WEBVTT
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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
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and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
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wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
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couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
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through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
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and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
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you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
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are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Chapter 25. John Wayne Gacy and the
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Drug that Turned to Gel in the Tube. Joliet, Illinois.
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May 10th, 1994. On the night of May 9th, 1994,
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some 400 people by the Chicago Tribune's count stood outside
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the walls of Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, Illinois, most
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of them supporters of the death penalty. As midnight came closer,
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they chanted, kill the clown, and vendors sold t-shirts, the
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Associated Press reported. Earlier that day, several hundred people had
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marched through downtown Chicago in support of the execution, carrying
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banners that read, Gacy, stick it to him, and 33
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body bags had been laid out on a sidewalk for
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his victims. Inside, John Wayne Gacy had eaten fried chicken
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and french fries. fried shrimp and fresh strawberries with a cola,
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and he told a corrections spokesman he'd particularly enjoyed the shrimp.
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He'd been flown by helicopter from Menard that morning, and
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his belongings had gone into the trash behind him. Fourteen
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years earlier, a Cook County jury had convicted him of
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murdering 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978.
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Of the bodies, twenty-nine came out of the crawlspace and
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the ground around his house in Norwood Park Township, outside Chicago,
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and four came out of the Des Plaines at Illinois Rivers.
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He'd been sentenced to death on twelve of the counts
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and to natural life on the other twenty-one. Nearly two
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dozen relatives of his victims, barred from the chamber as
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a security precaution, waited in an administration building for word.
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Gacy lay strapped to a gurney with a saline line
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in his arm, In the chamber, the line was hooked
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to a delivery module in the wall, and behind a
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one-way mirror, two executioners chosen by the Director of Corrections
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pushed their buttons at the same time, with the machine
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deciding which one actually sent the drugs. There were three
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drugs in order. Sodium thiopental to put him under, pancuronium
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bromide to stop his breathing, and potassium chloride to stop
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his heart. The whole thing was expected to take ten
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to fifteen minutes. Before it began, the corrections spokesman, Nick Howell, said,
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Gacy told the warden, Salvador Godinez, that taking his life
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wouldn't bring back any of the victims, and that the
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state was murdering him. The director, Howard Peters, gave the
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Chicago Tribune the same account. He said taking his life
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would not compensate for the loss of the others, and
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this was a mistake. The line everyone remembers is, kiss
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my ass. It has traveled as his last words for
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thirty years. And when Virginia electrocuted Robert Gleason in 2013,
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and he said the same thing in Gaelic, a Richmond
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television station pointed out that Gacy had said it first.
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None of the newspaper or wire accounts from the morning
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after have it. It first turns up years later on
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true crime websites, with no one named as having heard it.
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Bill Conkle prosecuted Gacy and sat in the front row
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of the witness room, and in 2019 he said, well,
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he didn't say that. The glass kept the witnesses from
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hearing much, he said, and what the prison officials told
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him Gacy had said was the line about the state
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committing murder. If Gacy said the other thing at all,
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Kunkel allowed, it was earlier, in conversation with an official,
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and that's been attributed to be his last words, but
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as far as I know, they really weren't. The execution
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was scheduled for 12.01 a.m., and the chemicals started flowing
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at about 12.40. The first drug went in, Then the
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pancuronium bromide, which was supposed to run down the tube
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into his arm, thickened and stopped. It had gelled, UPI wrote,
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passing along the explanation of Brian Fairchild of the Department
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of Corrections, and the result, Fairchild said, was that Gacy
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was still alive about ten minutes in. Time magazine's account
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has Gacy snorting just before the attendants pulled a curtain
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across the window in front of the two dozen witnesses.
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Behind the curtain, by Fairchild's account, Peters himself replaced the tube,
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and the blinds went back up about ten minutes later,
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the Tribune reported. The second and third drugs went in,
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and he was pronounced dead at 12.58 a.m., 18 minutes
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after the buttons were pushed. The reaction was like he
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was going to sleep, Peters said. He closed his eyes
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and took a deep breath. Howell said they didn't know
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whether it was a reaction to going into the body,
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pressure backing up, or something askance with the drug itself.
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Conkle put it another way. He lived six minutes longer
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than he should have. Anesthesiologists quoted in the Chicago Tribune
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blamed inexperience and basic IV procedure, they said, would have
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prevented it. The Will County coroner, Patrick O'Neill, watched the
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autopsy and said that, to the best of his knowledge
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and the pathologists, Gacy hadn't suffered any pain. Illinois had
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carried out one lethal injection before this one, of Charles Walker,
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in 1990. Gacy's attorney, John Greenless, had pointed out beforehand
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that Walker's line had kinked, and that Walker had likely
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been literally tortured to death. Officials had said they had
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a handle on the procedure. Chapter 26. Christina Riggs and
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the Needles in Her Wrists. Varner, Arkansas. May 2, 2000.
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Christina Riggs knew what potassium chloride did. She was a
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licensed practical nurse at the Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock,
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and on the night of November 4th, 1997, at her
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home in Sherwood, she gave her children, Justin, who was five,
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and Shelby, who was two, enough allovil to put them
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to sleep. Then she injected Justin with potassium chloride. It
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didn't kill him. He woke up crying in pain, and
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she gave him morphine, and when that didn't quiet him,
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she smothered him with a pillow. She smothered Shelby, too.
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She carried both bodies to her own bed and laid
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them together, wrote notes to her mother, her sister, and
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her ex-husband, then swallowed 28 Elavil tablets and injected herself
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with the potassium chloride. The needle missed the vein, and
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the drug burned a hole in her arm instead. She
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passed out on the bedroom floor, where her mother found
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her alive the next afternoon. She told the police why.'
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Because I wanted to die,' she said. but I didn't
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want to die and leave my kids behind or for
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them to be a burden to somebody else. The children
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had different fathers, and she said she didn't want them
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to grow up separately. At her trial in 1998, once
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the jury had found her guilty, she took the stand
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and asked for the death penalty.' I want to die.
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I want to be with my babies,' she said, by
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Amnesty International's record of it.' I want you to give
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me the death penalty. I don't want you to feel guilty.'
