Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Nitrogen Execution Experiment

Episode Date: February 4, 2024

Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack will tell the story of a murder and why the man convicted of the murder will be put to death in a very unique way. Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett. Pastor Charles Sennett recruited Billy Gray Williams to kill his wife Elizabeth and Williams hired John Forrest Parker and Kenneth Eugene Smith to carry out the murder. A week after the murder the Charles Sennett confessed to his family then shot himself in the head. Williams, Parker, and Smith were arrested and charged and convicted. Williams was sentenced to life and died in prison in 2020. Parker and Smith were sentenced to death. Parker was executed by lethal injection in 2010. Smith was scheduled to be executed in November of 2022 but the execution team was unable to connect the intravenous lines before time ran out. After much debate, the state agreed not to try lethal injection again on Smith but would instead use a method of execution, Nitrogen Hypoxia. Joseph Scott Morgan will explain what it is and why it is being tried for the first time...ever.    Transcript Highlights   00:02:29 Joe talks about travel  00:05:55 Talk Investigation of murder  00:06:41 Talk about experience as death investigator  00:08:37 Discuss sharing PTSD  00:12:18 Talk about nitrogen   00:14:21 Discussion Death Penalty  00:18:56 Talk about execution used to be public   00:21:30 Discussion about new method  00:23:13 Talk about the Crime   00:25:51 Talk Murder-for-Hire plot  00:27:31 Discussion public execution  00:30:24 Talk about the debate to come  00:35:17 Discussion Is there a “best way” to kill somebody  00:38:22 Talk about assisted suicide See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I've had the good fortune over a number of years now to travel back and forth to London. And every time I go to London, I make it a point to visit the Tower of London and for any number of reasons I like to see you know I like to see the history that's there because oh my gosh it's extensive I like to see the changing of the guards I do like to see the bee feeders as well and I don't mean Jen it's uh you know the guys that actually guard the Tower of London many people don't realize that it's still a residence. It's a royal residence.

But, you know, it's got a long history. And that's truly an understatement on my part. I am no historian, but I am a fan of history. But one of the things that stands out there is that when you make your way through their museum on those grounds, you come across something that you didn't expect to see. And that is an executioner's chopping block. It's behind glass. And it looks exactly like you think that it would. Large, big, very dark piece of wood, hand-hewn.

And it's kind of a cupped-out area on the very top of it, where, of course, the condemned would rest their heads. And then the person wielding either an axe or sword. Many times they brought in swordsmen from France because they were apparently the best at this, would proceed to lop that individual's head off there in the courtyard of the Tower of London for everybody to see.

It went on for a long, long time. Of course, they don't have executions any longer in Great Britain, but here in America, we still do. And there's any number of ways that the goals of Alabama that took place on the 25th of January by unique method nitrogen gas I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body balance Dave, I was chatting with my wife about doing this episode today, and she had suggested that I speak to the idea of an experience that I had when I was still a death investigator, where I was having panic attacks all the time. And it signaled the end of my career. I thought I was always having

a heart attack. And what came along with those panic attacks, other than the crushing chest pain that I had, and no, I didn't have a heart attack, was my inability to catch my breath. And I often felt like the proverbial fish on the dock out of water. You know that there's air, but yet you try to take it in, but you're shallow breathing. And I always, you know, I'd get this idea of these gills, you know, kind of moving like you see a fish on a deck. And when I heard about this method that the state of Alabama was going to employ relative to execution, it really, it kind of stopped me for a moment and made me think back to cases I've had as a death investigator, which we can get into, uh, particularly those involving,

um, individuals that read the book, what's referred to as final exit. And for me, I, the only thing I could think of was gasping for breath. Right. That's what it came down to. I got to tell you two things. One, um, I'm so thankful that you talk about what you went through with panic attacks, the PTSD, the things that you've shared on the air, through the podcast, on TV, and in your book. Because I think by admitting that, as a public figure, as somebody who is on TV, radio, and everything else every day, that you're giving hope and comfort to those who are suffering

and haven't admitted it yet. And I think that's something that is remarkable, and I'm thankful that you do it. There are too many people suffering in silence and don't know there's help. Yeah, there is truly help. You can recover from it. And interestingly enough, Dave, you know what my best therapy has been? What you and I are doing right now.

