Revisionist History - The Alabama Murders - Part 4: The Protocol

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Holman Correctional Facility. June 2010. John Forrest Parker is put to death by lethal injection. He didn’t appear to suffer. But did he? Get early, ad-free access to the full season of The Alabama Murders by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Previously on revisionist history. People had an idea of what had happened. When a person gets something in their mind, You know, it's kind of hard to change. I can't remember how soon they figured out that he, that, you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that. But it was, you know, it was pretty obvious, pretty quick.

Senate does it, the timing makes a lot more sense. He shows up after they've left. Stabs, calls. Stabs and calls. I mean, there's no sense than they even having a jury. if you if you're going to be able to overturn the jury if a judge can overturn the jury if a judge can overturn the jury I don't know how much Tom Hufflin explained to you but he just told me you were okay to talk to oh that's very kind and we're just we're very

uh John Parker's very very dear to me and I just very protective I wouldn't want to to do anything to hurt he or his family. Yeah. But other than that, I'm willing to talk. This is Tom Perry, Jr., big guy, Beard, from Demopolis, Alabama, who on the third Saturday of every month, for years and years, would spend a day on death row in Donaldson prison just outside Birmingham. I called him up because John Forrest Parker's lawyer told me, if you want to understand

something more about Parker, talk to Tom Perry. I want to tell you something, Malcolm. I don't mean to take over your interview now. But I'm no really do-gooder. I'm just an old guy that's falling short every day. I just happen. The Lord uses me in the penitentiary setting because of my shortcomings, if that makes sense.

Now, you're, I can't resist, almost everyone I've been talking to for the story so far is Church of Christ. I am not. And you're Methodist. I don't understand why you're not Church of Christ. What's going on? I don't know.

Maybe I like the cocktail too much for the Church of Christ. In this episode, I'm going to tell you about what happened to John Forrest Parker after he was sentenced to death. And give you a meditation on a phrase from the Jesuit priest, James Keenan, that I have come back too many times. sin is a failure to bother to care. This is the story of someone who bothered to care and someone else who couldn't be bothered at all.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. This is the Alabama murders episode four, the protocol. In the time that you were doing ministry at Donaldson, how many men that you were working with got executed? I believe I've been with 13, maybe 12. Yeah. Perry got involved working with people on death row through a mentor of his, Ben Sherrod. Like when I first went back, Big Ben Sheriff says, now look, if you come back here and you start, coming and these guys ask you to go all the way with them you got to be willing to go and if you're

not i understand but don't come back you and i said what's all the way and he said well you know be if they're executions if they have living family they don't necessarily want their family to watch them die or to be their only member but that we need somebody there that loves them and if they ask you to be with them you need you can't you need to be willing to go and if you're not just don't come and at the time we had had an execution in alabama in a very long time and i said sure well you know i didn't know what i was getting into but i'm in and like when i say at 12 or 13 malcolm 10 or 11 of them i was praying with their families at the time they died what that's a hard thing to go through lose 13 13 men you um

like i want i want to tell you the honest to goodness truth i don't want to we jokingly call it you know stupid christians but uh i don't by one little witness i'll give you is he gives you the power now when it's over i usually have need somebody to drive me home but up until then you just have the strength to do it but it's so hard you wouldn't believe it affects you. John Forrest Parker was one of those 13, and maybe the one closest to his heart. Man, I love John Parker. I sure do miss him.

The only reservations I have about doing this is, you know, at 15 years, it kind of makes me miss him a little more. The jury in John Parker's trial voted 10 to 2 for life without parole. But under Alabama law at the time, a judge was allowed to override a jury's recommendation, and this is what the judge, Inga Johnson, did. Johnson sentenced Parker to death in 1989. He was remanded to Donaldson prison and placed on death row, 24 cells in two blocks of 12. And there, Perry began to visit him, making the two-hour drive from Demopolis to Donaldson.

Perry would go with his friend Ben Sherrod, a handful of others would join them, When Perry first met Parker, Parker wouldn't come out of his cell. Sometimes we would take food, and if we took food, John would come out to eat. You know, we had really good food. But then his first chance, he'd go back to his cell. But if we didn't have food, John didn't come out. Well, of course, we learn as I developed my relationship with him. You know, Reverend Senate is who hired them.

