Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Firing Squad Execution FAIL, From 5 Yards Away

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

Mikal Mahdi was just 21-years-old when he began a crime spree that spanned four states and included two murders. One of the victims was James Myers, a 56-year-old Police Captain with the Orangeburg Public Safety Department in South Carolina. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the crime spree and the murders that landed Mahdi a date with the executioners and how the firing squad, that seemed like such a good idea compared to other methods of death, didn't work out as planned.  Did three shooters ALL miss the mark on Mikal Mahdi or was the "mark" misplaced? Transcript  Highlights00:02.40 Introduction 01:13.17 A botched execution  05:18.91 Mikal Mahdi killed South Carolina Public Safety Officer James Myers in 2004 10:08.71 Mikal Mahdi ended writhing in pain while strapped to a chair 14:40.64 French Guillotine - used as a deterrent 19:55.79 Electrocution of Ted Bundy 25:05.72 Prison Employees volunteer to carry out execution  30:15.15 Three shooters, two bullet holes, not one heart hit 35:10.71 Static Target from 5 yards away 39:48.66 Was this a "botched execution"? 45:02.64 Was the "marker" misplaced? 47:02.47 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. If given the task, could we do it? There's so many people out there that say that they would do it. But yet there's a very small, and I mean very small, percentage of people that have actually ever done it. What I'm talking about is, let's see, what are some of the euphemistic terms? Pulling the switch, pressing the button, or in our case today, pulling the trigger. Today we're going to talk about an execution that recently took place in the state of South Carolina.

Now Brother Dave and I have talked about executions in the past, but this one is of particular interest to me. So, let's explore what happens and what failed to happen in what some are calling a botched execution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. 15 feet, Dave. That's all that separates the end of a muzzle from a static target strapped to a chair. 15 feet, let's see, that's five yards. Being an old high school football player, I always measure things in yards because I can visualize that from being on a playing field. So it's weird. I think, uh, for many people, particularly those that deal in the metric system on a regular basis, but that's a conversation for another day.

But for me, you know, I'm thinking five yards away, that's not very far. And to be handed a weapon and be told that at the other end, only a five-yard shot with a long-barreled weapon that is rifled hit this target. And boy, did things take a bad turn in South Carolina. We're dealing with the execution of Mikel Motti. This is a man who actually wrote in a letter for his attorneys to share, I'm guilty as hell. What I've done is irredeemable. That is directly from the subject of today. Mikkel Motti was on a crime spree. He's 21 years old. He starts off in Virginia. He ends up in North Carolina where he steals a vehicle and he actually kills a clerk. He then heads down to South Carolina where he tries to use a credit card to get gas in his vehicle. And he spends like 45 minutes trying to do it.

And it's not working because the credit card is not any good. Well, the clerk calls cops. Hey, man, there's a guy out here trying to get some gas and whatever. And so they show up and there's a bit of a, you know, they some gas and whatever. And so they show up and there's a bit of a, uh, you know, they're, they're after this guy, uh, Mikkel Motti ends up at a farm area, not like a corn farm or, you know, cotton or whatever, but farmland that had been purchased by a couple as their piece of heaven on earth, you know, area a little pond and things and there's this shed that they had built on this property it was a it was a big deal for them because they'd only the couple only been married 15 months joe 15 months and i'm thinking this is just too cool

for school and they get married in front of the shed that they had built and uh that's where Mikkel Motti ran into the actual real victim of this case, Jim Myers, a 56-year-old officer of the law. Yeah. Mikkel Motti shot him at least eight times, probably more, and then poured diesel fuel over his body and set him on fire. That is what Mikkel Motti admitted to, and that's why he was sentenced to death. So yeah, I found this interesting because, you know, most of the time you, you have to, um, you know, if you've got somebody involved in something like this, the fact that he admitted to it, um, you, I think that many people believe and wrongly believe that for some reason you're going to be shown a level of mercy. Maybe he was thinking about that by the courts that