And I don't mean talking with a therapist, although I went through all that. But when I can talk about what I did for a living, it's purging, I think, to a great degree. Plus, it's educating, and people need to understand that you can bounce back from these things. And I think it's important to know that because you can bounce back from anything. It really is a matter of, it's a personal honesty with yourself that you have an issue you've got to deal with. Get it out and get it out. And believe me, you will be amazed at how many people are ready to say, wow, me too. Or, wow, let me just love on you, dude.

Everything's going to be fine. Yep. And then part two, of course, is nitrogen hypoxia. What in the world are we even talking about? Why did they try to, no, back up a sec. Because my first question is, I have limited sympathy for somebody who is in this position okay but i would think that there would not be um a guinea pig in the chair you know that we would actually have tried this on but we haven't this is like hey i think this might work let's try it he's a he's a condemned

man let's go ahead and we tried it once before the other way. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm just a little confused on in, in 2024 that we actually have a man who's been sentenced to death and he's been in there long enough to be so fat. We couldn't even find a vein. And now we're going to have to try something that's never been tried before to try to take his life. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Because, you know, they had, as you'd mentioned, they had previously attempted a lethal injection on this fellow and they couldn't get the line started, you know, where they have to push the drugs because there's a series of drugs. It's a, it's a lethal cocktail.

That's, that's pushed most of the time. It's something similar to phenobarbital, um, that's gonna that's going to put these people into a very, very deep coma. And they're essentially put into a position where they can stop their heart, stop their brain activity. This is a completely different methodology here, though. It's not dependent upon putting in an IV line. You know, the individual, if you're thinking about medical devices for folks at home, you can think about an EKG, the pads that they hook up to you, you know, they put them on your chest and put them on your legs and they're checking, you know, they're checking your, they have a heart monitor

that's hooked up. And here's something else interesting for those of you that have been in the hospital and don't know yet if they did this, but there is actually, if you've ever been in a hospital and they put the thing on your finger, that's called a pulse ox. It's actually, it's actually measuring your level of oxygen in your system. And that's, that's the crux of this whole thing. Because with nitrogen hypoxia, what is actually occurring is that they are replacing oxygen with nitrogen. Even when we were young kids and first learning science in school, we learned about the various elements that are out there that we breathe in and out every day. Nitrogen is a naturally occurring element in a gassy state that you do, in fact, breathe. And nitrogen by itself is not going to kill you. However, if you absent oxygen from the environment and make it purely nitrogen, that's going to take your life. And I think that that's

what they were aiming towards here. But you said a lot, you know, when you talked about never having tried it before, that the only thing I could really find in literature, first off, there have been people that have died as a result of nitrogen hypoxia. But Dave, that data actually comes from OSHA or similar organizations where you have on-the-job events that occur. And veterinarians have apparently attempted to use it as a form of euthanasia with animals. And here's one of the disturbing things. They said it works, it's highly effective if you use it on hogs. But it shows, hang on, let me get the verbiage right here.

They found that with other species, it caused them great distress. So that tells me that they've used it on multiple species, probably dogs and cats, and that it created this kind of anxiety or distress or whatever it was when they started inhalating this gas. But can you correlate that with, is there some kind of predictability thing that you can apply to that in a controlled environment where you're, you've got actually a human subject? I've got a feeling this is going to turn out really ugly for the great state of Alabama. Well, you know, here's the thing about it. There's two other states that have adopted this method and haven't used it yet.

