WEBVTT
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This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
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For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
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and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
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wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
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couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
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through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
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Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
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and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
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you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
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are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Part 5. The Gas, the Rifle, and Tennessee.
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2025 to 2026. These six chapters are the newest in
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the book. They run from January 2025 to May 2026
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across four states, and South Carolina and Louisiana are had
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each gone more than a decade without an execution before
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they started again. South Carolina's gap was 13 years, and
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by the time it came back, its books held three
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methods— the needle, the electric chair, and a firing squad
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its Supreme Court had upheld in 2024. Louisiana hadn't executed
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anyone since 2010. When it set a date again, it
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borrowed the nitrogen method Alabama had used first and put
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a mask on the prisoner. Alabama, meanwhile, went on using
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its own mask. It had executed Kenneth Smith with nitrogen
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in January 2024, and in October 2025, its corrections commissioner
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said Anthony Boyd's execution by the same method had been
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within the protocol, and the longest yet. Tennessee gets two chapters,
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and both happened in one room. Nine months apart, Byron
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Black and Tony Carruthers went to the same gurney at
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Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, under a protocol that
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uses one drug, pentobarbital. Two of the six are on
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the Death Penalty Information Center's list, Boyd at number 63
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and Carruthers at number 64. The other four, Marion Bowman,
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Jesse Hoffman, McCall Mottie, and Black aren't on it. They're
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here for what the witnesses saw, and for what the
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autopsies and the lawyers' filings recorded afterward. Chapter 41. Marion Bowman,
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and the 10 Grams. Columbia, South Carolina, January 31st, 2025.
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South Carolina went 13 years without an execution because it
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couldn't get the drugs. When it started again in September 2024,
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it did so under a secrecy law that keeps the
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drug supplier and the execution team's identities out of public view.
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The third man it executed was was Marion Bowman Jr.
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on January 31, 2025, for the killing of Candy Martin, 21,
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a friend of his whose body was found in the
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trunk of her burning car in Dorchester County in February 2001.
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Prosecutors said he'd shot her on the back road and
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dragged her into the woods, then come back hours later
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with a friend to put her in the trunk and
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light it, and that he had told the friend, I
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killed Candy Martin. Bowman said to the end that he hadn't.
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He refused to ask for clemency, because that would mean
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asking to spend his life in prison for a crime
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he said he didn't commit. In the chamber, Bowman's lawyer,
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Boyd Young, read his written statement, and it began, I
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did not kill Candy Martin. I'm innocent of the crimes
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I'm here to die for. The penobarbital started at 6.04
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in the evening. Bowman breathed heavily for about a minute,
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then shallowly, and his chest stopped moving at 6.06 or 6.07.
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The doctor pronounced him dead at 6.27, 23 minutes after
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the drug began. Nothing about it looked unusual to the witnesses.
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The autopsy did. Working from what the department told the pathologist,
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it recorded a total of 10 grams of penobarbital, twice
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the 5-gram dose that had been described as a single
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lethal dose, and lungs holding moderate to severe amounts of
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blood and frothy fluid. Richard Moore, the man executed before him,
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had gotten two 5-gram doses 11 minutes apart. How many
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doses Bowman got, or why, the department wouldn't say. The
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evidence is now undeniable. Something is badly wrong with South
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Carolina's lethal injection drugs, said Bo King, a federal defender
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representing the next man in line, Brad Sigman. King asked
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the state Supreme Court to find out whether the drugs
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were expired, diluted, or spoiled. The court let the execution
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go ahead, and Sigman chose the firing squad. Chapter 42.
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Jesse Hoffman and the Mask at Angola. Angola, Louisiana. March 18th, 2025.
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Louisiana hadn't executed anyone since 2010 either. Governor Jeff Landry's
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administration wrote a nitrogen protocol in February 2025 that and
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set a date for Jesse Hoffman Jr., and had borrowed
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Alabama's method with some tweaks to the equipment, its corrections
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secretary said. Hoffman had been 18 in November 1996, on
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the night before Thanksgiving, when he abducted Mary Elliott, a
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28-year-old advertising executive called Molly, from the parking garage in
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downtown New Orleans where he worked as a valet. He
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forced her to withdraw $ 200 from an ATM, then drove
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her to a remote spot by the Middle Pearl River
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in St. Tammany Parish, where he raped her and shot
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her once in the head. A duck hunter found her
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the next morning. In prison, Hoffman became a Buddhist, and
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his lawyers argued that a mask full of nitrogen would
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take him from the one thing his faith asked of
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him at death— conscious breathing in meditation. The Fifth Circuit
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let the execution proceed, two to one, without mentioning the
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religious claim, and the Supreme Court denied a stay, five
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to four. Justice Gorsuch, who wouldn't grant it, wrote that
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the lower courts had no license to declare whether an
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adherent has correctly perceived the commands of his religion. At 6.12 p.m.
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on March 18, 2025, Hoffman was walked into the chamber
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at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He declined to
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make a statement, and at 6.21, the gas began. Two
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reporters were allowed to watch. One of them, John Zimmerman
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of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, wrote that Hoffman's breathing became
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uneven and his chest rose. His body shook and his
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fingers twitched. He pulled at the table, his hands clenched,
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and at about 6.27 he jerked slightly and went mostly still.
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His last visible breath came at about 6.37. The gas
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ran about 19 minutes and he was pronounced dead at 6.50
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when the mask came off. His head was tilted back
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and his teeth were bared in a grimace. He did move.
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He did shake very briefly. Around 6.23, he did have
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some convulsive activity, Seth Smith, the department's chief of operations,
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told reporters. And he said he had seen nothing that
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I would say is consistent with pain. The corrections secretary,
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Gary Westcott, said it went flawless. Molly Elliott's husband, Andy,
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called it bittersweet news. said he was satisfied that justice
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had been served and said, the loss of Molly is
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a scar we will forever carry, and it will never heal.
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Hoffman's wife, Ilona, said, this execution was not justice, it
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was revenge. Chapter 43. McCall-Moddy and the Two Entrance Wounds. Columbia,
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South Carolina. April 11, 2025. McCall Mottie chose the firing squad,
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his lawyer David Weiss said, instead of being burned and
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mutilated in the electric chair or suffering a lingering death
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on the lethal injection gurney. In July 2004, in Winston-Salem,
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North Carolina, he'd killed a convenience store clerk, Christopher Boggs,
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shooting him twice in the head when Boggs asked for identification.
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Then he carjacked a man in Columbia, South Carolina. Days later,
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hiding in a shed on a farm in Calhoun County,
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He ambushed the man who owned it, James Myers, an
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off-duty captain in the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety. He
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shot Myers nine times with a. 22 rifle he'd found there,
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three times in the head, then poured diesel fuel over
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the body and set it on fire. Myers' wife found him.
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The shed was where they'd been married 15 months earlier.
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Motti pleaded guilty, and a judge sentenced him to death.
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In upholding the firing squad in 2024, South Carolina's Supreme
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Court had written that the pain will last only 10
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to 15 seconds unless there was a massive botch of
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the execution in which each member of the firing squad
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simply misses the inmate's heart. On April 11, 2025, at
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Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, Monty was strapped into
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a chair with a hood over his head and a
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white target with a red bullseye over his heart. Three
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volunteers with. 308 rifles fired through an opening in the
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wall about 15 feet away. He cried out as the
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bullets hit, and his arms flexed. About 45 seconds later,
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he groaned twice more, and his breathing went on for
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about 80 seconds before what looked like a final gasp.
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He was pronounced dead at 6.05 p.m., less than four
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minutes after the shots. The autopsy by a found two
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entrance wounds in the lower left chest, not three, and
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no exit wounds. The two wound paths ran downward and
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to the right, through the liver and the pancreas and
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the lower lobe of the left lung into the spine
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and ribs, and they perforated only the right ventricle of
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a heart that his lawyer's filing described as otherwise intact.