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The jury took 55 minutes. In 1999, the Arkansas Supreme
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Court affirmed the sentence 6-1, with the dissenting justice calling
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the statement she gave from an intensive care bed delusional
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and incoherent. She waived her remaining appeals and declined to
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ask for clemency. The ACLU of Arkansas said she was
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mentally incompetent at the time of the murders and is
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incapable even now of asking for help. Amnesty wrote to
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Governor Mike Huckabee, and he reviewed the case and let
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it go forward. On a Sunday, she was flown from
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the women's unit to Cummins, and on the evening of Tuesday,
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May 2, 2000, the state tried to do what she
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had failed to do herself. It took the execution team
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about 18 minutes to find a vein. They couldn't get
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one in either elbow, and by the Death Penalty Information
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Center's account, she agreed to the executioner's requests to have
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the needles in her wrists. The drugs started at 9.18.
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There's no way words can express just how sorry I
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am for taking the lives of my babies, she said.
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Now I can be with my babies as I always intended.
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About a minute after the drugs began, witnesses heard her whisper,
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I love you, my babies. She was pronounced dead at 9.28.
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Her lawyer, John Wesley Hall, called it state-assisted suicide. Amnesty's
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phrase was that the state had been in effect, completing
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the suicide. She was the fifth woman executed in the
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United States since 1976, and the first in Arkansas since 1845,
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when a woman named Lavinia Burnett was hanged in Washington
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County as an accessory to murder. Arkansas changed nothing afterward.
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Eight years later, when the state's prisoners went to federal
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court over the method, their lawyers listed her alongside Richter
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as evidence that the people doing it couldn't reliably find
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a vein. Chapter 27. Joseph Clark and the Vein Collapsed
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at Lucasville. Lucasville, Ohio, May 2, 2006 Joseph Clark had
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been on Ohio's death row for 21 years when he
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was walked into the death house at the Southern Ohio
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Correctional Facility in Lucasville on the morning of May 2, 2006.
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He'd used drugs since he was a teenager. At the
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time of his crimes, a federal appeals court opinion recorded,
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he'd been addicted to Dilaudid and abusing Preludin, and the
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AP called him a long-time intravenous drug user. The execution
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was set for 10 a.m., and for about 25 minutes,
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the team searched his right arm for a vein and
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found nothing they could use. At one point, a team
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member rolled up the leg of his blue trousers and
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looked at his right leg. Ohio's procedure called for two lines,
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one as a backup, but the team went ahead with
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one in his left arm. In his final statement, Clark
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apologized again to the families of the two men he'd killed.
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I'd like to apologize to them for taking away someone
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that they loved, he said. Twenty-two years ago, I said
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I was sorry, and today, I'm still sorry. The drugs started,
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and Clark lifted his head off the gurney. It don't work,
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it don't work, it don't work, it ain't working, he said.
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About five times by the count of Paul Costew, a
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reporter in the witness room. The vein had collapsed, and
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the team concluded afterward that the first drug had gone
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into the tissue of his arm instead of his bloodstream.
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By the team's own log, the curtain was pulled across
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the window at 10.37 and 46 seconds a.m., and from
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behind it, the witnesses heard Clark moaning and groaning. The
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written accounts the execution team is required to file afterward
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have him asking,' Can you just give me something by
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mouth to end this?' Three years later, in a federal
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lawsuit over Ohio's protocol, a team leader testified that he
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was told Clark had been stuck with needles 19 times.
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The log has the curtain reopening at 11.09.49. The AP's
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reporter in the room put it at 11.17. When it opened,
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Clark had a shunt in his left arm and his
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eyes were closed. He raised his head a few more times,
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breathed deeply, went still, and was pronounced dead at 11.26 a.m.,
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almost an hour and a half after the execution was
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supposed to begin. This has never happened, said Andrea Dean,
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the prison's spokeswoman. It was the longest execution since Ohio
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had resumed them in 1999. Clark's killings went back to
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January 1984. Needing money for drugs, he robbed a Lawson's
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convenience store on Hill Avenue in Toledo and shot the clerk,
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Donald Harris, in the back of the head. The next
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night at a gas station on Airport Highway, he took
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about $ 60 from David Manning, told him it wasn't all
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of it, and shot him once in the chest. Three
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days later, he shot and wounded a man at a
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cash machine and was arrested with the. 32 in his
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coat pocket, and he confessed a week after that. A
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jury convicted him of Manning's murder in November 1984, and
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he was sentenced to death. For Harris, he got life.
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Manning's widow, Mary Ellen Manning Gordon, watched the execution with
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his two brothers. I had no problems waiting, she said
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when a reporter asked about the delay. When it takes
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22 years to impose a sentence on a man who
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readily admitted murdering two vital young men, I have to
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believe our system is failing us. That June, the prison's director,
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Terry Collins, reported to Governor Bob Taft that our current
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practice has created an artificial, self-imposed time barrier resulting in
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enormous pressure on the execution team members. And Ohio rewrote
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its rules. Every effort to get two lines in before
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the inmate enters the chamber. A slow saline drip instead
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of a high-pressure syringe to test them. And no deadline.
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Clark's mother sued the state the next year. Chapter 28.
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Angel Diaz and the Needles That Went Through Both Veins. Stark, Florida.
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December 13th, 2006. Angel Nieves-Diaz spoke from the gurney at
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Florida State Prison on December 13, 2006, and called the
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death penalty a cowardly act. The state of Florida is
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killing an innocent person, he said. The state of Florida
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is committing a crime because I am innocent. He ended with,
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I'm sorry for what is happening to me and my
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family who have been put through this. The chemicals began
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flowing at 6 p.m. Seconds later, he looked up. blinked
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several times and seemed to mouth words, and a minute
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after that he began grimacing. Florida's executions usually went quietly,
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the prisoner unconscious almost at once and motionless within three
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to five minutes. The whole thing finished inside 15. Diaz
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kept moving for 24 minutes. He squinted and lifted his chin, coughed,
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licked his lips and blew, turned his head toward the
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witnesses even though a leather strap held it, and at
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one point his body jolted. One of his lawyers, Neil Dupree,
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said his Adam's apple bobbed up and down continually and
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his jaw was clenched. The lawyer's account afterward said he
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was gasping for air for 11 minutes. At some point
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before he died, a second dose of the chemicals was given.