They're waiting for somebody else to do it first for it to fail there so they can not use it. Yeah, you go first. We'll watch. And so I think Oklahoma and Mississippi, and they're thinking about this, and that's why. The other states are sitting around like that serial commercial. Get Mikey to do it. Yeah, yeah yeah he hates everything i know precisely and they're you know they're thinking what you know oh gee whiz you know kind of snarky what could go wrong and oh yeah the worst that can happen is you're trying to kill somebody right

yeah yeah yeah you're right but you don't know how it's going to play. And that's the important thing. Here's the thing about it. Regardless of where you fall on death penalty, it's important to understand, let's say, that you're all for death penalty. And that's okay. take this path using nitrogen gas and it fails or really, really is less than what you would consider a stellar outing, then that could compromise your ability in all other areas or all other methodologies to use, you know, what is acceptable. I think everybody has talked about the death penalty for so long being, you know, it has been used as a deterrent to crime. And there's an old image that I'm quite fond of from the old West. And it is an image of a public hanging, and it's prior to the hanging.

And you can look this up, and people can see this, but it's really striking. And you know, Dave, when you look at it, you can see this western town. They have like their little square, and you see hundreds. It's literally hundreds of people all milling about, and there's a gallows there. And you can see people standing on gallows. You can't really make out who they are, but there is one individual in the crowd, actually two. It was apparently a father and his little boy that looked like he was about six or seven. And the father had picked him up,

and this is like in the 1880s, had picked him up, put him up on his shoulders, and they were about 15 rows deep away from the gallows. And often when I look at that photo, I think about the words that the father may have used or may have said to his son, Boy, do you see that man up there? Do you know what he did? Now he has to pay the ultimate price. And at that point in time, the little boy was faced on the face of the planet or the single most evil individual that's ever walked the earth. We've all got a story. We've all got a story.

I guess our story would have to be with our case today is, how did Kenneth Eugene Smith wind up in the position where he is strapped to a Gurney Dave and they're putting a face mask on him that is going to fill his lungs with nitrogen gas? You know, we have to understand that. And I think more importantly, we have to understand who his victim was. You know, right now, with his name in the news over the last week while it's been discussed. It's been in the news several times over the last few years over what he's gone down, which it's an odd story in that. But the person that's lost in all of this was a mother,

potential grandmother, her name, Elizabeth Stennett. She was 45 years old, and her husband was pastor of the church. They lived in the parsonage. And this story begins with him calling the police. My wife's been murdered. There's been a home invasion. Send help quick. And he's freaking out so loud that the secretary that answers the phone

doesn't even understand what he's saying. And she hands it off to Ronnie May. The reason the name Ronnie May means something is that he was the investigator for Colbert County, Alabama, who ends up taking the call and calm down, you know, tell me what's happening. And he is the investigator that goes to the scene. It was Ronnie May who got there and is

talking to the pastor of the church it's his wife his name is charles stara stinnett rather charles stinnett says his wife's been murdered by a home invasion when the investigators get there the scene doesn't look right they check for a pulse on elizabeth can't find one and they begin making notes the paramedics arrive and they find a pulse cool the minute they find a pulse and again ronnie may the investigator did check for a pulse when he got there and said he couldn't feel one and so they began the investigation of the crime scene with her body they're waiting on paramedics as soon as they find the pulse joe, it looked like Charles Stennett was going to fall out right then. And that was a note the investigators made. Now she

died later at the hospital. She never recovered consciousness, but they began looking at the scene. It looks staged to the investigators. So they start looking into this fairly quickly. They bring Charles Stennett in for an interview and one thing leads to another and they find out that he's been having an affair. They find out that he bought life insurance, increased her life insurance coverage. And one thing led to another, they actually had a call to their crime tip line, you know, crime watchers. And that was a name that came through that they threw out at him during one of their interviews with Charles Stennett. Hey,

do you know this guy? And they said that Charles Stennett face turned beet red and he left. He left the police office. This is a, within a week. Yeah. Because he wasn't under arrest at that time. He was free to go.

They were just talking to him and that's why he was able to leave. But he was, he left freaking out with a red face. They knew they hit him with that. And by this time they kind of knew that he was involved. They didn't know what a level he was able to leave. But he left freaking out with a red face. They knew they hit him with that. And by this time, they kind of knew that he was involved. They didn't know what level he was involved. But Charles Stennett left. The police goes to the family home because he told them to meet.