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The state said all three rifles fired and all three
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bullets hit. Two of them threw the same hole which
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officials said had happened before in practice. Dr. Jonathan Arden,
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a forensic pathologist retained by Mahdi's lawyers, wrote that two
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bullets through one wound was extraordinarily uncommon, that the shooters
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had missed the intended target area, and that Mahdi did
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experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to
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60 seconds after he was shot. No x-rays had been taken,
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there was one photograph of the body, and the clothing
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with the target on it was never examined. Five days
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after the execution, he was cremated. I'm certainly not an
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expert in human anatomy, Weiss said, but it appears to
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me that target looks low. Chapter 44, Byron Black and
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the Device in His Chest Nashville, Tennessee, August 5th, 2025
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Byron Black had an implanted defibrillator, and his lawyers spent
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the summer of 2025 trying to get Tennessee to turn
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it off. He was 69 and in a wheelchair with dementia,
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brain damage, kidney failure, and congestive heart failure by his
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attorney's account, and the device in his chest was built
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to shock a failing heart back into rhythm. So the
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lawyers argued, as the pentobarbital stopped his heart, the machine
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would shock it over and over while he died. A
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Chancery Court judge agreed and ordered it deactivated at the gurney.
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The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed him, ruling that a trial
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court had no authority to put conditions on an execution
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it had ordered, and the hospital the state had counted
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on to turn the device off said it had never
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agreed to. Black had killed his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and
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her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6, in their beds
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in Nashville in the early hours of March 28, 1988,
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while he was on work release from a sentence for
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shooting Clay's estranged husband. For years, his lawyers had also
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argued that he was intellectually disabled, and a 2021 state
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law wouldn't let him prove it, but the courts read
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it to exclude him because he'd raised the claim before.
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He's here because of where his execution took place. The
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same riverbend gurney and the same one-drug protocol as Carruthers,
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nine months before him, with seven reporters watching. Asked for
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last words on the morning of August 5th, 2025, Black said, No, sir.
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The seven media witnesses agreed on what came next. He
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lifted his head off the gurney three or four times
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and looked around, then sighed and breathed heavily and said
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in the AP's rendering, oh, it's hurting so bad. Praying
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over him, his spiritual advisor answered, I'm so sorry, just
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listen to my voice. One of the witnesses had watched
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Oscar Smith die on the same gurney in May and
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said Smith was not panting or sighing or making any
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of these kinds of sounds that Byron Black did. Black
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was pronounced dead at 10.43 a.m. Read afterward, The defibrillator's
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data showed the device had not shocked him, and the
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autopsy found pulmonary edema. At a hearing that October, his lawyer,
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Kelly Henry, told the court the EKG from the chamber
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showed sustained cardiac activity for nearly two minutes after he
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was pronounced dead. She questioned why, at one point, the
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blanket had been pulled down to expose the IV. Did
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the IV come out, she asked, and whether that was
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why he had cried out that it was hurting. Angela
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Clay's sister, Lynette Bell, had a statement read after the execution.
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His family is now going through the same thing we
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went through 37 years ago. I can't say I'm sorry
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because we never got an apology. Chapter 45. Anthony Boyd
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and the 225 Breaths Atmore, Alabama, October 23rd, 2025 Justice
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Sotomayor's dissent on the afternoon of October 23, 2025, began
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with an instruction to the reader. Take out your phone,
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go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now,
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watch the seconds as they climb. She asked the reader
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to imagine suffocating for that long, strapped down with a
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mask pumping nitrogen. When the gas starts flowing, he will
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immediately convulse, she wrote of Anthony Boyd. He will gasp
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for air. and he will thrash violently against the restraints
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holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological
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torment until he finally loses consciousness. Boyd had asked to
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be shot instead, and the court said no, six to three,
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without explanation. Seven people have already been subjected to this
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cruel form of execution, she wrote. The court should not
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allow Boyd to become the eighth. Boyd had been convicted
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of killing Gregory Hughley over a $ 200 cocaine debt in
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Talladega County, Alabama, on July 31, 1993. Hughley was forced
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into a van at gunpoint in Anniston and driven to
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a baseball field where he was bound with duct tape
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and taped to a bench by his feet. Then he
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was doused with gasoline and set on fire, and the
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men watched him burn. The state's case that Boyd was
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one of them rested on the testimony of an accomplice
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who got a deal and was out of prison by 2009,
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and Boyd said to the end that he'd been at
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a party. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't participate in
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killing anybody, he said, from the gurney at Holman that evening,
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and ended, let's get it. At 5.57 p.m., he clenched
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his fist, lifted his head, began shaking, and raised his
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legs several inches off the gurney. His eyes rolled back
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to the whites. At about 6.01, he began a long
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run of heaving, open-mouthed, chest-lifting breaths that went on for
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more than 15 minutes, and Lee Hedgepath, an independent journalist
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in the witness room, counted more than 225 of them.
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Boyd was pronounced dead at 6.33, 43 minutes after the
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curtain opened. It was within the protocol, Alabama's corrections commissioner
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John Hamm said, but it has been the longest. The
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Reverend Jeff Hood, who stood in the chamber, said, this
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is the worst one yet. No one from Hughley's family came,
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and the family sent no statement. Chapter 46. Tony Carruthers
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and the Doctor Who Couldn't Place a Line. Nashville, Tennessee.
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May 21st, 2026. The first time Tennessee couldn't carry out
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its one drug protocol was May 21st, 2026, On the
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gurney was Tony Von Carruthers, 57, on death row since
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1996 for the killings of Marcellus Anderson, a Memphis drug dealer,
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his mother, Delois Anderson, and a friend, Frederick Tucker, in
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February 1994. The three were bound and buried in an
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open grave at Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard
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beneath another woman's casket. At trial, the medical examiner testified
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that each of them had been alive when the dirt
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went on, testimony his lawyers have disputed since. Carruthers had
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00:18:05.089 --> 00:18:08.589
represented himself at that trial after his appointed lawyer withdrew
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00:18:08.750 --> 00:18:12.170
six days before it began. There was no physical evidence
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00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:16.430
against him. The case rested on co-defendants and a jailhouse informant.
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Two days before the execution, the state's Supreme Court refused
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to order DNA testing of the victim's fingernail scrapings, the bindings,
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and an unknown man's DNA found on a blanket in
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00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:31.410
the grave. The execution was set for 10 in the
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00:18:31.450 --> 00:18:34.720
morning at Riverbend. and the team got a primary IV
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00:18:34.779 --> 00:18:37.940
line into him in about 15 minutes. Then, by the
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00:18:37.980 --> 00:18:41.710
department's own statement, it was unable to immediately establish a
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00:18:41.769 --> 00:18:46.009
backup line pursuant to the lethal injection execution protocol, could
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not find another suitable vein, and attempted to insert a
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00:18:49.720 --> 00:18:53.920
central line pursuant to the protocol, but the procedure was unsuccessful.
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That took about an hour and a half. In the
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00:18:57.750 --> 00:19:01.319
room with him was Maria Deliberato, an ACLU lawyer who
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00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:04.279
saw him wincing and groaning and said there was a
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00:19:04.339 --> 00:19:07.900
lot of blood. He'd been punctured more than a dozen times,
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00:19:08.299 --> 00:19:12.660
his attorney Amy Harwell said. No drugs were given. At 1.12
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00:19:12.660 --> 00:19:16.079
that afternoon, Governor Lee's office put out a single sentence,
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I am granting Tony Von Carruthers a temporary reprieve from
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00:19:20.230 --> 00:19:25.289
execution for one year. Later court filings identified the physician
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00:19:25.329 --> 00:19:28.400
who'd tried to place the central line through the subclavian
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00:19:28.440 --> 00:19:32.200
vein under the collarbone as Dr. Mark Walton Fowler, a
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00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:36.720
department contractor. In a deposition the previous fall, Fowler had
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00:19:36.759 --> 00:19:39.420
said that he'd last placed a central line around 2013,
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had done a dozen or more in his career, and
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had no current hospital privileges anywhere. In June, a group
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of Republican state senators wrote to the governor asking for
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an independent review and saying they cannot accept its incompetent administration.
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Lee said afterward that the protocol itself still stands as
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00:19:58.970 --> 00:20:02.019
it should, and that the Department of Correction did exactly
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00:20:02.119 --> 00:20:05.240
what they should. Fowler was on the team again on
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00:20:05.279 --> 00:20:07.700
September 30, 2026, when Tennessee tried to execute Krista Pike.