So he did, when you said religion and preachers and he wants to, wanted nothing to do with it, because, you know, he still equated that with Reverend Senate. Then Perry met Parker's mother. He told her that her son wouldn't leave his cell. She said, he doesn't come out. And I said, no, man. She said, next month, we went every month. She said, you tell him his mama said, he better come out. So I went and told him, but he said, I'll be there that he never missed. The next month, he never missed. And he and I became very, very good friends. And he confided a lot in me, so. what was he like um now you understand malcolm i do believe that the good lord changes people

john was very intelligent um very well read heck of a nice guy um just a wonderful person he's just the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with that he told me he said you know since i've come in here I've learned to read better and write better and do things better. In prison, he was sober and off drugs for the first time since he was 12. Spoke very openly with me about his crime. And, I mean, I remember one thing he said. And he was adamant with me. This was very difficult for John because he knew they were going to give him last.

words at his execution. And he said, you know I didn't kill, Ms. Stennick. I said, yeah, I know that. He said, but I was involved. And that's a horrible thing I was involved in. And he said, I've been in prison probably not long enough. But he said, but I didn't kill him.

And he said, we snapped out of it. You know, they told us that, you know, Reverend Senate came home and killed her. I don't know. Are you aware of that? and he um and he said well i mean he said i remember hitting her and it was like a light bulb went off like what the hell of you doing and and he said but that was horrible and i i'm not sure i've been in prison long enough yeah and you said was your you was the was the ministry part of your visiting explicit or how much of how much of this were you trying to bring the message of

Jesus to these men or it was that was that was absolutely central but you got to understand I realized quickly that our ministry more important than any words was a ministry of presence the fact that you showed up every time that prison would let you on the third Saturday we'd go and then let us stay two or three hours, but on twice a year, we would stay for three. We'd go in on a Thursday evening, well, going on Friday morning, stay all day, and then go in Saturday, stay all day, and go in Sundays. That's called a three-day weekie, and we would do that twice a year. Tom, you, this is a commitment.

It was a tremendous commitment, but I talked to my wife about it. I had young children at the time, and my wife says, you know, look, I have to say it makes you a better person, a better dad, a better husband, so go for it. Their visits went on for 23 years as Parker's appeals wound their way through the legal system. Finally, his execution date was set. 6 p.m. June 10, 2010. Parker was moved to Holman Prison in Atmore in the far south of the state near Mobile. That's where the state's execution chamber is. He was put in a special holding cell in the days leading up to his execution.

He filed two last appeals in his final week, to the Alabama Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court. Both failed. On his last day, he skipped breakfast but chose a dinner of fried fish, French fries, and iced tea. He gave his mother his gold watch, a mirror, seven stamps, and a box of pictures. He gave his two nephews his belt and his wallet.

He died by lethal injection at 6.41 p.m. Tom Perry was there with him. And then, you know, he was finally gone. But then after that, I have to get back on that van, and I go back to the hotel where the other people had been in there praying with his family. I had to go in and tell him, you know, John's gone. It was peaceful.

He didn't appear to suffer. He didn't appear to suffer. We'll be right back. To understand the particulars of John Parker's execution, you have to go back to 1977 in Oklahoma City. In the mid-70s, the Supreme Court had just lifted a long moratorium on capital punishment. The court had been concerned that existing methods, like the electric chair, violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Watching someone die on the electric chair was like watching a horror movie.

Public scrutiny was high. The court said that states could only bring back the death penalty if they found a more socially acceptable and legally rigorous way of applying it. So at that point, there were several things going on. First of all, there were journalists who were threatening to litigate so that they could see the next execution. And Oklahoma and other states such as Texas

were very concerned about that. they thought these executions would be videotaped and displayed to the world. This is Deborah Deno, who teaches law at Fordham University in New York City, and is one of the country's leading legal experts on capital punishment. Number two, Ronald Reagan, then-governor Ronald Reagan, a few years earlier, had sort of made a pronouncement of why don't we just execute inmates the way we put horses down. In case you're wondering, this is what Reagan said. Being a former farmer and horse raiser,