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He stopped moving at 6.24 and was pronounced dead at 6.36
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by the AP's clock and 6.34 by the Miami Herald's,
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which made it 34 minutes by the paper's count and
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longer than any lethal injection Florida had carried out. That night,
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the Department of Corrections said the delay was his liver.
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It was not unanticipated, the spokeswoman, Gretel Plessinger, said. The
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metabolism of the drugs to the liver is slowed. Governor
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Jeb Bush's office said a pre-existing medical condition was the
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reason the procedure took longer than usual. Two days later,
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the medical examiner, Dr. William Hamilton, said the needles had
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been pushed through Diaz's veins and into the flesh of
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his arms, more likely than not very early in the process.
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On Diaz's right arm, he said, was a chemical burn
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12 inches long, and on his left, another 11 inches long.
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There were records that Diaz had hepatitis. Hamilton said, but
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his liver appeared normal. The next month, a surgeon, Dr.
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Jonathan Groner, wrote that the liver explanation defies all medical logic.
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The Florida Supreme Court later called it undisputed that the
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catheters passed through his veins in both arms and thus
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delivered the lethal chemicals into soft tissue rather than into
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his veins. Bush suspended executions on December 15th and appointed
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a commission. On March 1, 2007, it reported that the
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department and its execution team had failed to follow protocol,
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failed to ensure IV access, failed to train, and had
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no guidelines for handling complications. It couldn't decide whether Diaz
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had been in pain. One of the executioners had told
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the commission, I have no medical training and no qualifications.
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Florida rewrote its procedure so that the warden must confirm
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the inmate is unconscious and before the second drug goes in.
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And in November 2007, the court upheld the new rules.
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Diaz had come from Puerto Rico, where he'd been convicted
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of armed robbery and then, while in prison, a second-degree
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murder for stabbing the director of a drug rehabilitation center
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19 times while he slept. He escaped in September 1979.
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Three months later, on December 29th, three Spanish-speaking men robbed
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the Velvet Swing Lounge in Miami. and one of them
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shot the manager, Joseph Nagy, to death. No witness saw
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who fired. Diaz's girlfriend went to the police, a jailhouse
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informant who testified against him later recanted, and his co-defendant,
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Angel Toro, got life. At trial, Diaz conducted his own defense,
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in poor English, against the advice of his lawyer and
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the judge, and the jury recommended death, eight to four.
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To the end, he maintained that he hadn't shot Nagy.
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The governor of Puerto Rico, which abolished the death penalty
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in 1929, asked Floreta for clemency. Afterward, a relative of Diaz's,
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Maria Otero, asked a different question. Why a stupid second dose?
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Chapter 29 Christopher Newton and the Sign in the Window Lucasville, Ohio,
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May 24, 2007 The witnesses at the Southern Ohio Correctional
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Facility in Lucasville, watched Christopher Newton's execution on a monitor,
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because for the first hour and a half of it,
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he never made it into the death chamber. He was
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in the holding cell, and the team was looking for
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a vein. Newton had killed to get there. In October 2001,
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while serving time for burglary at the Mansfield Correctional Institution,
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he claimed another inmate had threatened to stab him and
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asked for protective custody, and he later admitted that was
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a lie. he was sailed with Jason Brewer, a 27-year-old
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serving three to ten years for attempted burglary. Brewer was
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5'11 and 130 pounds, and Newton was a much bigger man.
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Before dawn on November 15, 2001, after a game of
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chess in which Brewer had ignored him, Newton choked him,
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cut a strip from an orange jumpsuit with a razor
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blade and strangled him with it, and stomped on his
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head five to ten times. When officers found Brewer on
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the floor in a puddle of blood with the cloth
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around his neck, Newton told them, let him die, I
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killed him. Two years earlier, he told a prison mental
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health worker that he was going to kill someone inside
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so he'd never get out. He refused to cooperate with
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investigators unless they sought the death penalty, and he pleaded
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guilty before a three-judge panel in Richland County. When the
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panel sentenced him to death in February 2003, He smiled
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and flashed a V with two fingers. I've been a
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lawyer for 26 years and I've never seen anyone laugh
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at the death penalty before, the prosecutor James Mayer Jr. said.
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The Ohio Supreme Court, affirming, noted that he knew he
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would die in prison and hoped for the death penalty.
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Newton weighed 265 pounds at his final physical. The execution
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was set for 10 in the morning on May 24, 2007,
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and at 10.03, the witnesses watched the team begin. By 10.10,
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they'd tried both arms and were working the upper and
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lower arms again, and he was stuck at least 10
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times by the Associated Press's count. A line went into
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the left arm at 10.27. At 10.56, a prison spokeswoman,
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Andrea Dean, held a handwritten note up to the window
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of the witness room. We have told the team to
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take their time. His size is creating a problem. Newton
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got a two-minute bathroom break at 11.05. Through all of it,
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the AP reported, he continued to talk, smile, and laugh
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with the prison staff. The second line went into his
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right arm at 11.28, and five minutes later he walked
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into the chamber on his own. His last words at 11.36 were, Yes, boy,
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I could sure go for some beef stew and a
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chicken bone. That's it. The drugs started at 11.37, and
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his eyes closed at 11.39. At 11.40, his belly began
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to heave, his chin and face shuddered and twitched, and
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his body convulsed twice, mildly. The movement stopped at 11.45,
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and he was pronounced dead at 11.53. It had been
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16 minutes from the first drug, the longest of any
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Ohio lethal injection since the state resumed them in 1999.
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against an average of about 7.5. Ohio said it had
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gone as it was meant to. He was thick, and
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his veins sat deep, Dean said, and he told them
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so himself. The team took as much time as needed
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to find good veins. In our mind, the process worked.
