TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:02.350 --> 00:00:06.269
This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
2
00:00:07.250 --> 00:00:10.509
For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
3
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
11
00:00:43.359 --> 00:00:47.700
someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
12
00:00:47.740 --> 00:00:51.679
we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
13
00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:55.299
who watched them, and some of the details are hard
14
00:00:55.539 --> 00:01:04.569
to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
15
00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:23.120
and firing squads. Chapter 12. Five Shots for Ethel Rosenberg. Ossining,
16
00:01:23.159 --> 00:01:31.359
New York. June 19th, 1953. On March 29th, 1951, A
17
00:01:31.400 --> 00:01:35.260
jury found Julius Rosenberg, his wife Ethel, and a third defendant,
18
00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:39.019
Morton Sabell, guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage for the
19
00:01:39.060 --> 00:01:43.599
Soviet Union. Judge Irving Kaufman passed sentence a week later,
20
00:01:43.900 --> 00:01:48.250
on April 5th. Sabell got 30 years in prison. Julius
21
00:01:48.310 --> 00:01:51.489
and Ethel were both sentenced to death, with the date
22
00:01:51.549 --> 00:01:56.430
set for the week of May 21st, 1951. The government's
23
00:01:56.469 --> 00:02:00.680
case against Ethel leaned on her own brother. David Greenglass
24
00:02:00.939 --> 00:02:05.560
pleaded guilty, received a 15-year sentence, and testified for the prosecution.
25
00:02:06.159 --> 00:02:09.080
And when the prosecutors asked him who had typed up
26
00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:12.949
the information, he said, under oath, that his sister did.
27
00:02:13.969 --> 00:02:17.069
The FBI's history of the case still tells it his way.
28
00:02:17.650 --> 00:02:20.590
Rosenberg answered that it was nothing to worry about because Ethel,
29
00:02:20.650 --> 00:02:24.729
his wife, would retype the information, it says. And Ethel
30
00:02:24.789 --> 00:02:27.469
then prepared the information on a portable typewriter in the
31
00:02:27.530 --> 00:02:31.990
Rosenberg apartment. She turns up in a KGB file entry
32
00:02:32.030 --> 00:02:34.770
about Julius, too, preserved in the notes known as the
33
00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:38.719
Vasiliev Notebooks. His wife knows about her husband's work and
34
00:02:38.780 --> 00:02:42.620
personally knows Twain and Callistratus, it read. She could be
35
00:02:42.740 --> 00:02:46.199
used independently, but she should not be overworked. Poor health.
36
00:02:47.979 --> 00:02:50.180
Ethel spent the next two years in the death house
37
00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:54.439
at Sing Sing while the appeals ran. Pope Pius XII
38
00:02:54.620 --> 00:02:59.810
asked President Eisenhower to spare the couple, and on February 11th, 1953,
39
00:03:00.009 --> 00:03:03.930
Eisenhower refused. The last fight was in the Supreme Court.
40
00:03:04.590 --> 00:03:08.969
On Wednesday, June 17, 1953, Justice Douglas granted a stay
41
00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.599
of execution. He wanted an answer to one question, whether
42
00:03:12.699 --> 00:03:16.439
the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which allowed a death
43
00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:19.819
sentence only when a jury recommended it, had replaced the
44
00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:24.539
penalty in the Espionage Act. The Rosenbergs' own lawyers hadn't
45
00:03:24.620 --> 00:03:27.900
raised it. It came from a lawyer named Edelman, who,
46
00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:31.599
Justice Jackson later wrote, was a stranger to the Rosenbergs
47
00:03:31.919 --> 00:03:36.000
and their case. His intervention was unauthorized by them and
48
00:03:36.060 --> 00:03:40.830
originally opposed by their counsel. The Attorney General asked the
49
00:03:40.870 --> 00:03:43.669
court to come back for a special term and throw
50
00:03:43.789 --> 00:03:47.129
out the stay, and on June 18th, it heard argument.