maybe he'd only be looking at potentially life in prison or something. But I got to tell you, this guy is a police officer and yeah, he's off duty, not just police officer, he's captain and had had a long career. You know, he's like in his mid fifties. Yeah. He's 56 years old, Joe. Yeah. And can you imagine you've lived this life? You've been away from your family at night working third watch. And I'm just thinking about this guy's life, you know, now looking back, you know, he's worked time away from his family. He's probably missed ball games and dance recitals and everything else that comes along that we always talk about. And then you get to this kind of bucolic place where just over the horizon,

you can see that you're finally going to be able to, to hang up, uh, your badge and celebrate, um, newfound love and maybe even peace. And then this descends upon you. Out of all the people in the world that this perpetrator could have shown up on the doorstep of, it's this guy. And this is arguably just an absolute brutal example of overkill of an individual. Why would you feel compelled to do this? And there's an interesting point that you brought up, Dave. You used the term frenzy with this individual, that his sole focus is to get from point A to point B. And you really wonder, because so many people, and you know I hate the why question, I think more importantly, what was his end game?

Was he just going to descend upon us like the angel of death or the black plague and wipe out as many people as he could? Where are you going to go at that point in time? I'm always fascinated in a general sort of way about these people that do this sort of thing. It's always amazing to me. And can I back up just for a second? You had mentioned North Carolina with this clerk. And again, the perpetrator in this case was not put to death or had not been sentenced to be executed regarding the event in South, in North Carolina.

But I have kids that I teach, okay, that work in convenience stores. And for my money, for my money, it is one of the most dangerous jobs aside from like food delivery, this sort of thing where you don't know who's going to be walking in the door. And, you know, police officers actually refer to convenience stores many times as stop and robs. That's what they'll refer to it because they're they're easy targets. And there's so many of these cases out there where convenience store workers have been killed. I don't know. It's not a job I would take, per se. I guess you've got a lot of time to study. You can hang out behind the counter and study. But Dave, you never know what's going to walk through the door. You know, it's shocking to me as well, Joe, that, uh, I look at, I look at people who work, the people who actually punch a time clock working at a convenience store or whatever

they have, uh, I just respect them so much. I really do, especially when they're going to school because I had to do that too. When I went to school, I had to work and those who punch a time clock and are, they're just doing what they have to do to get by, to get to the next level. I just think it's a great example. And too often we dismiss it. We throw that off at the side, but it's like those jobs you do like working at a convenience store as a clerk, regardless of the danger, it is a step to someplace else. It's not the end all. It's not where you plan on being when you're in college at 20 to be in that same place 20 years from now. It's a job that is done to get you to the next

stop in your life. And that's when I look at this guy. He's only 21 when he commits this crime, these crimes, plural. I don't know what he was doing, Joe. I don't know what his plan was when he woke up July 14th, 2004. We're talking about, you know, in this show about a botched execution, the victim is not the victim. You know, technically he is in this story, but I couldn't write it, Joe. I could not put victim next to this man's name. He was a victimizer who was paying his debt to society, which had been your life. Got to give it up. And anyway, I don't living somewhere in some palace.

OK, they don't. They've given everything that they can get. I mean, they both wind up, you know, giving their lives, you know, to the appetite of this monster. But I can tell you this. The monster that all the way back in the early 2000s that committed both of these crimes, he had a day of reckoning and a day where his life ended with apparent awareness of his death,

writhing in pain while strapped to a chair. There was a, there's a running joke in, in my family. I think it was my daughter that, you know, this term was, you know, kind of used a lot when she was a young teenager and it kind of got adopted by our family. And if one of us screwed up something, Lexi, my daughter, would say, way to go, dad. You're ruining it for everybody. And we would say that to one another all the way around. And it's a comical remark. It's generally said in jest and that sort of thing. But, Dave, what happened in that execution chamber is literally an example, I think at least, as far as capital punishment is concerned, of individuals ruining it for everybody. Let's, you know, the thing, the thing that's so distasteful, I think for a lot of people is someone has to stand up and, you know, like I'd mentioned earlier, you know, flip the lever, push the button, pull the trigger. And we have always, I think, tried to, and the execution process has kind of evolved in our country, capital punishment has, where individuals are seeking to do it as humanely as they possibly can. You know, and years ago, you know, you had judicial hangings.