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The director of the department, Terry Collins, said they had
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told the team, take your time, be comfortable, and do
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your job. The rule Ohio had adopted a year earlier,
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after Joseph Clark's execution went wrong at the same prison.
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Governor Ted Strickland said the procedure worked as it was
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intended to work. No autopsy was planned and no investigation. Dr.
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Jonathan Groner of Ohio State, who had studied lethal injection,
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read the timeline differently. It seems too long. The whole
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thing seems agonizing. And the movement after the paralytic, he said,
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suggested the second drug was not being effective. The ACLU
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of Ohio demanded a halt and filed records requests, and
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its lawyer, Jeffrey Gamso, said the state had spent six
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times the normal amount of time and was ignoring the
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facts and claiming that the Newton execution was not botched.
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Strickland answered that the ACLU's view was not a justification
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for a change of position. Newton's family didn't claim his body.
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He was cremated, and his ashes went to his spiritual advisor.
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Two years later, when Ohio spent two hours failing to
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find Vane and Rommel Broom and sent him back to
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his cell alive, the AP's stories reached for Newton as
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the precedent, and that fall the state rewrote its protocol
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around one drug and a backup injection into the muscle
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for when the vanes can't be found. Chapter 30. Rommel
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Broom and the Execution That Was Called Off After It
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Began Lucasville, Ohio. September 15th, 2009. Trina Middleton was 14,
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five feet tall and slightly built, and on the night
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of September 21, 1984, she walked home from a Friday
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football game at Shaw High School in East Cleveland with
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two friends. A car with its lights off passed them
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on Glynn Road and parked two houses ahead. The driver
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got out, ran past the girls, and came at them
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from behind. He grabbed Trina, said, Come here, bitch, and
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pulled a knife. and her friends broke loose and ran
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to a house across the street. About two hours later,
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Trina's body was found in a parking lot beside an
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abandoned swimming pool in Forest Hills Park. She'd been raped
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and stabbed seven times in the chest and abdomen. That December,
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Rommel Broom was arrested after he tried to abduct an
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11-year-old girl, and in October 1985, a jury convicted him
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of aggravated murder with kidnapping and rape specifications. He spent
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the next 24 years on death row. His execution at
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Lucasville was set for 10 in the morning on September 15, 2009,
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and a final federal appeal pushed it past midday. The
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warden finished reading him the death warrant at 1.59 p.m.,
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and a minute later, two members of the execution team
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came into the holding cell to start the IV lines.
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The Ohio Supreme Court's later account of what followed reads
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like a log. Team member 9 tried three times in
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Broom's left arm and couldn't reach a vein, and team
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member 21 made three unsuccessful stabs in his right. After
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a short break, member 9 tried twice more, and the
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second one made Broom scream. Member 21 got a catheter
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into a vein and then lost it, and blood ran
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down Broom's arm. Member 9 left the room, sweating, saying
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the veins had blown. Broom tried to help them. the
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AP's Stephen Majors reported from a closed-circuit monitor. He turned
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on his left side, slid the rubber tourniquet up his
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own arm, flexed and closed his fingers, and pointed out
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veins to the people trying to kill him. About 45
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minutes in, the director of the prison system, Terry Collins,
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called a break that ran 20 to 25 minutes. Then
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the team started again, on Broome's arms, his hands, above
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his elbows and his legs, going back into sites they'd
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already used. Broom covered his eyes and cried, and someone
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handed him a roll of toilet paper. A prison official
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said he'd never seen an inmate cry during venous access.
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The warden sent for the prison's physician, who'd been told
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to watch, and nothing more. Someone handed her a needle.
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She went in and struck bone, and Broom screamed again,
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while another team member worked on his right ankle. At
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about 4 p.m., Collins asked Governor Ted Strickland for a reprieve,
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and got one. for a week, and Broom sat up
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on the end of his bed and talked with the
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team that had spent the afternoon on him. I have
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a team right now that's disappointed because they think they
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let me down, Collins said. In an affidavit sworn two
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days after the attempt, Broom said his arms had been
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swelling and bruised and the needles were going into places
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already swollen. Waiting to be executed again is anguishing, he said.
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A doctor who photographed him three or four days after
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the attempt counted 18 puncture sites, and prison officials confirmed
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at least 18. The federal judge stopped the second date.
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That November, Ohio switched to a single drug, with an
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intermuscular backup for inmates whose veins couldn't be reached. Then
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in March 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that
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the state could try again. Because the attempt never reached
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the point of putting a lethal drug into the line,
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the court held Jeopardy! Never Attached, and the pain and
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emotional trauma Broom already experienced do not equate with the
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type of torture prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Justice William O'Neill, dissenting,
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wrote that the majority's description of the first attempt chills
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me to the core. The U.S. Supreme Court declined the
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case in December 2016, with Justices Breyer and Kagan noting
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that they would have taken it. Ohio set a new
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date for June 2020, and Governor Mike DeWine moved it
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to March 2022, because the state couldn't get drugs. Broom
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died first, on December 28, 2020, at 64, in the
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Prison Systems Medical Center in Columbus, of what the department
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called a probable COVID-19-related death. Let his passing in this way,
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and not in the execution chamber, be the final word
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on whether a second attempt should ever have been considered,
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his lawyers said. Thanks for listening. I've been reading from
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my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
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00:29:12.339 --> 00:29:15.579
and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
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00:29:15.660 --> 00:29:17.880
I used for this episode and for the book it's
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00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:21.890
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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00:29:21.950 --> 00:29:25.730
slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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00:29:25.849 --> 00:29:28.809
for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
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00:29:28.829 --> 00:29:31.329
the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
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00:29:31.369 --> 00:29:34.779
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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00:29:35.230 --> 00:29:36.720
as well as Kindle Unlimited.
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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 25. John Wayne Gacy and the
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Drug that Turned to Gel in the Tube. Joliet, Illinois.