51
00:03:47.849 --> 00:03:50.750
During the next morning, the court held another conference and
52
00:03:50.770 --> 00:03:53.699
then met at noon and announced its decision, Chief Justice
53
00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:57.879
Vinson wrote. The vote was six to three. The Atomic
54
00:03:57.919 --> 00:04:01.180
Energy Act did not repeal or limit the provisions of
55
00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:05.379
the Espionage Act, the court said, and the stay was vacated.
56
00:04:06.699 --> 00:04:11.620
Justices Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas dissented. I do not believe
57
00:04:11.710 --> 00:04:15.090
that government counsel or this court has had time or
58
00:04:15.210 --> 00:04:18.629
an adequate opportunity to investigate and decide the very serious
59
00:04:18.709 --> 00:04:24.329
question raised, Black wrote. Douglas' dissent said, Now I know
60
00:04:24.389 --> 00:04:27.029
that I am right on the law. and added, no
61
00:04:27.110 --> 00:04:28.970
man or woman should go to a death under an
62
00:04:29.050 --> 00:04:32.649
unlawful sentence merely because his lawyer failed to raise the point.
63
00:04:34.250 --> 00:04:38.910
Frankfurter didn't file his dissent until June 22nd, three days
64
00:04:39.129 --> 00:04:42.430
after the executions. But I am clear that the claim
65
00:04:42.670 -->
Load full transcript
00:04:46.529
had substance, he wrote. The hour of death was moved
66
00:04:46.850 --> 00:04:50.089
from 11 p.m. Thursday to 8 p.m. Friday in order
67
00:04:50.129 --> 00:04:53.600
to avoid an execution on the Jewish Sabbath. which begins
68
00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:57.660
at sundown on Friday, Time magazine reported, without saying who
69
00:04:57.740 --> 00:05:01.009
moved it. A fact sheet from the Rosenberg Fund for
70
00:05:01.069 --> 00:05:04.889
Children has it differently. The execution was set for 11 p.m.
71
00:05:04.990 --> 00:05:08.310
on Friday the 19th, after the court ruled, and then
72
00:05:08.370 --> 00:05:12.879
moved forward to 8 p.m. Wikipedia, citing a 2003 New
73
00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:16.360
York Times piece and Sam Robertson's book, The Brother, says
74
00:05:16.420 --> 00:05:20.459
Judge Kaufman made the change. That night, Gabe Pressman was
75
00:05:20.540 --> 00:05:24.939
outside the prison gates for the World Telegram and Sun.
76
00:05:25.100 --> 00:05:29.040
At 7.20, he later wrote, almost all conversation stopped, and
77
00:05:29.100 --> 00:05:32.220
at 7.52, a trooper said he understood one of them
78
00:05:32.339 --> 00:05:36.170
was dead. By the United Press timeline, that was more
79
00:05:36.259 --> 00:05:39.269
than ten minutes before Julius sat down in the chair.
80
00:05:40.589 --> 00:05:43.290
The official party came over from the administration building by
81
00:05:43.370 --> 00:05:47.269
prison van and reached the death house at 8.01. There
82
00:05:47.290 --> 00:05:51.629
were ten official witnesses and three newspaper men. At 8.02,
83
00:05:51.629 --> 00:05:53.529
a guard opened a door at the far end of
84
00:05:53.550 --> 00:05:57.589
the chamber, and Rabbi Irving Koslow, the prison chaplain, came
85
00:05:57.649 --> 00:06:01.800
through it, reading the 23rd Psalm. Julius walked in behind
86
00:06:01.860 --> 00:06:05.860
him in a T-shirt and brown trousers, clean-shaven, without the
87
00:06:05.899 --> 00:06:09.699
mustache he'd worn when he arrived there. United Press had
88
00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:13.420
loafers on his feet. Time had cloth slippers. For a
89
00:06:13.439 --> 00:06:15.879
brief moment, a puzzled look appeared on his face when
90
00:06:15.899 --> 00:06:18.329
he took one quick glance at the four benches at
91
00:06:18.350 --> 00:06:21.029
the rear of the chamber where the official witnesses sat,
92
00:06:21.509 --> 00:06:24.930
United Press reported. Otherwise, he gave no sign of emotion.
93
00:06:26.370 --> 00:06:29.629
Just before the chair, time said, he seemed to sway.