And he confesses to his family he's been having an affair and that he was involved in their mother's death. And then he goes out to his old truck and shoots himself. Ronnie May, the investigator who was there at the crime scene when he was called about Elizabeth Stennett and rode to the hospital with her hoping she would utter something, was there for Charles Stennett, too. He rode with the paramedics hoping he would utter something. He didn't. And so now we've got a husband and wife both dead and a staged crime scene. And they didn't think Charles Stennett was the one who pulled

the trigger that well she wasn't shot she was actually beaten to death and by the way just to give you an idea how this 45 year old woman was beaten they said that she really fought ronnie may the investigator said she really fought hard and they beat her they choked her they used a fire poker using in the fireplace. I say they because there were multiple people involved. It ended up being a murder for hire.

The murder for hire of Elizabeth Stennett by her pastor husband, Charles Stennett. He got one of the guys that rented a house from him and reached out. His name was Billy Gray Williams.

And he offered Billy Gray Williams three grand to kill his wife. Billy reached out. His name was Billy Gray Williams. And he offered Billy Gray Williams three grand to kill his wife. Billy reached out to John Forrest Parker and Kenneth Eugene Smith. And they all worked the deal out and staged the scene. They took a VCR and a TV or a stereo, which they recovered. Police recovered it from their houses. And that's what happened the bottom line is billy gray williams was convicted and sentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole he died in prison november of 2020 this happened in march of 1988 march 18th 1988 and the man lived until 2020 john forrest parker was sentenced to death and he was executed via lethal injection, June, 2010. So he got what? 22 years in prison before his death. Yeah.

And at the time of the statement, we're, we're 14 years down range from the initial execution that had taken place associated with this poor woman's homicide. Why did it take so long for Kenneth Eugene Smith? Why are we talking about him today in 2024? He's just now been put to death by an experimental means. Yeah.

Isn't it something, you know, you have, you have this much time to kind of work things out, uh, and, and pursue this. And I know that he, he had a defense team, um, you know, that kept appealing these sorts of things. And, and that's, that's the way the process works. It's not very streamlined. Um, and, and here they are there, you know, you wait all of this time and you're going to hang your, your hopes on this, this agent, because that's what it is, that would lead to his death. And look, some of the initial reports are coming in right now,

and I really want to, and look, if it was videotaped, we're never going to see that tape. That's not going to happen. Don't they videotape most of these executions? I think that they probably do from a documentary standpoint to document the event. But we're going to do it. Why don't they do it in public? So you mentioned the story of taking his son to look at the crime. Let's see the deterrent. I don't see a deterrent to do it in hiding. Yeah, it happens in a vacuum here. You know, you're no one, it's not a, it's not an appreciable event in the sense, if you're talking about this purely from a deterrent standpoint, you're not going to be deterred from doing something bad. If you don't bear witness to the consequences, it's counterintuitive

to me, it is at least. And I'm not saying that I want to look, I've seen enough death in my life. I'm not saying that, um, I'm going to drag my family down to the town square and watch this, but how they limit this thing with a number of people that can bear witness to it and these sorts of things, I don't see how it is an effective deterrent. And so this guy has been languishing on death row. We've been taking care of him, our tax dollars have for all of these years. And so it seems as though that we've come to this point where he has been killed with an experimental method. And, you know, what I'm at least initially hearing at the time of this conversation we're having, Dave, is that this execution lacked efficiency. I think that that's probably the most gentle way I can put this.

He's strapped to a table. He's strapped across the chest, the waist, feet are tied down. And he apparently smiled, acknowledged his family, who he has a wife and a child that were actually there present for the autopsy, including his spiritual advisor. And then victims of this poor woman's family that still remained, her son, who was a teenager, by the way, at the time of her murder, they were there. And then all of the authorities, he apparently looked over, told them he loved them, his family. And he read a statement, which was rather lengthy. It involved us stepping back as the human race, you know, the lack of humanity, those sorts of things.