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May 10th, 1994. On the night of May 9th, 1994,
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some 400 people by the Chicago Tribune's count stood outside
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the walls of Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, Illinois, most
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of them supporters of the death penalty. As midnight came closer,
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they chanted, kill the clown, and vendors sold t-shirts, the
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Associated Press reported. Earlier that day, several hundred people had
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marched through downtown Chicago in support of the execution, carrying
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banners that read, Gacy, stick it to him, and 33
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body bags had been laid out on a sidewalk for
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his victims. Inside, John Wayne Gacy had eaten fried chicken
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and french fries. fried shrimp and fresh strawberries with a cola,
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and he told a corrections spokesman he'd particularly enjoyed the shrimp.
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He'd been flown by helicopter from Menard that morning, and
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his belongings had gone into the trash behind him. Fourteen
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years earlier, a Cook County jury had convicted him of
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murdering 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978.
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Of the bodies, twenty-nine came out of the crawlspace and
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the ground around his house in Norwood Park Township, outside Chicago,
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and four came out of the Des Plaines at Illinois Rivers.
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He'd been sentenced to death on twelve of the counts
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and to natural life on the other twenty-one. Nearly two
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dozen relatives of his victims, barred from the chamber as
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a security precaution, waited in an administration building for word.
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Gacy lay strapped to a gurney with a saline line
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in his arm, In the chamber, the line was hooked
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to a delivery module in the wall, and behind a
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one-way mirror, two executioners chosen by the Director of Corrections
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pushed their buttons at the same time, with the machine
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deciding which one actually sent the drugs. There were three
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drugs in order. Sodium thiopental to put him under, pancuronium
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bromide to stop his breathing, and potassium chloride to stop
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his heart. The whole thing was expected to take ten
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to fifteen minutes. Before it began, the corrections spokesman, Nick Howell, said,
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Gacy told the warden, Salvador Godinez, that taking his life
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wouldn't bring back any of the victims, and that the
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state was murdering him. The director, Howard Peters, gave the
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Chicago Tribune the same account. He said taking his life
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would not compensate for the loss of the others, and
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this was a mistake. The line everyone remembers is, kiss
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my ass. It has traveled as his last words for
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thirty years. And when Virginia electrocuted Robert Gleason in 2013,
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and he said the same thing in Gaelic, a Richmond
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television station pointed out that Gacy had said it first.
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None of the newspaper or wire accounts from the morning
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after have it. It first turns up years later on
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true crime websites, with no one named as having heard it.
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Bill Conkle prosecuted Gacy and sat in the front row
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of the witness room, and in 2019 he said, well,
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he didn't say that. The glass kept the witnesses from
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hearing much, he said, and what the prison officials told
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him Gacy had said was the line about the state
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committing murder. If Gacy said the other thing at all,
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Kunkel allowed, it was earlier, in conversation with an official,
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and that's been attributed to be his last words, but
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as far as I know, they really weren't. The execution
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was scheduled for 12.01 a.m., and the chemicals started flowing
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at about 12.40. The first drug went in, Then the
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pancuronium bromide, which was supposed to run down the tube
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into his arm, thickened and stopped. It had gelled, UPI wrote,
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passing along the explanation of Brian Fairchild of the Department
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of Corrections, and the result, Fairchild said, was that Gacy
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was still alive about ten minutes in. Time magazine's account
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has Gacy snorting just before the attendants pulled a curtain
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across the window in front of the two dozen witnesses.
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Behind the curtain, by Fairchild's account, Peters himself replaced the tube,
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and the blinds went back up about ten minutes later,
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the Tribune reported. The second and third drugs went in,
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and he was pronounced dead at 12.58 a.m., 18 minutes
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after the buttons were pushed. The reaction was like he
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was going to sleep, Peters said. He closed his eyes
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and took a deep breath. Howell said they didn't know
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whether it was a reaction to going into the body,
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pressure backing up, or something askance with the drug itself.
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Conkle put it another way. He lived six minutes longer
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than he should have. Anesthesiologists quoted in the Chicago Tribune
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blamed inexperience and basic IV procedure, they said, would have
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prevented it. The Will County coroner, Patrick O'Neill, watched the
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autopsy and said that, to the best of his knowledge
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and the pathologists, Gacy hadn't suffered any pain. Illinois had
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carried out one lethal injection before this one, of Charles Walker,
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in 1990. Gacy's attorney, John Greenless, had pointed out beforehand
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that Walker's line had kinked, and that Walker had likely
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been literally tortured to death. Officials had said they had
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a handle on the procedure. Chapter 26. Christina Riggs and
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the Needles in Her Wrists. Varner, Arkansas. May 2, 2000.
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Christina Riggs knew what potassium chloride did. She was a
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licensed practical nurse at the Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock,
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and on the night of November 4th, 1997, at her
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home in Sherwood, she gave her children, Justin, who was five,
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and Shelby, who was two, enough allovil to put them
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to sleep. Then she injected Justin with potassium chloride. It
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didn't kill him. He woke up crying in pain, and
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she gave him morphine, and when that didn't quiet him,
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she smothered him with a pillow. She smothered Shelby, too.
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She carried both bodies to her own bed and laid
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them together, wrote notes to her mother, her sister, and
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her ex-husband, then swallowed 28 Elavil tablets and injected herself
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with the potassium chloride. The needle missed the vein, and
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the drug burned a hole in her arm instead. She
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passed out on the bedroom floor, where her mother found
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her alive the next afternoon. She told the police why.'
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Because I wanted to die,' she said. but I didn't
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want to die and leave my kids behind or for
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them to be a burden to somebody else. The children
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had different fathers, and she said she didn't want them
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to grow up separately. At her trial in 1998, once
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the jury had found her guilty, she took the stand
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and asked for the death penalty.' I want to die.
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I want to be with my babies,' she said, by
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Amnesty International's record of it.' I want you to give
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me the death penalty. I don't want you to feel guilty.'