And, you know, there were botched hangings, but the lion's share of the hangings that occurred were successful. Okay. And I'm talking about on the first drop, but you can't imagine. I think that a lot of people can't imagine seeing someone that is suspended in the air by their neck and they're flipping around. that for many people that's very distasteful can i ask you something very quickly yeah sure all right when i was a child i didn't know when you hang that the goal of hanging somebody was you know to snap their neck as they fell i thought that it was to strangle them i really did i thought like they put the noose on and pretty much just with their hands tied behind their back pulled them up until they died from you know their neck being strangled you know by the rope i didn't know

that it was a mathematical thing where they had you know took the weight height and everything else into consideration when they determined where where the noose needed to be fashioned and how and all that so that when that individual dropped, the neck would snap and it would be very quick. I didn't know that. Yeah. It didn't always happen that way, but I didn't know that. That was the whole point.

And it had been literally perfected over a period of time where there was a formula that was applied to this. But, you know, if you go back to Noah, my son, he said, I urge you to sit down and watch the movie Napoleon with me. And the thing with Joaquin Phoenix that came out, I thought it was pretty good. It's beautifully filmed. And you watch this thing being played out. And during that period of time, they had developed a guillotine. And the guillotine was regarded as like the perfect killing machine. The French were even using it. I think there's a wood carving or a lithograph. I can't remember what it is of the last guillotining that took place in France. I think it was in the 1920s. And it's like looking over a wall. And these were spectacles. You know, as time went by, they had tried to prevent the public from actually seeing it. And, you know, they viewed it back then, as I think a lot of the ancestors did, as it's not just getting rid of the individual and making them punished for this or punishing them for what they've done, their acts. But it was also a matter of deterrence, because if it happens in a vacuum, you're, you know, people don't really believe that it happened or they don't see it

it doesn't like in ingrain in their memory and of course that memory is passed on to the rest of the family you know if you have a family that is represented by one individual that one individual is going to go back to their family and say you're not going to believe what i just saw and this is a price that is paid i watched watched it. I watched them walk them out. I watched them strap them to a pole or, you know, make them kneel before a guillotine or whatever the case might be. And that information is passed on. people from that person's family present to witness this, that one individual goes back, set forth like a little sailing ship, just, you know, setting out this information individual saying, man, it ain't worth whatever it is that you want to do to lose your life over. This was horrific. We've lost that.

That doesn't exist anymore. That's, that's kind of why, that's kind of why capital punishment is not truly in its pure sense, not an effective deterrent because, you know, they go into a blockhouse. Yeah. When did they stop doing it in public, Joe? I mean, and why? Well, in the early 1900s, early 20th century, you had individuals that I think up until the early 1900s, you had public executions by hanging. I don't know much about firing squads in the U.S. I know that they did exist, but there was something that took place in the American mind where, yeah, we knew that we were going to send people away to prisons. We knew that they were there, but it was too, I don't know if it was Victorian

sensibilities or Edwardian sensibilities that, you know, that changed the mindset of people where they did not want to observe the horror of it. And let's face it, early 1900s were brutal. You think about World War I and how brutal it was. People had had enough death. They didn't want to see it. Now, they didn't want monsters walking on the street either. And so I think that it was at that point in time where they kind of covered, concealed this. Look, the first place I ever did autopsies, Dave, on a regular basis was inside of a jail. The morgue was actually inside the parish jail.

And guess what sat on the site of literally right where the morgue was prior to the morgue being there? The parish gallows. So even at a county level back then, a parish is the same as counties, there were gallows there. And I think that they had done a public execution. I think the last one, my history is getting jumbled, but I think it was like in the 1870s or something. So it's always been kind of part and parcel of what happens here in our judicial system. People don't agree with it, and that's okay not to agree with it. I have my questions as well, but if you're going to do it, if you're going to do it, there is a level of exactitude

that has to be in place with your process, who's going to handle the weapons, how this thing is orchestrated, because those that want to make execution more efficient and humane, all it takes is for one screw up and everybody else is going to have to pay the price relative to this. And then you're going to go searching for another methodology. We've come through so many now. I mean, let's just think about it. California used to have a gas chamber. That doesn't exist anymore.