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00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:19.349
the night in the prologue. The List Austin Surratt counted 8,776
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00:20:19.349 --> 00:20:20.670
executions in the United States between 1890 and 2010, and
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00:20:20.690 --> 00:20:22.369
found 276 that had gone wrong, a little over three
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00:20:22.490 --> 00:20:25.289
in every hundred. The failures weren't spread evenly across the methods.
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00:20:36.049 --> 00:20:38.809
Lethal injection, the newest one in his span and the
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00:20:38.890 --> 00:20:41.849
one that borrowed its drugs from medicine, failed a little
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00:20:41.950 --> 00:20:45.369
over seven times in every hundred, more often than any
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00:20:45.529 --> 00:20:49.220
other method he studied. Michael Radelet's list for the Death
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00:20:49.259 --> 00:20:53.960
Penalty Information Center starts in 1982 with Frank Coppola, a
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00:20:53.980 --> 00:20:57.559
former Portsmouth policeman in Virginia's electric chair, and runs to
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00:20:57.579 --> 00:21:02.400
the present. On the 1st of October, 2026, it held
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00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:04.809
65 names, and every one of them is in this book.
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00:21:05.579 --> 00:21:08.700
So are 12 cases from the centuries before anyone kept
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00:21:08.779 --> 00:21:12.720
a list, and four from 2025 that the list doesn't carry.
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00:21:13.420 --> 00:21:17.069
That comes to 81 cases, from an Oxford dissection table
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00:21:17.329 --> 00:21:21.930
in 1650 to a Nashville gurney in September 2026, the
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00:21:22.009 --> 00:21:26.049
one in the prologue, 46 chapters and 34 shorter entries
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00:21:26.230 --> 00:21:30.339
into the interludes. Each method in these pages was brought
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00:21:30.420 --> 00:21:33.319
in to fix the one before it. The long drop
321
00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:36.769
was supposed to make hanging exact. with a fall measured
322
00:21:36.809 --> 00:21:39.559
against the prisoner's weight so the rope would break the
323
00:21:39.619 --> 00:21:44.180
neck instead of strangling. At Exeter in 1885, the trapdoor
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00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:46.960
wouldn't open under John Lee, though the lever was pulled
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00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:51.380
again and again. In 1901, at Clayton in New Mexico Territory,
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00:21:51.720 --> 00:21:54.619
the drop took Black Jack Ketchum's head off, and the
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00:21:54.660 --> 00:21:58.400
Tribune ran the headline, Bandit's Head Jerked Off by Hangman's Rope.
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00:21:59.480 --> 00:22:03.240
Eva Dugan's went the same way at Florence in 1930.
329
00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:06.559
And three years later, Arizona's voters made lethal gas the
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00:22:06.619 --> 00:22:14.240
state method, 14,999 to 11,585. New York's answer to the
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00:22:14.289 --> 00:22:18.950
rope was electricity. At Auburn in 1890, the first 17
332
00:22:18.950 --> 00:22:22.569
seconds didn't kill William Kemmler. And when the current went
333
00:22:22.630 --> 00:22:25.049
on again, the hair around the head electrode and the
334
00:22:25.089 --> 00:22:27.650
flesh at the base of his spine began to singe.
335
00:22:28.779 --> 00:22:33.019
In 1946, Louisiana's portable chair failed to kill Willie Francis.
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00:22:33.460 --> 00:22:35.640
and he walked out of the room. A year and
337
00:22:35.700 --> 00:22:38.759
six days later, with the Supreme Court's permission, the state
338
00:22:38.819 --> 00:22:42.859
put him back in it. Ethel Rosenberg took five shocks
339
00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:47.039
at Sing Sing in 1953. After the death penalty came back,
340
00:22:47.380 --> 00:22:49.900
sparks came out of the electrode on John Evans' left
341
00:22:49.980 --> 00:22:54.509
leg in Alabama in 1983, and in Florida in 1997,
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00:22:54.509 --> 00:22:58.589
a flame rose from under Pedro Medina's headpiece. Two years later,
343
00:22:58.970 --> 00:23:01.450
Allen Lee Davis bled from under the mask in that
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00:23:01.529 --> 00:23:06.349
state's new oak chair. In January 2000, the Florida legislature
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00:23:06.630 --> 00:23:10.160
made lethal injection the state's method, and Davis is still
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00:23:10.200 --> 00:23:15.319
the last person Florida has electrocuted. Arizona gave up rope
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00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:19.740
for gas, and Mississippi had a chamber, too. At Parchman
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00:23:19.829 --> 00:23:23.809
in 1983, Jimmy Lee Gray's head struck a steel pole
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00:23:23.869 --> 00:23:27.049
behind his seat, and the Associated Press counted his moans.
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00:23:28.069 --> 00:23:31.450
In 1992, Arizona used its chamber for the first time
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00:23:31.509 --> 00:23:35.019
in 29 years on Donald Harding, and a television actor
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00:23:35.059 --> 00:23:38.619
in the witness room timed 57 seconds of spasms on
353
00:23:38.660 --> 00:23:41.180
a stopwatch. I don't know who came up with this
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00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:43.720
concept of a gas chamber in the first place, the
355
00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:48.099
Attorney General, Grant Woods, told the Phoenix Gazette. That November,
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00:23:48.299 --> 00:23:53.259
the state's voters replaced gas with lethal injection. Lethal injection
357
00:23:53.299 --> 00:23:56.599
went from an Oklahoma statute... to a Texas gurney in
358
00:23:56.660 --> 00:24:00.319
five years, and within a generation, every state still carrying
359
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:04.079
out executions had made it the main method. It went
360
00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:06.640
wrong in the vein, and it went wrong in the drugs.
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00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:10.880
At Lucasville in 2006, Joseph Clark lifted his head off
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00:24:10.900 --> 00:24:13.529
the gurney and said, It don't work! It don't work!
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00:24:13.589 --> 00:24:17.309
It don't work! It ain't working! In 2009, at the
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00:24:17.349 --> 00:24:21.049
same prison, Ohio's team left at least 18 puncture sites
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00:24:21.109 --> 00:24:24.589
in Rommel Broom and gave up. And in 2016, the
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00:24:24.609 --> 00:24:28.569
state's Supreme Court ruled that Ohio could try again because
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00:24:28.829 --> 00:24:33.170
jeopardy never attached. The drugs failed in their own ways.
368
00:24:34.089 --> 00:24:37.269
In 1994, the chemical Illinois was sending into John Wayne
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00:24:37.289 --> 00:24:42.299
Gacy gelled, UPI wrote, passing along the Corrections Department's explanation,
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00:24:42.660 --> 00:24:45.740
and he was still alive about 10 minutes in. By
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00:24:45.779 --> 00:24:49.890
January 2014, Ohio had run out of pentobarbital. and he
372
00:24:49.930 --> 00:24:52.990
gave Dennis McGuire a combination no one in the country
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00:24:53.009 --> 00:24:56.509
had used to kill a prisoner. For at least 10 minutes,
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00:24:56.730 --> 00:25:01.299
he gasped and choked. That April, Oklahoma used midazolam for
375
00:25:01.319 --> 00:25:03.880
the first time on Clayton Lockett with a sheet over
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00:25:03.900 --> 00:25:06.720
the needle in his groin. The state's Department of Public
377
00:25:06.759 --> 00:25:10.099
Safety found afterward that no one had been watching the IV.