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The jury took 55 minutes. In 1999, the Arkansas Supreme
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Court affirmed the sentence 6-1, with the dissenting justice calling
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the statement she gave from an intensive care bed delusional
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and incoherent. She waived her remaining appeals and declined to
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ask for clemency. The ACLU of Arkansas said she was
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mentally incompetent at the time of the murders and is
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incapable even now of asking for help. Amnesty wrote to
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Governor Mike Huckabee, and he reviewed the case and let
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it go forward. On a Sunday, she was flown from
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the women's unit to Cummins, and on the evening of Tuesday,
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May 2, 2000, the state tried to do what she
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had failed to do herself. It took the execution team
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about 18 minutes to find a vein. They couldn't get
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one in either elbow, and by the Death Penalty Information
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Center's account, she agreed to the executioner's requests to have
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the needles in her wrists. The drugs started at 9.18.
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There's no way words can express just how sorry I
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am for taking the lives of my babies, she said.
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Now I can be with my babies as I always intended.
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About a minute after the drugs began, witnesses heard her whisper,
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I love you, my babies. She was pronounced dead at 9.28.
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Her lawyer, John Wesley Hall, called it state-assisted suicide. Amnesty's
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phrase was that the state had been in effect, completing
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the suicide. She was the fifth woman executed in the
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United States since 1976, and the first in Arkansas since 1845,
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when a woman named Lavinia Burnett was hanged in Washington
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County as an accessory to murder. Arkansas changed nothing afterward.
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Eight years later, when the state's prisoners went to federal
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court over the method, their lawyers listed her alongside Richter
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as evidence that the people doing it couldn't reliably find
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a vein. Chapter 27. Joseph Clark and the Vein Collapsed
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at Lucasville. Lucasville, Ohio, May 2, 2006 Joseph Clark had
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been on Ohio's death row for 21 years when he
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was walked into the death house at the Southern Ohio
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Correctional Facility in Lucasville on the morning of May 2, 2006.
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He'd used drugs since he was a teenager. At the
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time of his crimes, a federal appeals court opinion recorded,
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he'd been addicted to Dilaudid and abusing Preludin, and the
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AP called him a long-time intravenous drug user. The execution
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was set for 10 a.m., and for about 25 minutes,
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the team searched his right arm for a vein and
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found nothing they could use. At one point, a team
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member rolled up the leg of his blue trousers and
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looked at his right leg. Ohio's procedure called for two lines,
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one as a backup, but the team went ahead with
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one in his left arm. In his final statement, Clark
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apologized again to the families of the two men he'd killed.
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I'd like to apologize to them for taking away someone
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that they loved, he said. Twenty-two years ago, I said
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I was sorry, and today, I'm still sorry. The drugs started,
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and Clark lifted his head off the gurney. It don't work,
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it don't work, it don't work, it ain't working, he said.
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About five times by the count of Paul Costew, a
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reporter in the witness room. The vein had collapsed, and
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the team concluded afterward that the first drug had gone
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into the tissue of his arm instead of his bloodstream.
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By the team's own log, the curtain was pulled across
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the window at 10.37 and 46 seconds a.m., and from
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behind it, the witnesses heard Clark moaning and groaning. The
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written accounts the execution team is required to file afterward
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have him asking,' Can you just give me something by
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mouth to end this?' Three years later, in a federal
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lawsuit over Ohio's protocol, a team leader testified that he
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was told Clark had been stuck with needles 19 times.
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The log has the curtain reopening at 11.09.49. The AP's
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reporter in the room put it at 11.17. When it opened,
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Clark had a shunt in his left arm and his
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eyes were closed. He raised his head a few more times,
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breathed deeply, went still, and was pronounced dead at 11.26 a.m.,
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almost an hour and a half after the execution was
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supposed to begin. This has never happened, said Andrea Dean,
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the prison's spokeswoman. It was the longest execution since Ohio
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had resumed them in 1999. Clark's killings went back to
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January 1984. Needing money for drugs, he robbed a Lawson's
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convenience store on Hill Avenue in Toledo and shot the clerk,
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Donald Harris, in the back of the head. The next
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night at a gas station on Airport Highway, he took
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about $ 60 from David Manning, told him it wasn't all
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of it, and shot him once in the chest. Three
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days later, he shot and wounded a man at a
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cash machine and was arrested with the. 32 in his
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coat pocket, and he confessed a week after that. A
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jury convicted him of Manning's murder in November 1984, and
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he was sentenced to death. For Harris, he got life.
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Manning's widow, Mary Ellen Manning Gordon, watched the execution with
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his two brothers. I had no problems waiting, she said
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when a reporter asked about the delay. When it takes
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22 years to impose a sentence on a man who
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readily admitted murdering two vital young men, I have to
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believe our system is failing us. That June, the prison's director,
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Terry Collins, reported to Governor Bob Taft that our current
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practice has created an artificial, self-imposed time barrier resulting in
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enormous pressure on the execution team members. And Ohio rewrote
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its rules. Every effort to get two lines in before
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the inmate enters the chamber. A slow saline drip instead
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of a high-pressure syringe to test them. And no deadline.
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Clark's mother sued the state the next year. Chapter 28.
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Angel Diaz and the Needles That Went Through Both Veins. Stark, Florida.
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December 13th, 2006. Angel Nieves-Diaz spoke from the gurney at
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Florida State Prison on December 13, 2006, and called the
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death penalty a cowardly act. The state of Florida is
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killing an innocent person, he said. The state of Florida
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is committing a crime because I am innocent. He ended with,
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I'm sorry for what is happening to me and my
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family who have been put through this. The chemicals began
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flowing at 6 p.m. Seconds later, he looked up. blinked
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several times and seemed to mouth words, and a minute
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after that he began grimacing. Florida's executions usually went quietly,
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the prisoner unconscious almost at once and motionless within three
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to five minutes. The whole thing finished inside 15. Diaz
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kept moving for 24 minutes. He squinted and lifted his chin, coughed,
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licked his lips and blew, turned his head toward the
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witnesses even though a leather strap held it, and at
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one point his body jolted. One of his lawyers, Neil Dupree,
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said his Adam's apple bobbed up and down continually and
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his jaw was clenched. The lawyer's account afterward said he
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was gasping for air for 11 minutes. At some point
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before he died, a second dose of the chemicals was given.