Cruel and unusual. I got to admit, it's kind of harsh, all right? You think about the gallows, and that's not something that we've seen. One of the things that people thought was going to answer this question and make it humane is, is, is actually something that, um, that Thomas Edison had a hand in and that's the creation of the electric chair. We used it for years and years, but there are all these horrible mishaps, uh, that occurred along the way where it was, what they were using was not necessarily sufficient to the need. And if you want to see the brutality of what happens with electrocution, as horrible as Ted Bundy was, go look at his postmortem images and you'll see how scored his scalp is. And there are all of these stories. Some of them might be a bit apocryphal, but there are all these stories about people catching fire. I'm not saying that capital

punishment is wrong. I'm just saying the problem is that you don't know how any one event is going to direct how the rest of the country is going to go. We get away from the electric chair and suddenly they think that we've got the perfect thing. We're going to use lethal injection. Well, how are you going to facilitate this if you can't get the drugs and you have to have the right combination of drugs and you've got drug companies that won't sell you the drugs. And then there's horror stories with that. And people can't bear watching it. So isn't it funny how now we've kind of come full circle back to a methodology that I know we've covered at least one other case so far.

We've come full circle back to a methodology involving firearms, where an individual is tied, anchored to a fixed object, in this case, in South Carolina, a chair. And you literally have a firing squad where, you know, they're going to send lead core projectiles downrange to pierce your body and unfortunately the problem is is that some people apparently can't shoot straight 308 Winchester. It is arguably one of the most storied rounds of ammunition in American history.

It's existed. The.30 caliber rifle round has existed forever and ever. I've mentioned this before, but it, it bears, you know, repeating that most of the stuff that we use in the civilian world, as far as firearms go, it evolved out of the utility that the military had. And we've got several permutations of the 30 caliber round or approximately 30 caliber that go all the way back to, I think probably the most significant is probably 30-06 that was used. And there's been several iterations along the way, and we landed on 308. Again, that designation for people that don't understand calibers, which can be confusing. This is the old British system, 308.

It essentially measures out the circumference of the round. That is, how big a round is this particular round. So if you think about it, it's 0.308 inches. And that round in particular is still in use today around the world, even in our military, 308. You know, you think about the old M14 platform, which, you know, still we use a variant of M14 in the military because many special ops personnel prefer this round over 5.56 or the 223 caliber because it's more robust. It really packs a wallop. But this is where South Carolina landed. They landed on 308 Winchester. And the way their executions are set up, this is strictly a voluntary program where if you're part of the correctional system, and I don't mean as an inmate, but I mean as an employee, apparently they have, and they haven't really explained it.

They keep some of the stuff veiled. You have three volunteers that step up and they become the executioners. And so they went a long way to kind of perfect, I guess, or try to account for any kind of problems that might arise in an execution. Built out or redesigned what's referred to as the death house. They've sent out one photo of this thing and it is actually the chair that you can see uh that the individuals are strapped to and then i guess it's kind of hearkening back to the past they brought in the their electric chair and there's a picture of it so you've got the uh firing squad chair there that's facing i would assume toward the wall. Because if you look behind the veil, you can see what appears to be clay stacked up there or maybe sandbags that's behind a black curtain. And then you've got the electric chair that's literally you're

staring at. So that's the image that they've put out. And it's a very tight space dave that's that's one of the things about this that when this round if people out there have not heard a 308 round being discharged this thing would rattle your cage if you've got three of them going off just the reverberation of the sound in this environment it's not not like firing off a.22 caliber, which is very small. It would really get your attention, but this is a very confined space. And I'm really amazed by this. I'm fascinated by this because, you know, you think about the old idea of a firing squad. I think about the Kubrick movie, Paths of of glory, uh, uh, with Kirk Douglas and they

marched the guys out. They're strapped to a post, they're blindfolded and you've got a whole line of soldiers, one line kneeling in front, other standing in the back and they're firing at it. Like in this thing, it looks like they're firing at a distance. They were only talking about 15 feet, five yards, man. That's a very, very small range of fire, Joe. And the reason we're actually spending time on it today is because even though it is only 5 yards, 15 feet, there was a problem with this execution. There was a problem.