378
00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:14.299
In July, at Florence, Michael Kiefer of the Arizona Republic
379
00:25:14.579 --> 00:25:19.329
counted about 640 gasps from Joseph Wood. Then, starting with
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00:25:19.450 --> 00:25:22.759
Alva Campbell in Ohio in 2017, what had happened to
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00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:26.980
Broom kept happening. The needle failed before any lethal drug
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00:25:27.019 --> 00:25:29.759
went in, and the prisoner was unstrapped and sent back
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00:25:29.799 --> 00:25:34.660
to his cell. Ohio, Alabama, and Idaho did that to
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00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:38.900
five men in seven years. And in May 2026, Tennessee
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00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:44.400
did it to Tony Carruthers. Alabama turned to nitrogen. On
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00:25:44.450 --> 00:25:48.319
January 25th, 2024, it put a mask on Kenneth Smith,
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00:25:48.740 --> 00:25:52.119
whom it had failed to execute by injection 14 months earlier,
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00:25:52.740 --> 00:25:55.619
and the witnesses watched him shake and writhe on the
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00:25:55.660 --> 00:25:58.599
gurney for at least two minutes. The next morning, the
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00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:02.109
state's Attorney General, Steve Marshall, said, what occurred last night
391
00:26:02.589 --> 00:26:07.529
was textbook. Louisiana took up the method in 2025, and
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00:26:07.569 --> 00:26:10.990
in October of that year, Lee Hedgepath, an independent journalist
393
00:26:11.049 --> 00:26:15.769
in Alabama's Witness Room, counted more than 225 heaving breaths
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00:26:16.130 --> 00:26:22.220
from Anthony Boyd. The other answer was older. In 1879,
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00:26:22.220 --> 00:26:26.119
Utah's firing squad left Wallace Wilkerson crying out that they
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00:26:26.160 --> 00:26:29.670
had missed the mark, and he took 27 minutes to die.
397
00:26:30.589 --> 00:26:35.029
In April 2025, South Carolina's squad fired three rifles at
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00:26:35.089 --> 00:26:39.839
McCall Mottie, and the autopsy found two entrance wounds, not three.
399
00:26:41.809 --> 00:26:47.829
where the methods stood in October 2026. Alabama had used
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00:26:47.970 --> 00:26:52.250
nitrogen more than any other state. Before Anthony Boyd went
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00:26:52.289 --> 00:26:55.390
to the gurney, he asked to be shot instead, and
402
00:26:55.410 --> 00:27:00.549
the Supreme Court said no. Justice Sotomayor, dissenting, counted seven
403
00:27:00.589 --> 00:27:05.470
people already executed that way. Afterward, the state's corrections commissioner,
404
00:27:05.529 --> 00:27:09.069
John Hamm, said of Boyd's execution, it was within the protocol,
405
00:27:09.569 --> 00:27:14.250
but it has been the longest. In June 2026, the
406
00:27:14.289 --> 00:27:18.519
federal judge barred Alabama from using nitrogen to execute Jeffrey Lee,
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00:27:18.940 --> 00:27:22.859
ruling that the protocol was cruel and unusual punishment. The
408
00:27:23.220 --> 00:27:26.299
11th Circuit agreed, and the Supreme Court refused to let
409
00:27:26.339 --> 00:27:30.950
the execution go ahead, with three justices dissenting. In September,
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00:27:30.990 --> 00:27:36.990
the state executed Lee by lethal injection instead. Louisiana had
411
00:27:37.029 --> 00:27:41.009
a nitrogen protocol, written in February 2025, and had used
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00:27:41.049 --> 00:27:45.779
it on Jesse Hoffman at Angola. Its corrections secretary, Gary Westcott,
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00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:51.380
said afterward it went flawless. South Carolina was executing again
414
00:27:51.579 --> 00:27:54.640
after 13 years under its secrecy law with the needle,
415
00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:57.440
the chair, and the firing squad all on its books.
416
00:27:58.680 --> 00:28:02.740
After Marion Bowman's autopsy recorded 10 grams of penobarbital, a
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00:28:02.779 --> 00:28:06.140
federal defender asked the state Supreme Court to find out
418
00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:10.230
whether the drugs were expired, diluted, or spoiled, and the
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00:28:10.269 --> 00:28:14.630
court let the next execution go ahead. Arizona's gas chamber
420
00:28:14.690 --> 00:28:19.599
still stood at Florence. Florida had executed by injection since 2000,
421
00:28:19.599 --> 00:28:22.240
and had left the chair as a choice a prisoner
422
00:28:22.259 --> 00:28:27.759
could make. Tennessee was still using pentobarbital alone. After Carruthers,
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00:28:27.859 --> 00:28:30.940
Governor Bill Lee said the Department of Correction did exactly
424
00:28:31.019 --> 00:28:34.369
what they should, and that the protocol itself still stands
425
00:28:34.549 --> 00:28:38.750
as it should. By October, after the failed execution and
426
00:28:38.769 --> 00:28:42.000
the prologue, the governor had ordered an outside review and
427
00:28:42.039 --> 00:28:46.460
taken the last execution off the state's calendar for 2026,
428
00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:48.829
and the head of the state's prison system had announced
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00:28:49.029 --> 00:28:53.710
his resignation. The one-year reprieve he gave Carruthers runs to
430
00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:59.710
May 21, 2027. Under a law passed in March 2025,
431
00:28:59.710 --> 00:29:05.069
the firing squad became Idaho's primary method on July 1, 2026,
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00:29:05.069 --> 00:29:09.390
making Idaho the first state to do so. Thomas Creech
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00:29:09.849 --> 00:29:13.309
whom Idaho's team had failed to execute by injection in
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00:29:13.349 --> 00:29:17.809
February 2024, was still on death row in Kuna with
435
00:29:17.869 --> 00:29:21.539
no date, and the statute says any new warrant will
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00:29:21.559 --> 00:29:24.460
be carried out by rifle if the department certifies the
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00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:29.440
squad is ready. After the first attempt, Preach said he
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00:29:29.519 --> 00:29:35.200
still woke up back on the table. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.
439
00:29:35.400 --> 00:29:38.819
That's the end of my book, Botched Executions. If you
440
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:41.950
like what I've been sharing, I'd greatly appreciate you purchasing
441
00:29:41.990 --> 00:29:44.859
the book itself and then leaving a rating and review
442
00:29:45.019 --> 00:29:47.329
on Amazon to let others know what you thought of it.
443
00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:50.440
That really helps others to discover the book more than
444
00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:53.259
you might think. And if you would prefer the audiobook,
445
00:29:53.819 --> 00:29:55.720
you won't have to wait very long. It should be
446
00:29:55.759 --> 00:29:58.720
available to purchase on Amazon and Audible in a couple
447
00:29:58.759 --> 00:30:04.390
of days. To grab the book, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions.
448
00:30:04.829 --> 00:30:09.690
That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions. For all of the books
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00:30:09.710 --> 00:30:12.359
that I've written, as well as the ones being released soon,
450
00:30:12.839 --> 00:30:15.420
visit WeirdDarkness.com slash books.
1
00:00:02.350 --> 00:00:06.269
This is Botched Executions from Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar.
2
00:00:07.250 --> 00:00:10.509
For nearly 400 years, states have been putting people to death,
3
00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:15.460
and some of those executions went horribly wrong. Trap doors
4
00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:19.600
wouldn't open, flames rose from the electric chair, and needles
5
00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:23.579
couldn't find a vein. In this series, I'm taking you
6
00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:27.480
through my book, Botched Executions, one chapter at a time.
7
00:00:28.179 --> 00:00:31.469
Everything you'll hear comes from the witnesses, the court records,
8
00:00:31.969 --> 00:00:35.810
and the state's own written reports. Where the accounts disagree,
9
00:00:36.310 --> 00:00:41.140
you'll hear both. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, these
10
00:00:41.179 --> 00:00:43.280
are the cases where a state set out to kill
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someone and got it wrong. A word of warning before
12
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we begin. These are real deaths, described by the people
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who watched them, and some of the details are hard
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to hear. And now, botched executions, four centuries of failed hangings, electrocutions, gassings, injections,
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and firing squads. Part 5. The Gas, the Rifle, and Tennessee.
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2025 to 2026. These six chapters are the newest in
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the book. They run from January 2025 to May 2026
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across four states, and South Carolina and Louisiana are had
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each gone more than a decade without an execution before
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they started again. South Carolina's gap was 13 years, and
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by the time it came back, its books held three
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methods— the needle, the electric chair, and a firing squad
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its Supreme Court had upheld in 2024. Louisiana hadn't executed
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anyone since 2010. When it set a date again, it
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borrowed the nitrogen method Alabama had used first and put
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a mask on the prisoner. Alabama, meanwhile, went on using
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its own mask. It had executed Kenneth Smith with nitrogen
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in January 2024, and in October 2025, its corrections commissioner
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said Anthony Boyd's execution by the same method had been
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within the protocol, and the longest yet. Tennessee gets two chapters,
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and both happened in one room. Nine months apart, Byron
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Black and Tony Carruthers went to the same gurney at
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Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, under a protocol that
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uses one drug, pentobarbital. Two of the six are on
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the Death Penalty Information Center's list, Boyd at number 63
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and Carruthers at number 64. The other four, Marion Bowman,
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Jesse Hoffman, McCall Mottie, and Black aren't on it. They're
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here for what the witnesses saw, and for what the
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autopsies and the lawyers' filings recorded afterward. Chapter 41. Marion Bowman,
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and the 10 Grams. Columbia, South Carolina, January 31st, 2025.