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He stopped moving at 6.24 and was pronounced dead at 6.36
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by the AP's clock and 6.34 by the Miami Herald's,
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which made it 34 minutes by the paper's count and
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longer than any lethal injection Florida had carried out. That night,
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the Department of Corrections said the delay was his liver.
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It was not unanticipated, the spokeswoman, Gretel Plessinger, said. The
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metabolism of the drugs to the liver is slowed. Governor
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Jeb Bush's office said a pre-existing medical condition was the
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reason the procedure took longer than usual. Two days later,
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the medical examiner, Dr. William Hamilton, said the needles had
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been pushed through Diaz's veins and into the flesh of
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his arms, more likely than not very early in the process.
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On Diaz's right arm, he said, was a chemical burn
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12 inches long, and on his left, another 11 inches long.
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There were records that Diaz had hepatitis. Hamilton said, but
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his liver appeared normal. The next month, a surgeon, Dr.
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Jonathan Groner, wrote that the liver explanation defies all medical logic.
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The Florida Supreme Court later called it undisputed that the
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catheters passed through his veins in both arms and thus
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delivered the lethal chemicals into soft tissue rather than into
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his veins. Bush suspended executions on December 15th and appointed
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a commission. On March 1, 2007, it reported that the
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department and its execution team had failed to follow protocol,
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failed to ensure IV access, failed to train, and had
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no guidelines for handling complications. It couldn't decide whether Diaz
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had been in pain. One of the executioners had told
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the commission, I have no medical training and no qualifications.
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Florida rewrote its procedure so that the warden must confirm
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the inmate is unconscious and before the second drug goes in.
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And in November 2007, the court upheld the new rules.
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Diaz had come from Puerto Rico, where he'd been convicted
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of armed robbery and then, while in prison, a second-degree
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murder for stabbing the director of a drug rehabilitation center
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19 times while he slept. He escaped in September 1979.
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Three months later, on December 29th, three Spanish-speaking men robbed
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the Velvet Swing Lounge in Miami. and one of them
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shot the manager, Joseph Nagy, to death. No witness saw
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who fired. Diaz's girlfriend went to the police, a jailhouse
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informant who testified against him later recanted, and his co-defendant,
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Angel Toro, got life. At trial, Diaz conducted his own defense,
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in poor English, against the advice of his lawyer and
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the judge, and the jury recommended death, eight to four.
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To the end, he maintained that he hadn't shot Nagy.
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The governor of Puerto Rico, which abolished the death penalty
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in 1929, asked Floreta for clemency. Afterward, a relative of Diaz's,
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Maria Otero, asked a different question. Why a stupid second dose?
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Chapter 29 Christopher Newton and the Sign in the Window Lucasville, Ohio,
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May 24, 2007 The witnesses at the Southern Ohio Correctional
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Facility in Lucasville, watched Christopher Newton's execution on a monitor,
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because for the first hour and a half of it,
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he never made it into the death chamber. He was
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in the holding cell, and the team was looking for
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a vein. Newton had killed to get there. In October 2001,
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while serving time for burglary at the Mansfield Correctional Institution,
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he claimed another inmate had threatened to stab him and
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asked for protective custody, and he later admitted that was
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a lie. he was sailed with Jason Brewer, a 27-year-old
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serving three to ten years for attempted burglary. Brewer was
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5'11 and 130 pounds, and Newton was a much bigger man.
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Before dawn on November 15, 2001, after a game of
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chess in which Brewer had ignored him, Newton choked him,
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cut a strip from an orange jumpsuit with a razor
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blade and strangled him with it, and stomped on his
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head five to ten times. When officers found Brewer on
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the floor in a puddle of blood with the cloth
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around his neck, Newton told them, let him die, I
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killed him. Two years earlier, he told a prison mental
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health worker that he was going to kill someone inside
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so he'd never get out. He refused to cooperate with
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investigators unless they sought the death penalty, and he pleaded
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guilty before a three-judge panel in Richland County. When the
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panel sentenced him to death in February 2003, He smiled
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and flashed a V with two fingers. I've been a
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lawyer for 26 years and I've never seen anyone laugh
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at the death penalty before, the prosecutor James Mayer Jr. said.
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The Ohio Supreme Court, affirming, noted that he knew he
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would die in prison and hoped for the death penalty.
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Newton weighed 265 pounds at his final physical. The execution
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was set for 10 in the morning on May 24, 2007,
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and at 10.03, the witnesses watched the team begin. By 10.10,
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they'd tried both arms and were working the upper and
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lower arms again, and he was stuck at least 10
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times by the Associated Press's count. A line went into
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the left arm at 10.27. At 10.56, a prison spokeswoman,
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Andrea Dean, held a handwritten note up to the window
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of the witness room. We have told the team to
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take their time. His size is creating a problem. Newton
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got a two-minute bathroom break at 11.05. Through all of it,
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the AP reported, he continued to talk, smile, and laugh
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with the prison staff. The second line went into his
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right arm at 11.28, and five minutes later he walked
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into the chamber on his own. His last words at 11.36 were, Yes, boy,
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I could sure go for some beef stew and a
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chicken bone. That's it. The drugs started at 11.37, and
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his eyes closed at 11.39. At 11.40, his belly began
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to heave, his chin and face shuddered and twitched, and
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his body convulsed twice, mildly. The movement stopped at 11.45,
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and he was pronounced dead at 11.53. It had been
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16 minutes from the first drug, the longest of any
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Ohio lethal injection since the state resumed them in 1999.
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against an average of about 7.5. Ohio said it had
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gone as it was meant to. He was thick, and
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his veins sat deep, Dean said, and he told them
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so himself. The team took as much time as needed
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to find good veins. In our mind, the process worked.
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The director of the department, Terry Collins, said they had
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told the team, take your time, be comfortable, and do
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your job. The rule Ohio had adopted a year earlier,
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after Joseph Clark's execution went wrong at the same prison.
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Governor Ted Strickland said the procedure worked as it was
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intended to work. No autopsy was planned and no investigation. Dr.