I know what it's like to try to eliminate an injured horse by shooting him. Now, you call the veterinarian, and the vet gives it a shot, and the horse goes to sleep. That's it. You know, I think there was a pressure to have a method that looked more humane than electrocution and lethal gas. Those were the pressures that was on the state. So from the beginning, you know,

these are states terrified of journalists, being able to videotape what's happening. So their concern is really with what this looks like to the world. That's right, the perception. The perception is what, yeah. Yes. Absolutely. So, Oklahoma City, 1977,

a state senator named Bill Wiseman takes up the court's challenge. He wants to find a way to make capital punishment more humane. And one day he gets a call from the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner, A.J. Chapman, who has heard about Wiseman's crusade

and has an idea. He gives Wiseman a rough outline for what would come to be known as lethal injection. Two drugs, in sequence. First is sedative, like a barbiturate, to put the prisoner to sleep, then a paralytic,

something to immobilize them. Later, Chapman added a third drug, potassium chloride, which is the main ingredient in chemical fertilizer, and which, in elevated doses, causes hypercalaemia, which is like flipping the power switch on your heart.

Wiseman took Chapman's idea and put it before the Oklahoma State Legislature. It passed by an overwhelming margin. I'm reading now from an editorial in the Vista, the student newspaper at Central State University in Oklahoma. Lethal injection is not only less traumatic on the prisoner, but it would also be easier on witnesses, for they would not have to endure the grizzly.

sight of roasting flesh, bulging eyeballs, or squirting blood. But Chapman's protocol was never tested. I mean, how could you test it? You're trying to kill someone. Everyone you would experiment on would die. As a result, no one really knew how it worked. In his memoirs published years later, Chapman argued that knowing the precise method of action didn't matter since, quote, the properties of the drugs were extremely well known. The three-drug combination was just a variation on a protocol that was being used for anesthesia every day in hospitals all around the world. But of course, that isn't quite true, is it? It's not the same procedure that's used for medical anesthesia, because the intention

of medical anesthesia is to keep the patient alive. And the intention of medical anesthesia is to keep the patient alive. And the intention of lethal injection is to give those same drugs in doses so large that the patient dies. That's actually totally different. Did Chapman, how much thought did he put into this three drug protocol? You know, I mean, that's a question for him. I do know that they came up with this in the course of an afternoon. We reached out to Chapman for an interview, but he declined to talk to us. The Oklahoma Protocol would become the method of choice in 30 other American states. It's even, with a minor variation,

what countries like Canada use today for euthanasia. But how exactly does it work? I know this seems like a pedantic point, but it is the settled position of the United States, in fact, of most of the world, that a mark of a civilized society is that its punishment is humane. You can't torture people.

Even if you've decided to kill a prisoner, You have to do it the right way. So, once again, how does lethal injection kill people? So I was given a stack of autopsies, of prisoners, executed here in the state of Georgia. Joel Zivitt, an anesthesiologist at Emory University. In Georgia, there's an automatic autopsy that's performed on these prisoners. Interestingly, by the way, the cause of death that's written on the death certificate, is homicide.

Because he's an anesthesiologist, and lethal injection is basically the homicidal version of anesthesiology, Zivit was approached by a group of lawyers who had a client on death row. They had a technical question. Could he tell, from looking at the bloodwork of executed prisoners, whether they were conscious at the point of death? The operating assumption behind lethal injection was that they were unconscious, that they will be fully anesthetized when the potassium chloride hit their heart. But did we know that for a fact?

So I just, I read the autopsy, read the first autopsy and kind of was going through it and saw this finding that was surprising, which was that in this first one that I read, that the lungs were what's called heavy. This had nothing to do with the question he'd been asked to answer. It was completely unexpected. As part of an autopsy, the lungs are removed from the body and just plopped on a scale. And all these lungs were heavy. Why were they heavy?

They were heavy because they were full of bloody, frothy fluid. And this bloody, frothy fluid could not have gotten into the lungs after death. If you're dead, your heart has stopped working, so there's no way for fluid to get pumped into your lungs. it had to have happened while the prisoner was still alive. And what was assumed, I think, by me and others, I hadn't really thought about it, was that the body would be essentially pristine. You know, there wouldn't be this kind of destruction of organs within the body.