Now, did they have – I'm going to ask you because I'm curious. I thought that when an execution was done by firing squad that several people were dummies or they were firing blanks pretty much that you had, say, 10 people of which two or three had live action and the rest were not. And so that nobody knew exactly who did the killing, because that seems to be a consideration. Apparently that's not the way South Carolina is doing this. Everybody fires. And these people have practiced as well. I would think so, Joe.

And 15 feet is from, you know, nothing. I mean, that's not a first down in football. This is a very short distance. It's nothing, you know, you're not cracking off a shot from a thousand yards here. And what, what's really interesting, Dave, is that, you know, I mentioned the, the 308 Winchester round. This is fired through a rifled barrel. Okay. Now they don't say whether or not the rifles are scoped. I would think personally that having at a range of five yards, which is just very elemental, I think that a scope would probably impede your ability to fire accurately at that short of a distance.

You'd be much better off with iron sights. We are dealing with experts. We're not dealing with people who are trying to pass their class to get a certification to fire a weapon. Yeah, I don't know what the qualification is other than being a volunteer with a correction system. And, you know, I've met some people that work within the correction system and they are many times those individuals are the most. A few, not all, but they've been the most ardent anti capital punish people that you come around, because when you live in an environment with people day in and day out, you know, it really humanizes them. It's easy for us on the outside

to say, yeah, well, we need to execute this guy. We need to put him away and he never should breathe any more free air. Matter of fact, he shouldn't breathe any air at all. We're going to end his life. But they've chosen or have volunteers that have come up out of this. Corrections officers, tough job. One of the toughest jobs that you can have because you're going into a lockdown situation every single day. I would suffocate. There is no way I could do that job. But because you're a corrections officer does not make you an expert with a weapon. You know, I'm thinking, you know, in the state of state of South Carolina,

one place that actually produces some of the greatest marksmen in the world is right down the road in Parris Island, South Carolina, the United States Marine Corps Depot down there, Parris Island. You know, and you could, Marine Corps depot down there, Parris Island. I'm thinking that probably somebody in recruit training, even when they get toward the end of it, they would fare much better under these circumstances as far as accuracy goes. I don't know how much train up these corrections officers have had. Did somebody get nervous? But the big thing here, Dave, is that what we're being told is that out of three shooters, you've only got two defects or bullet holes in the body. And I don't see how in the world you could have missed, which is, I think, one of the big questions.

And not only miss, but even the two that entered the body were not center mass shots that took out the heart, which is their rationale in this particular case is that if you can go in and these rounds, the.308, it's called a, what was it called again? It's an urban, this particular type of ammo is a, it's like an urban ammunition, 110-ground TAP urban ammunition. And just so we understand what happens, when that round strikes, Dave, it's not to be, it's not a through and through round. You're not looking, it's not like what you would hunt deer with necessarily. You're talking about something that because they're talking, there's an urban designation on this. The idea is that this is like a police sniper round that goes in. The projectile actually fragments upon impact, and it sends these little shards through the body. And what happens is if you're aiming center mass of the heart, so if everybody will find their sternum and move just slightly,

it's not all the way over as far as you can go on the left side of the body, just find your sternum, that flat bone right in the center of your chest. Move over about an inch, and you're right on top of your heart. It's inferior to where your sternum is, the sternoclavicular notch up there. Just go down about two or three inches, and then over to the left slightly, and you're right on target. Dave, they missed that area with a rifle round. From five yards away, Joe, 15 feet, the only other person with any kind of marksman experience that could miss that shot would be Lee Harvey Oswald. I mean, that's about it.

Everybody else is going to hit something. But in this case, we have three shooters or three bullets coming towards the subject. And you only have two that they can say definitively entered, two of the bullets entered this man's body. And they did not enter in the heart did they not like draw an x at the circle around it you know mark well here's here's one of the things that we're hearing uh there's actually a marker that is placed on the body

and again they haven't demonstrated to us in the public what this marker looks like. Okay. I've seen, you know, it's generally portrayed. Well, it's portrayed. Actually, I think I've seen newsreels with this from World War II where they're executing war crimes people. Most of those were executed by hanging, but there are some. And you'll see there's like a white patch of cloth that is pinned approximating the heart. Okay. You know where it is. And there's actually a physician there. Think about it. You've got a physician there that has a stethoscope. My question is, is the physician involved in placement of the patch? And I know that some people might say, well, that would violate the Hippocratic Oath. You know,