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South Carolina went 13 years without an execution because it
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couldn't get the drugs. When it started again in September 2024,
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it did so under a secrecy law that keeps the
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drug supplier and the execution team's identities out of public view.
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The third man it executed was was Marion Bowman Jr.
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on January 31, 2025, for the killing of Candy Martin, 21,
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a friend of his whose body was found in the
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trunk of her burning car in Dorchester County in February 2001.
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Prosecutors said he'd shot her on the back road and
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dragged her into the woods, then come back hours later
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with a friend to put her in the trunk and
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light it, and that he had told the friend, I
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killed Candy Martin. Bowman said to the end that he hadn't.
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He refused to ask for clemency, because that would mean
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asking to spend his life in prison for a crime
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he said he didn't commit. In the chamber, Bowman's lawyer,
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Boyd Young, read his written statement, and it began, I
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did not kill Candy Martin. I'm innocent of the crimes
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I'm here to die for. The penobarbital started at 6.04
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in the evening. Bowman breathed heavily for about a minute,
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then shallowly, and his chest stopped moving at 6.06 or 6.07.
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The doctor pronounced him dead at 6.27, 23 minutes after
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the drug began. Nothing about it looked unusual to the witnesses.
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The autopsy did. Working from what the department told the pathologist,
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it recorded a total of 10 grams of penobarbital, twice
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the 5-gram dose that had been described as a single
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lethal dose, and lungs holding moderate to severe amounts of
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blood and frothy fluid. Richard Moore, the man executed before him,
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had gotten two 5-gram doses 11 minutes apart. How many
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doses Bowman got, or why, the department wouldn't say. The
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evidence is now undeniable. Something is badly wrong with South
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Carolina's lethal injection drugs, said Bo King, a federal defender
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representing the next man in line, Brad Sigman. King asked
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the state Supreme Court to find out whether the drugs
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were expired, diluted, or spoiled. The court let the execution
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go ahead, and Sigman chose the firing squad. Chapter 42.
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Jesse Hoffman and the Mask at Angola. Angola, Louisiana. March 18th, 2025.
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Louisiana hadn't executed anyone since 2010 either. Governor Jeff Landry's
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administration wrote a nitrogen protocol in February 2025 that and
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set a date for Jesse Hoffman Jr., and had borrowed
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Alabama's method with some tweaks to the equipment, its corrections
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secretary said. Hoffman had been 18 in November 1996, on
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the night before Thanksgiving, when he abducted Mary Elliott, a
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28-year-old advertising executive called Molly, from the parking garage in
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downtown New Orleans where he worked as a valet. He
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forced her to withdraw $ 200 from an ATM, then drove
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her to a remote spot by the Middle Pearl River
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in St. Tammany Parish, where he raped her and shot
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her once in the head. A duck hunter found her
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the next morning. In prison, Hoffman became a Buddhist, and
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his lawyers argued that a mask full of nitrogen would
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take him from the one thing his faith asked of
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him at death— conscious breathing in meditation. The Fifth Circuit
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let the execution proceed, two to one, without mentioning the
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religious claim, and the Supreme Court denied a stay, five
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to four. Justice Gorsuch, who wouldn't grant it, wrote that
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the lower courts had no license to declare whether an
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adherent has correctly perceived the commands of his religion. At 6.12 p.m.
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on March 18, 2025, Hoffman was walked into the chamber
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at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He declined to
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make a statement, and at 6.21, the gas began. Two
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reporters were allowed to watch. One of them, John Zimmerman
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of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, wrote that Hoffman's breathing became
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uneven and his chest rose. His body shook and his
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fingers twitched. He pulled at the table, his hands clenched,
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and at about 6.27 he jerked slightly and went mostly still.
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His last visible breath came at about 6.37. The gas
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ran about 19 minutes and he was pronounced dead at 6.50
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when the mask came off. His head was tilted back
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and his teeth were bared in a grimace. He did move.
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He did shake very briefly. Around 6.23, he did have
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some convulsive activity, Seth Smith, the department's chief of operations,
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told reporters. And he said he had seen nothing that
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I would say is consistent with pain. The corrections secretary,
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Gary Westcott, said it went flawless. Molly Elliott's husband, Andy,
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called it bittersweet news. said he was satisfied that justice
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had been served and said, the loss of Molly is
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a scar we will forever carry, and it will never heal.
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Hoffman's wife, Ilona, said, this execution was not justice, it
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was revenge. Chapter 43. McCall-Moddy and the Two Entrance Wounds. Columbia,
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South Carolina. April 11, 2025. McCall Mottie chose the firing squad,
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his lawyer David Weiss said, instead of being burned and
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mutilated in the electric chair or suffering a lingering death
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on the lethal injection gurney. In July 2004, in Winston-Salem,
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North Carolina, he'd killed a convenience store clerk, Christopher Boggs,
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shooting him twice in the head when Boggs asked for identification.
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Then he carjacked a man in Columbia, South Carolina. Days later,
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hiding in a shed on a farm in Calhoun County,
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He ambushed the man who owned it, James Myers, an
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off-duty captain in the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety. He
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shot Myers nine times with a. 22 rifle he'd found there,
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three times in the head, then poured diesel fuel over
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the body and set it on fire. Myers' wife found him.
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The shed was where they'd been married 15 months earlier.
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Motti pleaded guilty, and a judge sentenced him to death.
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In upholding the firing squad in 2024, South Carolina's Supreme
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Court had written that the pain will last only 10
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to 15 seconds unless there was a massive botch of
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the execution in which each member of the firing squad
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simply misses the inmate's heart. On April 11, 2025, at
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Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, Monty was strapped into
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a chair with a hood over his head and a
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white target with a red bullseye over his heart. Three
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volunteers with. 308 rifles fired through an opening in the
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wall about 15 feet away. He cried out as the
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bullets hit, and his arms flexed. About 45 seconds later,
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he groaned twice more, and his breathing went on for
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about 80 seconds before what looked like a final gasp.
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He was pronounced dead at 6.05 p.m., less than four
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minutes after the shots. The autopsy by a found two
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entrance wounds in the lower left chest, not three, and
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no exit wounds. The two wound paths ran downward and
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to the right, through the liver and the pancreas and
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the lower lobe of the left lung into the spine
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and ribs, and they perforated only the right ventricle of
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a heart that his lawyer's filing described as otherwise intact.
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The state said all three rifles fired and all three
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bullets hit. Two of them threw the same hole which
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officials said had happened before in practice. Dr. Jonathan Arden,
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a forensic pathologist retained by Mahdi's lawyers, wrote that two
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bullets through one wound was extraordinarily uncommon, that the shooters
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had missed the intended target area, and that Mahdi did
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experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to
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60 seconds after he was shot. No x-rays had been taken,
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there was one photograph of the body, and the clothing
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with the target on it was never examined. Five days
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after the execution, he was cremated. I'm certainly not an
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expert in human anatomy, Weiss said, but it appears to
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me that target looks low. Chapter 44, Byron Black and
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the Device in His Chest Nashville, Tennessee, August 5th, 2025
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Byron Black had an implanted defibrillator, and his lawyers spent
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the summer of 2025 trying to get Tennessee to turn
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it off. He was 69 and in a wheelchair with dementia,
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brain damage, kidney failure, and congestive heart failure by his
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attorney's account, and the device in his chest was built
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to shock a failing heart back into rhythm. So the
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lawyers argued, as the pentobarbital stopped his heart, the machine
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would shock it over and over while he died. A
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Chancery Court judge agreed and ordered it deactivated at the gurney.