94
00:06:30.920 --> 00:06:34.920
He was in the chair at 8.04. Warden Dano signaled
95
00:06:35.019 --> 00:06:39.040
Joseph Francel and the slim little executioner through the switch,
96
00:06:39.339 --> 00:06:42.610
United Press reported. There was a buzzing sound for three seconds.
97
00:06:42.980 --> 00:06:47.279
and Rosenberg lurched forward, his hands clenched. The second charge
98
00:06:47.339 --> 00:06:51.819
ran for
57 seconds, and then came a third. Both
99
00:06:51.899 --> 00:06:55.439
United Press and Time said three shocks of 2,000 volts each,
100
00:06:55.910 --> 00:06:59.490
though Wikipedia says the first one killed him. The doctors
101
00:06:59.610 --> 00:07:03.029
stepped forward with their stethoscopes, and Dr. Kipp told the warden,
102
00:07:03.470 --> 00:07:07.949
I pronounce this man dead. United Press gave the time
103
00:07:08.089 --> 00:07:12.379
as 8.06, and the FBI gives it at 8.05. Two
104
00:07:12.420 --> 00:07:15.379
guards bundled the body onto a hospital cart and wheeled
105
00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:21.089
it into the autopsy room. Ethel was 37. At 8.08,
106
00:07:21.089 --> 00:07:23.350
the door to the left of the chair opened, and
107
00:07:23.389 --> 00:07:28.250
she came down the last mile, United Press reported, calm, unsmiling,
108
00:07:28.569 --> 00:07:32.540
her thin lips drawn to a narrow slit. Rabbi Koslow
109
00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:36.000
walked ahead of her, reading the 15th and 31st Psalms,
110
00:07:36.459 --> 00:07:40.120
though time gave only the 15th. Lord, who shall abide
111
00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:44.620
in thy tabernacle? On her left was Helen Evans, a
112
00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:46.819
prison matron who'd been with her the whole time she
113
00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:50.139
was in the death house. On her right was a Mrs. Manny,
114
00:07:50.500 --> 00:07:53.279
who said she'd filled in from her regular job as
115
00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:58.879
a telephone operator. Two male guards came behind. Mrs. Rosenberg
116
00:07:58.899 --> 00:08:02.759
had reached the chair, United Press reported, and had one
117
00:08:02.810 --> 00:08:05.490
hand on it when she turned and took Evans by
118
00:08:05.529 --> 00:08:08.389
the hand. She put her arm around the older woman
119
00:08:08.750 --> 00:08:11.310
and kissed her on the left cheek. then mumbled a
120
00:08:11.329 --> 00:08:15.699
few words, turned, and sat down in the chair. Time
121
00:08:15.759 --> 00:08:19.420
had the goodbye a little differently. The prisoner shook hands,
122
00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:21.779
then impulsively brushed a kiss on the cheek of a
123
00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:27.459
matron accompanying her. The state had dressed her. United Press
124
00:08:27.500 --> 00:08:32.450
described an ill-fitting, green-figured print dress. No stockings and loafers,
125
00:08:32.649 --> 00:08:36.250
like her husband's. Time saw a dark green print dress
126
00:08:36.309 --> 00:08:39.620
with white polka dots and cloth slippers. and noted that
127
00:08:39.659 --> 00:08:42.659
her hair had been cropped close on top for the electrode.
128
00:08:43.950 --> 00:08:47.730
She sat down with taut composure, wincing only slightly as
129
00:08:47.769 --> 00:08:50.669
the electrode was applied to her head, the magazine reported.
130
00:08:51.470 --> 00:08:56.909
The mask fell. At a quarter of a minute past 8.11,
131
00:08:56.909 --> 00:09:01.129
Brancel threw the switch. He was an electrician, and his sideline,
132
00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:05.340
United Press reported, was acting as executioner in prisons in
133
00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:09.759
five states. the state of New York paid him $ 150
134
00:09:09.100 --> 00:09:13.639
for each execution. When the first electric shock was applied,
135
00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:17.070
a thick white stream of smoke curled upward from the
136
00:09:17.129 --> 00:09:20.990
football-type helmet on her head, United Press reported. The juice
137
00:09:21.049 --> 00:09:25.110
went off, and the burned body relaxed. The story went
138
00:09:25.230 --> 00:09:28.519
on to a second shock, a third, and a fourth,
139
00:09:29.259 --> 00:09:32.879
but time counted only three before the doctors stepped in.