well, I don't think that it would. As a matter of fact, I think it's an extension of mercy because if you know that this is going to happen, there's nothing you can do about it. So if you zero in on that area, you have a physician or nurse that's standing there with a stethoscope that can actually appreciate and locate the exact location of the heart. And they say, okay, guys, put the patch right here. All right. No, no question about it at this point in time. But there has been comment. There have been comments made that would indicate that the patch was misplaced. But even even if it is misplaced. To I would assume to the left, like further away from the heart. Then you're still even in that location,

I can't imagine out of the three shooters you're going to have what's referred to as a flyer. And if you ever go to the range, and particularly with handguns, people will have flyers every now and then. And that means that when you fire, you have a bullet or projectile that completely misses the target. You rarely see that at a range of five yards. I know in law enforcement, I qualified twice a year with handgun and five yards, I think, no, we have a three yard range as well, but five yards is really nothing. If you're shooting center mass, which you're taught to do center mass at a static target, this guy's static. He ain't moving anywhere.

Okay. And so you have a weapon that is meant to, um, hit the target at long range. It's high velocity. I'm failing to understand what happened. What's fascinating about this, Dave, is that the coroner for this particular county, and this happens, I've been involved in autopsies involving executed individuals, the coroner in this particular county is assigned to request the examination of the dead. This is a homicide, okay? There's no other way. You know, you and I have spent a lot of time recently talking about manner and cause of death. There's no other way you can classify this, okay, this is a homicide. Even though it's state-sanctioned, this is a homicide. So in most states, if you have a violent homicide like this, it's required that you do an autopsy.

And there's another reason you need to do it on somebody that is dying at the hands of state. It's going to be thorough. It's the most thorough autopsy you've ever seen. I mean, places in the body are dissected that we would not normally do. It takes a long time to conduct one of these autopsies. But apparently, the pathologist that did the autopsy on this case opined that two of the rounds entered the body at the same spot. Okay. Now I've seen this happen by an individual firing at close range with a handgun. Um, and they score two hits in the same defect.

And it's pretty, you can still delineate it. Sometimes they're not perfectly matched up, but you've got a physician that's saying, a pathologist that's saying that, no, no, no, we've got two rounds that enter the same location, and we've got a second one, you know, that is off by itself. The problem is, is that they don't go into a lot of descriptors as to what organ systems were impacted. I can only assume that perhaps the lung, the left lung, and it has been implied at least that the heart was clipped in some way by one of these rounds, but it was not to the point where death was instantaneous. Because what the report is, is that as soon as the order was given for the squad to fire, simultaneously witnesses stated that this guy being executed screamed out simultaneously as he's not screaming out in pain at that moment. Tom, he is screaming out.

OK, and he is shot. Well, about 40 seconds later. They heard him moan. Okay. Most of the time with an execution where somebody has shot center mass into the heart, they're not going to make another move. They're dead. That's the efficiency of firing squats. Okay. That's not what happened. 40 seconds later, they heard him moan and approximating a total of 70 seconds after the actual shooting, he's heard to kind of whimper again and then dies. That's not what you want in an execution. You want this thing to be sudden and swift and merciful. And I know people are saying, well, he doesn't deserve mercy.

I understand that. But the argument here is the following. If a group of people screw this up, then you're going to be out walking around the weeds looking for another means of execution. I mean, what are we going to do? We're going back to the guillotine now? You know, because this case, Dave, and there's already been a lawsuit filed, and we'll talk about that in just a second. This case, from now on, regarding capital punishment, is going to be cited, okay? It'll be cited as being cruel and unusual. All right. So it's the idea. It's the idea of these individuals not doing their job effectively. And that's that's problematic. The family retained the services of a fellow that I personally met that I've known. Matter of fact, I think he was actually in to become the chief medical examiner in Atlanta.