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The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed him, ruling that a trial
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court had no authority to put conditions on an execution
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it had ordered, and the hospital the state had counted
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on to turn the device off said it had never
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agreed to. Black had killed his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and
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her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6, in their beds
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00:12:35.799 --> 00:12:39.500
in Nashville in the early hours of March 28, 1988,
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while he was on work release from a sentence for
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shooting Clay's estranged husband. For years, his lawyers had also
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argued that he was intellectually disabled, and a 2021 state
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law wouldn't let him prove it, but the courts read
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it to exclude him because he'd raised the claim before.
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He's here because of where his execution took place. The
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same riverbend gurney and the same one-drug protocol as Carruthers,
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00:13:04.970 --> 00:13:09.490
nine months before him, with seven reporters watching. Asked for
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00:13:09.529 --> 00:13:14.149
last words on the morning of August 5th, 2025, Black said, No, sir.
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The seven media witnesses agreed on what came next. He
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00:13:18.169 --> 00:13:20.360
lifted his head off the gurney three or four times
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and looked around, then sighed and breathed heavily and said
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00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:29.279
in the AP's rendering, oh, it's hurting so bad. Praying
200
00:13:29.340 --> 00:13:33.080
over him, his spiritual advisor answered, I'm so sorry, just
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00:13:33.259 --> 00:13:37.200
listen to my voice. One of the witnesses had watched
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00:13:37.379 --> 00:13:40.450
Oscar Smith die on the same gurney in May and
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00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:44.230
said Smith was not panting or sighing or making any
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00:13:44.370 --> 00:13:47.769
of these kinds of sounds that Byron Black did. Black
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00:13:47.809 --> 00:13:53.799
was pronounced dead at 10.43 a.m. Read afterward, The defibrillator's
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00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:56.740
data showed the device had not shocked him, and the
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00:13:56.820 --> 00:14:00.899
autopsy found pulmonary edema. At a hearing that October, his lawyer,
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00:14:00.980 --> 00:14:03.879
Kelly Henry, told the court the EKG from the chamber
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00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:08.620
showed sustained cardiac activity for nearly two minutes after he
210
00:14:08.679 --> 00:14:12.870
was pronounced dead. She questioned why, at one point, the
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00:14:12.909 --> 00:14:16.210
blanket had been pulled down to expose the IV. Did
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00:14:16.250 --> 00:14:19.309
the IV come out, she asked, and whether that was
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00:14:19.409 --> 00:14:22.830
why he had cried out that it was hurting. Angela
214
00:14:22.870 --> 00:14:26.690
Clay's sister, Lynette Bell, had a statement read after the execution.
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00:14:27.389 --> 00:14:29.860
His family is now going through the same thing we
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00:14:29.889 --> 00:14:33.259
went through 37 years ago. I can't say I'm sorry
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00:14:33.320 --> 00:14:39.159
because we never got an apology. Chapter 45. Anthony Boyd
218
00:14:39.860 --> 00:14:49.320
and the 225 Breaths Atmore, Alabama, October 23rd, 2025 Justice
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00:14:49.419 --> 00:14:54.059
Sotomayor's dissent on the afternoon of October 23, 2025, began
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00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:57.070
with an instruction to the reader. Take out your phone,
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00:14:57.450 --> 00:15:02.149
go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now,
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00:15:02.629 --> 00:15:06.470
watch the seconds as they climb. She asked the reader
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00:15:06.529 --> 00:15:10.039
to imagine suffocating for that long, strapped down with a
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00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:13.840
mask pumping nitrogen. When the gas starts flowing, he will
225
00:15:13.879 --> 00:15:17.500
immediately convulse, she wrote of Anthony Boyd. He will gasp
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00:15:17.639 --> 00:15:20.889
for air. and he will thrash violently against the restraints
227
00:15:20.950 --> 00:15:24.789
holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological
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00:15:24.929 --> 00:15:29.490
torment until he finally loses consciousness. Boyd had asked to
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be shot instead, and the court said no, six to three,
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without explanation. Seven people have already been subjected to this
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00:15:37.379 --> 00:15:40.350
cruel form of execution, she wrote. The court should not
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allow Boyd to become the eighth. Boyd had been convicted
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00:15:44.769 --> 00:15:48.379
of killing Gregory Hughley over a $ 200 cocaine debt in
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00:15:48.419 --> 00:15:53.720
Talladega County, Alabama, on July 31, 1993. Hughley was forced
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00:15:53.759 --> 00:15:56.379
into a van at gunpoint in Anniston and driven to
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a baseball field where he was bound with duct tape
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and taped to a bench by his feet. Then he
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was doused with gasoline and set on fire, and the
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00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:08.100
men watched him burn. The state's case that Boyd was
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00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:10.870
one of them rested on the testimony of an accomplice
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00:16:10.889 --> 00:16:13.190
who got a deal and was out of prison by 2009,
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and Boyd said to the end that he'd been at
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a party. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't participate in
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killing anybody, he said, from the gurney at Holman that evening,
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and ended, let's get it. At 5.57 p.m., he clenched
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his fist, lifted his head, began shaking, and raised his
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legs several inches off the gurney. His eyes rolled back
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to the whites. At about 6.01, he began a long
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run of heaving, open-mouthed, chest-lifting breaths that went on for
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more than 15 minutes, and Lee Hedgepath, an independent journalist
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in the witness room, counted more than 225 of them.
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Boyd was pronounced dead at 6.33, 43 minutes after the
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curtain opened. It was within the protocol, Alabama's corrections commissioner
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John Hamm said, but it has been the longest. The
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00:17:04.279 --> 00:17:07.359
Reverend Jeff Hood, who stood in the chamber, said, this
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00:17:07.619 --> 00:17:11.799
is the worst one yet. No one from Hughley's family came,
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00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:18.839
and the family sent no statement. Chapter 46. Tony Carruthers
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00:17:19.059 --> 00:17:23.220
and the Doctor Who Couldn't Place a Line. Nashville, Tennessee.
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May 21st, 2026. The first time Tennessee couldn't carry out
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00:17:30.029 --> 00:17:34.950
its one drug protocol was May 21st, 2026, On the
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00:17:34.970 --> 00:17:39.049
gurney was Tony Von Carruthers, 57, on death row since
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00:17:39.049 --> 00:17:42.730
1996 for the killings of Marcellus Anderson, a Memphis drug dealer,
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00:17:43.069 --> 00:17:46.329
his mother, Delois Anderson, and a friend, Frederick Tucker, in
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00:17:46.369 --> 00:17:50.359
February 1994. The three were bound and buried in an
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00:17:50.430 --> 00:17:53.759
open grave at Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard
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00:17:53.880 --> 00:17:58.119
beneath another woman's casket. At trial, the medical examiner testified
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that each of them had been alive when the dirt
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00:18:00.460 --> 00:18:05.029
went on, testimony his lawyers have disputed since. Carruthers had
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00:18:05.089 --> 00:18:08.589
represented himself at that trial after his appointed lawyer withdrew
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00:18:08.750 --> 00:18:12.170
six days before it began. There was no physical evidence
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00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:16.430
against him. The case rested on co-defendants and a jailhouse informant.
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00:18:17.230 --> 00:18:21.019
Two days before the execution, the state's Supreme Court refused
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00:18:21.119 --> 00:18:25.180
to order DNA testing of the victim's fingernail scrapings, the bindings,
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00:18:25.500 --> 00:18:28.180
and an unknown man's DNA found on a blanket in
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00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:31.410
the grave. The execution was set for 10 in the
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00:18:31.450 --> 00:18:34.720
morning at Riverbend. and the team got a primary IV
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00:18:34.779 --> 00:18:37.940
line into him in about 15 minutes. Then, by the
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00:18:37.980 --> 00:18:41.710
department's own statement, it was unable to immediately establish a
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00:18:41.769 --> 00:18:46.009
backup line pursuant to the lethal injection execution protocol, could
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00:18:46.049 --> 00:18:49.619
not find another suitable vein, and attempted to insert a
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00:18:49.720 --> 00:18:53.920
central line pursuant to the protocol, but the procedure was unsuccessful.