140
00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:37.610
Then the doctors went to her. A prison guard stepped forward,
141
00:09:38.029 --> 00:09:41.769
released one strap, and pulled down a round-necked dress, United
142
00:09:41.809 --> 00:09:46.450
Press reported. Doctors Kipp and McCracken applied their stethoscopes, then
143
00:09:46.549 --> 00:09:50.470
conferred in low tones. Francel walked over to join them
144
00:09:50.509 --> 00:09:54.889
and asked, The doctors nodded and went back to their
145
00:09:54.929 --> 00:09:58.169
places along the wall beside the warden, and Francel threw
146
00:09:58.220 --> 00:10:03.009
the switch again. Bob Considine of the International News Service
147
00:10:03.320 --> 00:10:05.759
was one of the reporters in the room, and afterward,
148
00:10:06.100 --> 00:10:08.960
he described it on the air. She died a lot harder,
149
00:10:09.159 --> 00:10:11.659
he said, when she'd had the same amount of electricity
150
00:10:11.700 --> 00:10:14.480
that had killed her husband. He said the doctors pulled
151
00:10:14.559 --> 00:10:17.450
down the cheap prison dress and a little dark green
152
00:10:17.529 --> 00:10:21.389
printed job, and put their stethoscopes to her. Partway through
153
00:10:21.409 --> 00:10:24.100
that sentence, he stopped and said, I can't say it.
154
00:10:25.100 --> 00:10:28.200
The doctors looked at each other, rather dumbfounded, and seemed
155
00:10:28.299 --> 00:10:32.100
surprised that she was not dead. More had come off
156
00:10:32.139 --> 00:10:35.879
her than one strap, by Considine's account. Believing she was dead,
157
00:10:36.200 --> 00:10:39.250
the attendants had taken off the ghastly strappings and electrodes
158
00:10:39.509 --> 00:10:42.330
and the black belts and so forth, he said. These
159
00:10:42.370 --> 00:10:45.220
had to be readjusted again, and she was given more electricity,
160
00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:48.279
which started again a kind of ghastly plume of smoke
161
00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:50.779
that rose from her head and went up against the
162
00:10:50.820 --> 00:10:55.820
skylight overhead. Time wrote that the doctors still heard a
163
00:10:55.899 --> 00:10:59.730
faint heartbeat, and that they stood back, and Ethel Rosenberg
164
00:10:59.759
--> 00:11:04.470
was given two more shots. Considine also said two, and
165
00:11:04.490 --> 00:11:07.730
the United Press had four before the doctors and one after,
166
00:11:08.049 --> 00:11:11.559
which comes to the same five. When the doctors listened
167
00:11:11.700 --> 00:11:15.620
the second time, United Press reported they quickly pronounced her dead.
168
00:11:16.779 --> 00:11:20.259
The Wire story didn't print a clock time, only that
169
00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:22.860
she was dead after four and a half minutes, and
170
00:11:22.899 --> 00:11:27.649
the FBI puts her death at 8.15. A modern encyclopedia
171
00:11:27.769 --> 00:11:31.429
entry from EBSCO says she died after four minutes and
172
00:11:31.429 --> 00:11:35.830
50 seconds of electrocution. United Press wrote that the executions
173
00:11:36.110 --> 00:11:40.799
came shortly before sundown, ushered in the Jewish Sabbath. The
174
00:11:40.840 --> 00:11:44.720
Rosenberg Fund for Children's fact sheet says hers was finished
175
00:11:44.820 --> 00:11:48.379
after sundown, but the sun set at Ossining that evening
176
00:11:48.440 --> 00:11:52.259
at about 8.30, so by the reported times, both were
177
00:11:52.299 --> 00:11:56.679
dead before it went down. Considine, like many in the
178
00:11:56.720 --> 00:12:01.179
news media at the time, supported the executions, as Democracy Now!