That's how I met him. And I was working there. His name's Jonathan Arden. And he was a medical examiner with the office of chief medical examiner in New York. I think he was in Washington, D.C. as well. Two major offices. And this guy is really, he's really sharp, a hell of a nice guy, and very proficient at what he does. But you know, Dave, he actually stated, he got to review all of these materials. And the big thing about it is this.

He said that there were no x-rays done. The detail in the autopsy with the wound tracks was not, to his way of thinking, was not sufficiently described, and they didn't examine the clothing. Now, you don't examine the clothing on a gunfire-related death. You're going to skew your data. Okay? There's no mention of it, according to Dr. Arden.

What's the purpose for doing the clothing? Well, okay, let's just prisoners do, you know, having an orange jumpsuits or scrub tops or whatever, that clothing, from a forensic standpoint, is like another layer of skin. Okay. So, and this could apply to knife wounds as well, but when you fire through it, it will be another indicator of point of impact relative to around. And you haven't examined the clothing? I mean, that's like forensic pathology 101. one, you know, before you actually ever strip the body down, you're going to take detailed photographs of everything that the person was wearing while they're still wearing it. Okay. And you, to try to orient everything. Okay. And then you said no x-rays. Why not take, you're doing an autopsy. Why not do x-rays? I don't understand that. And here's, here's another thing that comes in with

the 308 round. What did I say earlier? And you had actually reminded me of this. This is not like my revelation here. You actually had, it's a fragmented round. Um, and you know, the beauty of fragmented rounds that are demonstrated on x-ray, it's, it's shocking. You know, when you see this, Because when you open up a body, all right, just so folks understand, when you open up a body and it's been greatly traumatized, you're going to see a mass of hemorrhage, pooled blood, ripped tissue, all those sorts of things. X-rays cut through all of that. You don't see that mass hemorrhage. What you see, particularly with a fragmented round, which is the intention of this urban

round that you will see a little lead storm. And it will be, if the bullet acts like it does, not all bullets, it's just like hollow points. All hollow points don't necessarily deploy. Sometimes they'll just pass right through the body. all bullets. It's just like hollow points. All hollow points don't necessarily deploy. Okay. Sometimes they'll just pass right through the body. The hope is that it will deploy and it doesn't exit out and harm somebody else. That's the point of the sniper round. So if you shoot somebody and they're in a window and they're holding hostages, you want the round to wind up in their body and not penetrate the body, but you want to kill them so that none of

the hostages get hurt. It doesn't pass through another wall and into another home or somebody, bystander or something like that. The x-ray here is mind-blowing or the absence of it. And Arden makes reference to that. He also makes reference to the idea that out of all of his years of doing autopsies, and I can tell you, his count is huge. All right. He has, it's such a rare occurrence that you would have two rounds go through the same defect in the body. You know, it's a real head scratcher, you know, as far as I guess, as far as Dr. Arden is concerned. Can I ask you something though, Joe? Yeah, man.

If there are two, again, marksmen, all three are, I'm going to assume they are marksmen, that these are good shots, even though it is only five yards away, I'm going to assume they've done their homework and these three cats are, we don't have to worry about them hitting the target, but to have two bullets go into the same track that means that all three of them missed the mark and that two of them missed the mark in the exact same spot i would buy it more if they were in the right spot that there were two going in there that would make a whole lot more sense to me than missing yeah we come back to this idea of placement of the marker was was the marker misplaced and they happened to hit the same spot through the marker and because of the

anatomical disorientation here you know um, you happen to have two really good shots that were off target. And that's, you know, that's, that's hugely problematic here because you, you want to be able to, I think at the end of the day, that people that do research on these sorts of things, as gruesome as it is, but it is, it's something that we study. You begin to think about effectiveness of rounds that are being utilized for a variety of different purposes. In this case, ending the life of a cop killer who took this poor man out in the shed that he and his new wife had built with their hands, shoots him eight, nine times, saturates his body in diesel

fuel, and sets him on fire. Well, the problem I think arises is that to me, in one way, your lack of preparedness and your lack of attention to detail dishonors his memory. Just think about that just for a second. Because you cannot be efficient enough to be counted upon to do your job. That 70 seconds that this individual lived after the shooting could be 70 seconds that might change the way we all view capital punishment. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.