And then they put this mask over him, which is kind of fascinating, the mechanism that they're trying to employ. And this is the first time this has been done. Just keep that in mind. And it sounds as though this mask is very similar to what firefighters use. You know, it's one of these all-encompassing masks. If people have ever seen a movie like Backdraft with the firefighters, and they've got this thing that encompasses the entire face, and you can see out of it, it's not like a mask that you commonly think where people, an oxygen mask, or even a cannula that you stick in your

nose. This is an all encompassing mask that has to be sealed because that that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to infuse the air that he is breathing with pure nitrogen. And, you know, it sounds as though that it didn't go off quite as quickly as they thought it would. As a matter of fact, I read one report, Dave, where they said that it took close to 20 minutes for him to die, which I know that there are those hearing this and listening to this, and you're going to think, well, he suffered just like this poor woman suffered. Yeah, you're right. He did suffer. But here's the problem. If you want to maintain the death penalty, there is a protection in the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment. And so if there's even a perception that this was cruel and unusual, now this methodology is taken off the table. And you're back to square one with drugs.

So it's a catch-22, I think. The state and everybody else involved in this is kind of in an interesting position because, trust me, this thing is going to be examined and reexamined over and over again. I was working in Atlanta with a medical examiner. I had one of my old colleagues down in New Orleans who contacted me. He called me up one evening while I was at work. And he said, have you worked any final exit cases? And I was like, first off, what's a final exit case? And why are you asking me this?

And I said, no, I haven't. What is that? And he said, well, there's a book out called final exit and it's a um it's essentially a book that was written and published by all people hang on to your hat uh i believe the publisher was called the hemlock society so this book final exit which was actually written by a fellow named Derek Humphrey, whose wife had died as a result of poisoning that he facilitated. He aided her in this. He prepared a drink, a tea, I think, for her to take. She had horrible cancer.

And she drank it. He didn't force her to drink it, but he prepared the drink. And so this is, you know, one of the things that got this guy thinking about this idea of what he refers to as self-deliverance. It's assisted suicide. And now assisted suicide, you know, is in a lot of places around the country and over in Europe as well. And with the publication of that book, we in the medical legal community had any number of cases following that, following the publication that were associated with final exit methodologies. And in this book, they actually laid out how to go about doing this. And I'm telling you this because Humphrey himself went on to tape videos of all things, Dave, of how, how would one go about painlessly bringing about

your death? And I was shocked. You know, these things were, for a time, up on YouTube. I don't know if they've taken them down. Who knows what YouTube does anyway? But his recommendation for people was to use helium. Helium. And he would actually acquire it through going to a party store and purchasing a canister of helium. Well, what does that have in common with our topic?

And well, it's helium, just like nitrogen, is an inert gas. And so it doesn't have elements of toxicity to it. You got to think back, you know, years ago out in Cali when they were still using the gas chamber, they would take potassium cyanide and drop it into sulfuric acid inside of the gas chamber. And the person would be strapped in the chair. It was a horrific death. You know, it would fill up with, you know, with the fumes from the stuff. And it was painful, noxious, burned the lungs, burned the eyes. You'd have, you know, foaming from the mouth because of congestive failure. And it was quite, quite horrible to see. And then it was, it's lethal for anybody that was around it as well.

So they were in this, it's literally a chamber. And, um, but that's, that's not what this is because this is not, nitrogen is not toxic in that sense. Okay. It's not, it's not like cyanide. It's something completely different. It's merely oxygen replacement. Just like, you know, Humphreys had written about and demonstrated to the entire world utilizing helium, which for many of us was quite shocking, you know, because none of us had

ever seen anybody go to these links to go through great detail of telling how people to do this. But here we are, we've literally wound up here where they're using nitrogen gas that has been suggested actually for people that talk about self-deliverance they've actually talked about this in europe as utilizing nitrogen gas because of the fact that it is an inert gas it's it's a peculiar time to be in this environment and be in the world that we're in right now. Dave, I just keep thinking, Joe,

and I've never witnessed an execution, but I keep, I'm thinking about the victim, the victim's family. I'm, I'm, I'm appalled that this guy gets to make some lifelong statement after he has spent decades on our dime, that he's been able to get so fat that we couldn't get a needle in his arm.