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That took about an hour and a half. In the
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00:18:57.750 --> 00:19:01.319
room with him was Maria Deliberato, an ACLU lawyer who
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00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:04.279
saw him wincing and groaning and said there was a
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00:19:04.339 --> 00:19:07.900
lot of blood. He'd been punctured more than a dozen times,
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00:19:08.299 --> 00:19:12.660
his attorney Amy Harwell said. No drugs were given. At 1.12
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00:19:12.660 --> 00:19:16.079
that afternoon, Governor Lee's office put out a single sentence,
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00:19:16.619 --> 00:19:20.170
I am granting Tony Von Carruthers a temporary reprieve from
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00:19:20.230 --> 00:19:25.289
execution for one year. Later court filings identified the physician
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00:19:25.329 --> 00:19:28.400
who'd tried to place the central line through the subclavian
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00:19:28.440 --> 00:19:32.200
vein under the collarbone as Dr. Mark Walton Fowler, a
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00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:36.720
department contractor. In a deposition the previous fall, Fowler had
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00:19:36.759 --> 00:19:39.420
said that he'd last placed a central line around 2013,
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00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:42.970
had done a dozen or more in his career, and
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00:19:43.009 --> 00:19:47.049
had no current hospital privileges anywhere. In June, a group
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00:19:47.089 --> 00:19:50.250
of Republican state senators wrote to the governor asking for
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00:19:50.289 --> 00:19:54.509
an independent review and saying they cannot accept its incompetent administration.
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00:19:55.430 --> 00:19:58.930
Lee said afterward that the protocol itself still stands as
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00:19:58.970 --> 00:20:02.019
it should, and that the Department of Correction did exactly
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00:20:02.119 --> 00:20:05.240
what they should. Fowler was on the team again on
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00:20:05.279 --> 00:20:07.700
September 30, 2026, when Tennessee tried to execute Krista Pike.
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00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:19.349
the night in the prologue. The List Austin Surratt counted 8,776
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00:20:19.349 --> 00:20:20.670
executions in the United States between 1890 and 2010, and
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00:20:20.690 --> 00:20:22.369
found 276 that had gone wrong, a little over three
305
00:20:22.490 --> 00:20:25.289
in every hundred. The failures weren't spread evenly across the methods.
306
00:20:36.049 --> 00:20:38.809
Lethal injection, the newest one in his span and the
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00:20:38.890 --> 00:20:41.849
one that borrowed its drugs from medicine, failed a little
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00:20:41.950 --> 00:20:45.369
over seven times in every hundred, more often than any
309
00:20:45.529 --> 00:20:49.220
other method he studied. Michael Radelet's list for the Death
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00:20:49.259 --> 00:20:53.960
Penalty Information Center starts in 1982 with Frank Coppola, a
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00:20:53.980 --> 00:20:57.559
former Portsmouth policeman in Virginia's electric chair, and runs to
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00:20:57.579 --> 00:21:02.400
the present. On the 1st of October, 2026, it held
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00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:04.809
65 names, and every one of them is in this book.
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00:21:05.579 --> 00:21:08.700
So are 12 cases from the centuries before anyone kept
315
00:21:08.779 --> 00:21:12.720
a list, and four from 2025 that the list doesn't carry.
316
00:21:13.420 --> 00:21:17.069
That comes to 81 cases, from an Oxford dissection table
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00:21:17.329 --> 00:21:21.930
in 1650 to a Nashville gurney in September 2026, the
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00:21:22.009 --> 00:21:26.049
one in the prologue, 46 chapters and 34 shorter entries
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00:21:26.230 --> 00:21:30.339
into the interludes. Each method in these pages was brought
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00:21:30.420 --> 00:21:33.319
in to fix the one before it. The long drop
321
00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:36.769
was supposed to make hanging exact. with a fall measured
322
00:21:36.809 --> 00:21:39.559
against the prisoner's weight so the rope would break the
323
00:21:39.619 --> 00:21:44.180
neck instead of strangling. At Exeter in 1885, the trapdoor
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00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:46.960
wouldn't open under John Lee, though the lever was pulled
325
00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:51.380
again and again. In 1901, at Clayton in New Mexico Territory,
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00:21:51.720 --> 00:21:54.619
the drop took Black Jack Ketchum's head off, and the
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00:21:54.660 --> 00:21:58.400
Tribune ran the headline, Bandit's Head Jerked Off by Hangman's Rope.
328
00:21:59.480 --> 00:22:03.240
Eva Dugan's went the same way at Florence in 1930.
329
00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:06.559
And three years later, Arizona's voters made lethal gas the
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00:22:06.619 --> 00:22:14.240
state method, 14,999 to 11,585. New York's answer to the
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00:22:14.289 --> 00:22:18.950
rope was electricity. At Auburn in 1890, the first 17
332
00:22:18.950 --> 00:22:22.569
seconds didn't kill William Kemmler. And when the current went
333
00:22:22.630 --> 00:22:25.049
on again, the hair around the head electrode and the
334
00:22:25.089 --> 00:22:27.650
flesh at the base of his spine began to singe.
335
00:22:28.779 --> 00:22:33.019
In 1946, Louisiana's portable chair failed to kill Willie Francis.
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00:22:33.460 --> 00:22:35.640
and he walked out of the room. A year and
337
00:22:35.700 --> 00:22:38.759
six days later, with the Supreme Court's permission, the state
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00:22:38.819 --> 00:22:42.859
put him back in it. Ethel Rosenberg took five shocks
339
00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:47.039
at Sing Sing in 1953. After the death penalty came back,
340
00:22:47.380 --> 00:22:49.900
sparks came out of the electrode on John Evans' left
341
00:22:49.980 --> 00:22:54.509
leg in Alabama in 1983, and in Florida in 1997,
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00:22:54.509 --> 00:22:58.589
a flame rose from under Pedro Medina's headpiece. Two years later,
343
00:22:58.970 --> 00:23:01.450
Allen Lee Davis bled from under the mask in that
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00:23:01.529 --> 00:23:06.349
state's new oak chair. In January 2000, the Florida legislature
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00:23:06.630 --> 00:23:10.160
made lethal injection the state's method, and Davis is still
346
00:23:10.200 --> 00:23:15.319
the last person Florida has electrocuted. Arizona gave up rope
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00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:19.740
for gas, and Mississippi had a chamber, too. At Parchman
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00:23:19.829 --> 00:23:23.809
in 1983, Jimmy Lee Gray's head struck a steel pole
349
00:23:23.869 --> 00:23:27.049
behind his seat, and the Associated Press counted his moans.
350
00:23:28.069 --> 00:23:31.450
In 1992, Arizona used its chamber for the first time
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00:23:31.509 --> 00:23:35.019
in 29 years on Donald Harding, and a television actor
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00:23:35.059 --> 00:23:38.619
in the witness room timed 57 seconds of spasms on
353
00:23:38.660 --> 00:23:41.180
a stopwatch. I don't know who came up with this
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00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:43.720
concept of a gas chamber in the first place, the
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00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:48.099
Attorney General, Grant Woods, told the Phoenix Gazette. That November,
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00:23:48.299 --> 00:23:53.259
the state's voters replaced gas with lethal injection. Lethal injection
357
00:23:53.299 --> 00:23:56.599
went from an Oklahoma statute... to a Texas gurney in
358
00:23:56.660 --> 00:24:00.319
five years, and within a generation, every state still carrying
359
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:04.079
out executions had made it the main method. It went
360
00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:06.640
wrong in the vein, and it went wrong in the drugs.
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00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:10.880
At Lucasville in 2006, Joseph Clark lifted his head off
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00:24:10.900 --> 00:24:13.529
the gurney and said, It don't work! It don't work!
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00:24:13.589 --> 00:24:17.309
It don't work! It ain't working! In 2009, at the
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00:24:17.349 --> 00:24:21.049
same prison, Ohio's team left at least 18 puncture sites
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00:24:21.109 --> 00:24:24.589
in Rommel Broom and gave up. And in 2016, the
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00:24:24.609 --> 00:24:28.569
state's Supreme Court ruled that Ohio could try again because
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00:24:28.829 --> 00:24:33.170
jeopardy never attached. The drugs failed in their own ways.
