began and 40 after he was strapped down. Afterward,
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the prison's spokesman, Charles Brown, gave the press the word
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the team used. There was a delay in the execution
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and officials indicated it was what they call a blowout,
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he said. The warden ordered the team to come back
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in and reinsert the catheter and start again. The remainder
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of the substance was introduced. It was the first time
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such a thing had happened, he said, since Texas began
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injecting people in 1982. There was no autopsy, no inquiry,
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and no change to the procedure. Decades later, the Associated
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Press looked back and called it the first of two
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needle blowouts in the Texas death chamber. Ten years on,
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Joseph Cannon's needle came out of his arm, too, and
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the curtain closed again. He's on the list at the
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end of this part. Chapter 24. Ricky Ray Rector and
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the Pecan Pie. Varner, Arkansas. January 24th, 1992. On his
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last night, January 24th, 1992, Ricky Ray Rector ate steak
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and fried chicken in the death house at Cummins and
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set his slice of pecan pie aside on the tray.
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He always did that, his lawyers said afterward, because he
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saved dessert for bedtime. When the guards came to take
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him to the chamber, he told them he was saving
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it for later. They found it in the cell after
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he was dead. Rector had shot himself in the head
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11 years earlier, and the man Arkansas executed was what
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was left. On March 22, 1981, after being turned away
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from a private party, he killed a man named Arthur
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Criswell at a restaurant in Conway and wounded two others.
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Two days later, Bob Barton, a Conway police officer who
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knew Rector, came to the house of Rector's mother and
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sat in the living room, talking with her and with
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Rector's sister and nephew. Rector came in the back door
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and said little. After a few minutes, he drew a
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pistol and shot Martin twice, then put the gun to
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his own forehead and fired. The bullet took out about
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three inches of the front of his brain, which a
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federal appeals court later wrote is commonly referred to in
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medical terms as a frontal lobotomy. The surgeons cleaned the
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wound and closed it. And in November 1982, a jury
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sentenced him to death for killing Martin. What followed was
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10 years of courts deciding whether a man who couldn't
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remember his own trial could be executed for it. A
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federal judge, Henry Woods, sent him to the Federal Medical
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Center in Springfield, Missouri for evaluation, and his IQ came
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back at 70, right at the cutoff for mental retardation.
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The examiners found he knew he was on death row.
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and knew why, and that under the Supreme Court's standard,
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that was enough. They also found he would have considerable
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difficulty due to his organic deficits in being able to
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work in a collaborative, cooperative effort with an attorney, which
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the American Bar Association's standards said should matter. Woods wrote
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that those standards were interesting, but had no legal effect.
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The Eighth Circuit agreed with him. When the Supreme Court
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declined the case in June 1991, Justice Marshall dissented, writing
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that it is inhumane to put a man to death
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when he has been rendered incapable of appealing to the
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mercy of the society that has condemned him. On January 16, 1992,
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the Clemency Board voted against Rector, and on the 23rd,
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Governor Bill Clinton denied clemency. Clinton flew home from New
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Hampshire for it. He was running for president, the primary
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there was three weeks off, and his campaign said he
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would not be giving interviews. In 11 years as governor,
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he had scheduled 68 executions, and Rector would be the
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first black prisoner executed in Arkansas since 1960. One account
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that went around afterward had Rector telling his lawyer he
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meant to vote for Clinton in the fall. The execution
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was set for 9 p.m., the AP said. though the
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Encyclopedia of Arkansas gives 915. At 945, a prison spokesman
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told the press it still hadn't happened because the medical
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team couldn't find a vein. The witnesses sat behind a
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drawn curtain and never saw the next part. Over the
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better part of an hour, they heard Rector moaning, and
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they counted eight moans. On the other side of the curtain,
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a team that started as two people grew to five,
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working both sides of his body. He had spindly veins
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that collapsed easily, Amnesty International wrote, and he was a
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big man on medication. He tried to help. Witnesses said
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he seemed cheerful about it, as if the people bending
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over him were nurses doing an ordinary job, and he
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wanted to make it easier for them. He was pronounced
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dead at 10.09. The autopsy counted 10 puncture marks, and
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it recorded that the team had cut into his right
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arm to reach a vein. The state's medical administrator explained
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the moans by the number of people working on him,
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which may have contributed to his occasional outbursts, and put
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the trouble down to his size and his medication. One
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of the officials involved resigned afterward and gave that night
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as his reason. Arkansas changed nothing in its procedure then.
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Sixteen years later, when prisoners challenged the state's method in
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federal court, Rector's autopsy was the exhibit. Ten punctures and
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what their lawyer called the deep gash that was cut
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into his arm, a method she said was medically unacceptable
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under any circumstances. By then, the pie had become the story.
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For years, Clinton's willingness to be in the state that
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night was cited as the moment a Democrat proved he
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wasn't soft on crime. And the account the Death Penalty
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Information Center still cites is the long one Marshall Frady
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wrote for the New Yorker the winter after the executions.
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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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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.