You know, that we paid for this. Now the woman that he killed, that he got paid for killing, he actually took money to take a life. She died in 1988 at the age of 45. This guy's been on death row pretty much since then for the rest of his life, just waiting, finding ways to mess with the system. You know, he looks so happy with himself when they couldn't get the needle in his arm. And there has been talk.

I believe it was from Elizabeth Stennett's son who said that he dehydrated himself before the, uh, event so that they couldn't get a needle in there. Is there, is there any truth to that? Yeah. Yeah. There, there can be because what, and look, any of us can experience this. I don't know if you've experienced it, Dave, but, and I'm not saying you dehydrated yourself, but depending upon how hydrated you are, it can make it easier or more difficult, depending upon circumstances, to find a vein, essentially, or vessel to put an IV in. Have you ever been in that circumstance where they were trying to put an IV in you and they were saying, oh, God, they got to do multiple sticks. There's hardly too many things that are more painful that you have to go through. Um, and God bless people that do it.

Cause I could, I couldn't do it, you know, even, even as much time as I spent in the autopsy room, there's something about sticking a needle into somebody's arm and seeing them, seeing them squirm, you know, while they're doing it. But yeah, yeah. The level of hydration in your body can certainly play into this idea. Now, whether or not he purposefully did that, that's, that's certainly interesting, you know, and, um, and there have been other cases over, over time that, you know, where, where they have talked about this. Um, I'm going to tell you something about myself that I don't know that I've ever shared with you regarding my career.

But back in the mid-90s, I was assigned to the state medical examiner's office for Georgia as a liaison between my office in Atlanta and the state medical examiner. Because our office in Atlanta was actually doing all of the autopsies for the state of Georgia. So our doctors would rotate between the two locations. And the doctors, when they got out to the state medical examiner's office, it was disorganized. They didn't have a lot of information, and I was going to be their point of contact. And so I was reassigned there for, I don't know, about 18 months. And Dave, during that 18 month period, um, there were executions that took place in Georgia. And I was actually, I was actually present and participated in two of the autopsies of executed prisoners. I thought an autopsy was to determine how somebody died. If you're watching them die based on, you know, we're planning your death.

We have decided this is the method we're going to use and we're going to kill you. And then we do it and now you're dead. I would think that basically we could use, I don't know, a picture book and crayons and figure that one out. But you really actually have to do a full on autopsy afterwards. Yeah, I think't just full-on. It's arguably the most thorough autopsy that is done, period. I'm not going to go into all the detail, because even for this show, it could be a bit unpalatable, I think, for some people, but it is so detailed and so thorough. And the reason for this is, first off, we only have five classifications of death for manners of death. And an execution is a homicide.

OK, and I, you know, look, that's reality. And that's why I hate the word murder. Murder is such a lawyer's word. I hate it. It's theatrical. I love the term homicide in my world because it's not judging the circumstances. Merely all the term homicide means is death at the hand of another. So somebody, somebody in the death house has to press the button.

They've committed a homicide. Now, we don't know who that person is. Any executor, any executioner, can you cut that in? Any executioner that is out there for, you know, forever and ever, amen, when they swing their axe or they pull the handle and drop the trap door, if they pull the trigger, they've committed a homicide by law. That's the way we define it. All right. And so in this particular, it's not accidental. It's certainly not natural. It's not undetermined. Okay. And it's not suicide. It has to be a homicide.