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Jonathan Groner of Ohio State, who had studied lethal injection,
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read the timeline differently. It seems too long. The whole
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thing seems agonizing. And the movement after the paralytic, he said,
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suggested the second drug was not being effective. The ACLU
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of Ohio demanded a halt and filed records requests, and
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its lawyer, Jeffrey Gamso, said the state had spent six
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times the normal amount of time and was ignoring the
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facts and claiming that the Newton execution was not botched.
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Strickland answered that the ACLU's view was not a justification
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for a change of position. Newton's family didn't claim his body.
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He was cremated, and his ashes went to his spiritual advisor.
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Two years later, when Ohio spent two hours failing to
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find Vane and Rommel Broom and sent him back to
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his cell alive, the AP's stories reached for Newton as
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the precedent, and that fall the state rewrote its protocol
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around one drug and a backup injection into the muscle
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for when the vanes can't be found. Chapter 30. Rommel
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Broom and the Execution That Was Called Off After It
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Began Lucasville, Ohio. September 15th, 2009. Trina Middleton was 14,
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five feet tall and slightly built, and on the night
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of September 21, 1984, she walked home from a Friday
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football game at Shaw High School in East Cleveland with
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two friends. A car with its lights off passed them
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on Glynn Road and parked two houses ahead. The driver
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got out, ran past the girls, and came at them
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from behind. He grabbed Trina, said, Come here, bitch, and
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pulled a knife. and her friends broke loose and ran
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to a house across the street. About two hours later,
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Trina's body was found in a parking lot beside an
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abandoned swimming pool in Forest Hills Park. She'd been raped
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and stabbed seven times in the chest and abdomen. That December,
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Rommel Broom was arrested after he tried to abduct an
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11-year-old girl, and in October 1985, a jury convicted him
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of aggravated murder with kidnapping and rape specifications. He spent
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the next 24 years on death row. His execution at
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Lucasville was set for 10 in the morning on September 15, 2009,
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and a final federal appeal pushed it past midday. The
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warden finished reading him the death warrant at 1.59 p.m.,
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and a minute later, two members of the execution team
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came into the holding cell to start the IV lines.
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The Ohio Supreme Court's later account of what followed reads
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like a log. Team member 9 tried three times in
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Broom's left arm and couldn't reach a vein, and team
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00:25:46.609 --> 00:25:51.089
member 21 made three unsuccessful stabs in his right. After
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a short break, member 9 tried twice more, and the
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00:25:54.190 --> 00:25:58.049
second one made Broom scream. Member 21 got a catheter
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into a vein and then lost it, and blood ran
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down Broom's arm. Member 9 left the room, sweating, saying
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the veins had blown. Broom tried to help them. the
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AP's Stephen Majors reported from a closed-circuit monitor. He turned
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00:26:12.619 --> 00:26:15.200
on his left side, slid the rubber tourniquet up his
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own arm, flexed and closed his fingers, and pointed out
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veins to the people trying to kill him. About 45
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minutes in, the director of the prison system, Terry Collins,
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called a break that ran 20 to 25 minutes. Then
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the team started again, on Broome's arms, his hands, above
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his elbows and his legs, going back into sites they'd
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already used. Broom covered his eyes and cried, and someone
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handed him a roll of toilet paper. A prison official
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said he'd never seen an inmate cry during venous access.
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The warden sent for the prison's physician, who'd been told
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to watch, and nothing more. Someone handed her a needle.
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She went in and struck bone, and Broom screamed again,
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while another team member worked on his right ankle. At
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about 4 p.m., Collins asked Governor Ted Strickland for a reprieve,
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00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:09.710
and got one. for a week, and Broom sat up
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on the end of his bed and talked with the
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team that had spent the afternoon on him. I have
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a team right now that's disappointed because they think they
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let me down, Collins said. In an affidavit sworn two
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00:27:21.710 --> 00:27:24.619
days after the attempt, Broom said his arms had been
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swelling and bruised and the needles were going into places
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00:27:28.099 --> 00:27:32.960
already swollen. Waiting to be executed again is anguishing, he said.
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A doctor who photographed him three or four days after
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the attempt counted 18 puncture sites, and prison officials confirmed
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at least 18. The federal judge stopped the second date.
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That November, Ohio switched to a single drug, with an
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intermuscular backup for inmates whose veins couldn't be reached. Then
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00:27:54.269 --> 00:27:58.680
in March 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that
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the state could try again. Because the attempt never reached
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the point of putting a lethal drug into the line,
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the court held Jeopardy! Never Attached, and the pain and
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00:28:08.039 --> 00:28:11.880
emotional trauma Broom already experienced do not equate with the
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type of torture prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Justice William O'Neill, dissenting,
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00:28:17.519 --> 00:28:20.640
wrote that the majority's description of the first attempt chills
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me to the core. The U.S. Supreme Court declined the
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case in December 2016, with Justices Breyer and Kagan noting
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that they would have taken it. Ohio set a new
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date for June 2020, and Governor Mike DeWine moved it
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to March 2022, because the state couldn't get drugs. Broom
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died first, on December 28, 2020, at 64, in the
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Prison Systems Medical Center in Columbus, of what the department
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00:28:48.180 --> 00:28:53.359
called a probable COVID-19-related death. Let his passing in this way,
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and not in the execution chamber, be the final word
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on whether a second attempt should ever have been considered,
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his lawyers said. Thanks for listening. I've been reading from
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00:29:05.880 --> 00:29:12.180
my new book, Botched Executions, Four Centuries of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections,
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00:29:12.339 --> 00:29:15.579
and Firing Squads. If you'd like a list of sources
455
00:29:15.660 --> 00:29:17.880
I used for this episode and for the book it's
456
00:29:17.920 --> 00:29:21.890
narrated from, you can find the full list at weirddarkness.com
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00:29:21.950 --> 00:29:25.730
slash botched executions. Scroll to the bottom of the page
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00:29:25.849 --> 00:29:28.809
for the sources used. If you'd rather not wait for
459
00:29:28.829 --> 00:29:31.329
the next section to be shared in the podcast, the
460
00:29:31.369 --> 00:29:34.779
whole book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
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00:29:35.230 --> 00:29:36.720
as well as Kindle Unlimited.