368
00:24:34.089 --> 00:24:37.269
In 1994, the chemical Illinois was sending into John Wayne
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00:24:37.289 --> 00:24:42.299
Gacy gelled, UPI wrote, passing along the Corrections Department's explanation,
370
00:24:42.660 --> 00:24:45.740
and he was still alive about 10 minutes in. By
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00:24:45.779 --> 00:24:49.890
January 2014, Ohio had run out of pentobarbital. and he
372
00:24:49.930 --> 00:24:52.990
gave Dennis McGuire a combination no one in the country
373
00:24:53.009 --> 00:24:56.509
had used to kill a prisoner. For at least 10 minutes,
374
00:24:56.730 --> 00:25:01.299
he gasped and choked. That April, Oklahoma used midazolam for
375
00:25:01.319 --> 00:25:03.880
the first time on Clayton Lockett with a sheet over
376
00:25:03.900 --> 00:25:06.720
the needle in his groin. The state's Department of Public
377
00:25:06.759 --> 00:25:10.099
Safety found afterward that no one had been watching the IV.
378
00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:14.299
In July, at Florence, Michael Kiefer of the Arizona Republic
379
00:25:14.579 --> 00:25:19.329
counted about 640 gasps from Joseph Wood. Then, starting with
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00:25:19.450 --> 00:25:22.759
Alva Campbell in Ohio in 2017, what had happened to
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00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:26.980
Broom kept happening. The needle failed before any lethal drug
382
00:25:27.019 --> 00:25:29.759
went in, and the prisoner was unstrapped and sent back
383
00:25:29.799 --> 00:25:34.660
to his cell. Ohio, Alabama, and Idaho did that to
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00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:38.900
five men in seven years. And in May 2026, Tennessee
385
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:44.400
did it to Tony Carruthers. Alabama turned to nitrogen. On
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00:25:44.450 --> 00:25:48.319
January 25th, 2024, it put a mask on Kenneth Smith,
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00:25:48.740 --> 00:25:52.119
whom it had failed to execute by injection 14 months earlier,
388
00:25:52.740 --> 00:25:55.619
and the witnesses watched him shake and writhe on the
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00:25:55.660 --> 00:25:58.599
gurney for at least two minutes. The next morning, the
390
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:02.109
state's Attorney General, Steve Marshall, said, what occurred last night
391
00:26:02.589 --> 00:26:07.529
was textbook. Louisiana took up the method in 2025, and
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00:26:07.569 --> 00:26:10.990
in October of that year, Lee Hedgepath, an independent journalist
393
00:26:11.049 --> 00:26:15.769
in Alabama's Witness Room, counted more than 225 heaving breaths
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00:26:16.130 --> 00:26:22.220
from Anthony Boyd. The other answer was older. In 1879,
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00:26:22.220 --> 00:26:26.119
Utah's firing squad left Wallace Wilkerson crying out that they
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00:26:26.160 --> 00:26:29.670
had missed the mark, and he took 27 minutes to die.
397
00:26:30.589 --> 00:26:35.029
In April 2025, South Carolina's squad fired three rifles at
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00:26:35.089 --> 00:26:39.839
McCall Mottie, and the autopsy found two entrance wounds, not three.
399
00:26:41.809 --> 00:26:47.829
where the methods stood in October 2026. Alabama had used
400
00:26:47.970 --> 00:26:52.250
nitrogen more than any other state. Before Anthony Boyd went
401
00:26:52.289 --> 00:26:55.390
to the gurney, he asked to be shot instead, and
402
00:26:55.410 --> 00:27:00.549
the Supreme Court said no. Justice Sotomayor, dissenting, counted seven
403
00:27:00.589 --> 00:27:05.470
people already executed that way. Afterward, the state's corrections commissioner,
404
00:27:05.529 --> 00:27:09.069
John Hamm, said of Boyd's execution, it was within the protocol,
405
00:27:09.569 --> 00:27:14.250
but it has been the longest. In June 2026, the
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00:27:14.289 --> 00:27:18.519
federal judge barred Alabama from using nitrogen to execute Jeffrey Lee,
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00:27:18.940 --> 00:27:22.859
ruling that the protocol was cruel and unusual punishment. The
408
00:27:23.220 --> 00:27:26.299
11th Circuit agreed, and the Supreme Court refused to let
409
00:27:26.339 --> 00:27:30.950
the execution go ahead, with three justices dissenting. In September,
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00:27:30.990 --> 00:27:36.990
the state executed Lee by lethal injection instead. Louisiana had
411
00:27:37.029 --> 00:27:41.009
a nitrogen protocol, written in February 2025, and had used
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00:27:41.049 --> 00:27:45.779
it on Jesse Hoffman at Angola. Its corrections secretary, Gary Westcott,
413
00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:51.380
said afterward it went flawless. South Carolina was executing again
414
00:27:51.579 --> 00:27:54.640
after 13 years under its secrecy law with the needle,
415
00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:57.440
the chair, and the firing squad all on its books.
416
00:27:58.680 --> 00:28:02.740
After Marion Bowman's autopsy recorded 10 grams of penobarbital, a
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00:28:02.779 --> 00:28:06.140
federal defender asked the state Supreme Court to find out
418
00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:10.230
whether the drugs were expired, diluted, or spoiled, and the
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00:28:10.269 --> 00:28:14.630
court let the next execution go ahead. Arizona's gas chamber
420
00:28:14.690 --> 00:28:19.599
still stood at Florence. Florida had executed by injection since 2000,
421
00:28:19.599 --> 00:28:22.240
and had left the chair as a choice a prisoner
422
00:28:22.259 --> 00:28:27.759
could make. Tennessee was still using pentobarbital alone. After Carruthers,
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00:28:27.859 --> 00:28:30.940
Governor Bill Lee said the Department of Correction did exactly
424
00:28:31.019 --> 00:28:34.369
what they should, and that the protocol itself still stands
425
00:28:34.549 --> 00:28:38.750
as it should. By October, after the failed execution and
426
00:28:38.769 --> 00:28:42.000
the prologue, the governor had ordered an outside review and
427
00:28:42.039 --> 00:28:46.460
taken the last execution off the state's calendar for 2026,
428
00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:48.829
and the head of the state's prison system had announced
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00:28:49.029 --> 00:28:53.710
his resignation. The one-year reprieve he gave Carruthers runs to
430
00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:59.710
May 21, 2027. Under a law passed in March 2025,
431
00:28:59.710 --> 00:29:05.069
the firing squad became Idaho's primary method on July 1, 2026,
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00:29:05.069 --> 00:29:09.390
making Idaho the first state to do so. Thomas Creech
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00:29:09.849 --> 00:29:13.309
whom Idaho's team had failed to execute by injection in
434
00:29:13.349 --> 00:29:17.809
February 2024, was still on death row in Kuna with
435
00:29:17.869 --> 00:29:21.539
no date, and the statute says any new warrant will
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00:29:21.559 --> 00:29:24.460
be carried out by rifle if the department certifies the
437
00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:29.440
squad is ready. After the first attempt, Preach said he
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00:29:29.519 --> 00:29:35.200
still woke up back on the table. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.
439
00:29:35.400 --> 00:29:38.819
That's the end of my book, Botched Executions. If you
440
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:41.950
like what I've been sharing, I'd greatly appreciate you purchasing
441
00:29:41.990 --> 00:29:44.859
the book itself and then leaving a rating and review
442
00:29:45.019 --> 00:29:47.329
on Amazon to let others know what you thought of it.
443
00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:50.440
That really helps others to discover the book more than
444
00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:53.259
you might think. And if you would prefer the audiobook,
445
00:29:53.819 --> 00:29:55.720
you won't have to wait very long. It should be
446
00:29:55.759 --> 00:29:58.720
available to purchase on Amazon and Audible in a couple
447
00:29:58.759 --> 00:30:04.390
of days. To grab the book, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions.
448
00:30:04.829 --> 00:30:09.690
That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Botched Executions. For all of the books
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00:30:09.710 --> 00:30:12.359
that I've written, as well as the ones being released soon,
450
00:30:12.839 --> 00:30:15.420
visit WeirdDarkness.com slash books.