So in most states, if you die as a result of a homicide, your body is going to be autopsied. But in any case, and it doesn't matter if it's natural, when an individual dies in the custody of the state, okay, There has to be an examination. And so that's what compels them to actually do autopsies on, on executed prisoners. And Dave, I got to tell you, brother, the position that they're in right now, because all eyes are on it. I mean, you, you watch the, I have to watch the news. I don't know anybody, fans, I don't know anybody on the face of the planet that watches news closer than my buddy Dave Mack. He sees it day in and day out. And I can tell you his algorithm has probably been lit up with stories

about this execution for the last 72 hours, I guess, leading up to it and when it happened. All the eyes of the world are on Alabama. And it's not just the news people and it's not just the citizenry. You've got two states out there, Mississippi and Oklahoma, that are also watching this because they've got this on the books now, Dave. They're trying to figure out, is this territory we want to get off in with our prisoners? Are we going to employ this methodology? The way you've explained it sounds like we don't possess the ability to figure out the best way to kill somebody that has been

sentenced to death. We have a firing squad. That that seems pretty good we've got electrocution seems pretty good bring back the guillotine that seems pretty good i'm just thinking about all the ways that we are certain that somebody's going to die when we pull the trigger and i i don't know why we the firing squad is set up so far away when you could just walk up behind them and you know i mean there's so many things we could do that are as deliberate, but more effective guaranteed. There's no reason that somebody should have to squirm. Yeah, I know. And this is another point that's very interesting about this. Um, you know, we were talking about, um, this idea, I can't help, but you know, it makes my mind go haywire. This term self-deliverance, it's, it's assisted

suicide is what it comes down to, but they, um, it's interesting how people use verbiage to kind of soften things, you know, many times or make it appear like it's something other than what it is. Again, I'm a medical legal death investigator. There's only five classifications of death you can rule. Um, you know, what those five, just for the sake of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. It's homicide, suicide, accidental, natural, and undetermined. That's our only choices. We don't have any other choices, period, in the medical legal community as to how we're

going to classify death. And then you put the cause of death below that. And so, you know, in this case, you know, you're talking, it is a homicide, and it's homicide as a result of inhaling nitrogen gas. So, you know, it's, it's very simple, you know, when you, when you look at it from that perspective, but yeah, we've had, there are any number of methodologies that are out there that have been employed and, and some, yeah, it's brutal, but you know what, dude? Death is brutal. And it seems as though that people want to make this out to be as palatable for them as they possibly can. That's not the reality of life. And it's certainly not the reality of death. Death is unpalatable. It's repugnant. That's why we don't want people to kill other people. My point, and I really, I got horribly off track there, but with the assisted suicide, that can be classified, I guess, some of my friends in the medical community probably take, you know, take umbrage at me saying this, but it's almost like palliative care, where you've got somebody that is in a condition that they're in a unrecoverable flat spin physiologically. They're not going to recover from it.

And so you're providing comfort for them. And that's, I guess, to some people's way of thinking, that is comfort. That's, executions are different. Because I think a lot of people, actually I had two people say this to me. Well, why didn't they give him something? Like, why didn't they shoot him with a bolus of Ativan or something, you know, to knock down the anxiety and make him, um, uh, you know, make him more compliant because we don't want to watch him squirm on the table and that sort of thing. That's not what executions are about. That's not. And again,

it goes back to this idea of deterrence. We're not showing it to anybody. Yeah. You're not showing it to anybody. Well, the people in that little room witnessed it. And I don't know that. And there were people from the press corps that were there, a select group. Then you had family from both sides and then you had state authorities that were there. And so are you making them feel uncomfortable by him seeing, by them bearing witness to this? Perhaps. It's not the way that they would want to go, but it's the court, court hands down this idea of, you know, you're going to die. They sentence you to capital, uh, as a capital offense and they sentence you capital punishment, whatever methodology in that state is. It's, it's not their job to make it palatable for the victim. And so that's why they're not given some type of drug to knock down their anxiety over this.

And also it could be argued, I guess, some sharp lawyer would say, well, if you did that, then you're going to impede their ability to effectively communicate. And if there's some kind of big reveal they have at the end, have you got them so drugged up that they're not going to be able to communicate effectively with counsel, with their minister, or whoever it is that's attached? It's a very complex situation. After all these years, they have plenty of time. Exactly. After all these years. And look, decades.

Okay, let's just go to decades. Decades, centuries. It seems like that maybe our ancestors had it right relative to methodologies. Because capital punishment has always been around. It's always been around. And it seems as though the more palatable we try to make it, the less effective it is. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.