179
00:12:01.279 --> 00:12:04.759
noted when it aired the clip in 2010. He closed
180
00:12:04.799 --> 00:12:08.360
his broadcast this way, After two more of those jolts,
181
00:12:08.799 --> 00:12:11.279
Ethel Rosenberg had met a maker she'll have a lot
182
00:12:11.399 --> 00:12:15.990
of explaining to do to. United Press wrote, The Rosenbergs
183
00:12:16.049 --> 00:12:21.649
refused to the end to trade the secrets for their lives. Outside,
184
00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:25.600
Pressman was watching the guard tower. At 8.18, he wrote,
185
00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:28.899
A guard in Tower 13 crossed his arms and then
186
00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:31.600
spread them out like an umpire calling a runner safe
187
00:12:31.820 --> 00:12:34.450
at home, and that was how the crowd learned both
188
00:12:34.490 --> 00:12:38.149
of them were dead. Pressman also quoted another of the
189
00:12:38.190 --> 00:12:42.049
death house matrons, a gray-haired woman named Natalie Jackson, who
190
00:12:42.090 --> 00:12:44.789
said she'd seen five women go to the chair and
191
00:12:44.870 --> 00:12:48.529
Ethel was the calmest. The only sentence Jackson had heard
192
00:12:48.570 --> 00:12:53.669
from her, Pressman reported, was about her children. Vinson's full
193
00:12:53.730 --> 00:12:58.649
opinion was filed on July 16, 1953. The sentence of
194
00:12:58.710 --> 00:13:02.279
death was carried out, it said. A week later, on
195
00:13:02.330 --> 00:13:06.190
July 23rd, Francel electrocuted a man named William Draper at
196
00:13:06.269 --> 00:13:10.330
Sing Sing, and then he quit. He was unhappy with
197
00:13:10.370 --> 00:13:14.549
the $ 150, and he was exasperated by the threats against
198
00:13:14.590 --> 00:13:19.409
his life. David Greenglass was released from federal prison on
199
00:13:19.470 --> 00:13:24.240
November 16th, 1960. In 2001, he went on 60 Minutes
200
00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:27.460
2 in what CBS called his first and only TV
201
00:13:27.500 --> 00:13:30.200
interview and said, I don't know who typed it, frankly.
202
00:13:30.539 --> 00:13:32.519
and to this day I can't even remember that the
203
00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:36.230
typing took place. He told the program, I would not
204
00:13:36.279 --> 00:13:40.149
sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. And
205
00:13:40.169 --> 00:13:43.970
he said he slept very well. He told Sam Roberts,
206
00:13:44.190 --> 00:13:46.370
the New York Times reporter who wrote to the brother,
207
00:13:46.750 --> 00:13:49.870
that he'd lied at the trial to protect his wife, Ruth.
208
00:13:51.470 --> 00:13:53.309
Greenglass died in 2014, at 92. In July 2015, after
209
00:13:53.370 --> 00:14:00.909
a federal judge ordered it unsealed, The testimony he'd given
210
00:14:00.929 --> 00:14:05.200
a grand jury on August 7, 1950, was released, and
211
00:14:05.269 --> 00:14:08.899
it had nothing in it about typing. I said before,
212
00:14:09.340 --> 00:14:12.100
and say it again, honestly, this is a fact, he
213
00:14:12.139 --> 00:14:15.860
told the grand jury. I never spoke to my sister
214
00:14:15.940 --> 00:14:27.179
about this at all. Thanks for listening. I've been reading
215
00:14:27.220 --> 00:14:33.679
from my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
216
00:14:33.850 --> 00:14:37.090
and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
217
00:14:37.169 --> 00:14:39.389
I used for this episode and for the book it's
218
00:14:39.429 --> 00:14:43.389
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
219
00:14:43.450 --> 00:14:47.230
slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
220
00:14:47.350 --> 00:14:50.320
for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
221
00:14:50.340 --> 00:14:52.840
the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
222
00:14:52.879 --> 00:14:56.279
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
223
00:14:56.710 --> 00:14:58.230
as well as Kindle Unlimited.