But when I went through the whole list, almost 80% of the time, so eight out of ten times, there was this finding of this frothy, bloody fluid. So you could cut into the windpipe, and the fluid would be just frothing right in there without being, pardon me too, graphic. So the question then was, how did it get in there? I conferred with a pathologist colleague of mine. We kind of puzzled over this for a while. And it occurred to us that, you know, what we think, what I think,

is that it's actually the way the pentobarbital is prepared. Pentobarbital is the first of the drugs used in the fatal injection protocol. It's the sedative, and it has a high pH. This is sort of basic chemistry. The pH scale goes from 1 to 14. 7 is neutral. The other thing important to know about the pH scale is that it's a log scale. So it means that every time you move one number, you're going up by a factor of 10.

You know, for a reference, the Richter scale of earthquakes is also a log scale. That's why an earthquake of four and a half, you know, you kind of, you know, will maybe shuffle the ground underneath you, but an earthquake of eight and a half will split the world in half. So it's a huge, powerful difference. The body's normal pH is between 7.35 and 7.45. If you drop below 7 or rise above 8, you'll probably die. The pH of pentobarbital is between 9 and 11. Now, when pentabarbital is used in ordinary medicine, this fact doesn't matter that much.

The dose is pretty small. It burns a little, but the body compensates. But now imagine giving 10 times that quantity and pushing it into a small vein. It travels rapidly to the heart, where the heart pumps it immediately into the lungs, and it tears the lungs apart, basically. They get burned from the inside, and then the separation of air and blood, there's a very fine layer of tissue there that gets destroyed, and the blood just pours into the lungs.

And I'm sorry, as I'm saying this, it's awful. And this is what, this is how lethal injection actually kills you. It kills you by burning your lungs up. And you're also paralyzed, so you can't complain that this is happening. And then to finish you off, of course, you know, you're probably begging for the potassium at that point because that finally stops your heart and stops this process. But in the meantime, you know, this has been gone on for a few minutes. So the last thing that, you know, you may know is that you're unfired from the inside.

and the blood is filling up your lungs as you die. Is this too graphic? Of course it is, but that's the point, because the reason lethal injections started in the first place was that even the proponents of the death penalty were eager to find a method that was humane. That didn't involve fixing metal plates to someone's head and frying their brains with a jolt of electricity.

And Zivot's point is that this is not actually more human, remain. It just looks that way. Death penalty advocates were trying to satisfy the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, but their innovation only spared the suffering of the witnesses to an execution, not the subject of the execution. The whole thing was an illusion. But even that's not the issue. The real issue is that the lethal injection protocol was dreamt up on the back of an envelope. And until Jill Zivit came along, by accident, 50 years later, none of the people who championed lethal injection could get around to wondering just how their preferred method worked. And it's not like the evidence wasn't available. In many states, there's an autopsy on everyone who's executed.

The autopsies were just sitting there in a drawer somewhere, hundreds of them. And in almost every case, They were characterized by the same inexplicable finding. Here's what I don't understand. Nobody noticed this till you? Apparently not. Isn't that astonishing? Astonishing. Well, I don't know.

I mean, I guess so. I guess it's astonishing, but you know, you have to be curious, I suppose, or care. or, I mean, what's astonishing to me is the fact that it was noticed every time by pathologists. No one said anything. It's not like a pathologist said, wow, look at this finding and brought it to that I'm aware of. Like, when I first had the, in my job as an anesthesiologist, intensivist, I look at autopsies, but I don't, you know, it's not, I don't make a living at autopsies. So to be sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, I sent it to my, a colleague of mine, Mark Edgar, who's a pathologist. But I said, look, I've got this list. I'm not telling you what this

is, okay? Just tell me what you see. You know, what do you see? And he came back and said, well, all these, you know, that's all these heavy lungs. Like, there's all this pulmonary edema. Like, what is that? Like, he saw it immediately without prompture. Like, believe is evidence free, right? So the people who believe this, you know, were immune to evidence. or immune to, you know, I don't know, an impartial appraisal. So, and I was surprised. I was. I just didn't think of it.

You know, it's like the failure of imagination where you just couldn't imagine it. But now that it's been seen, of course, you can't unsee it. Zivit wrote an academic article describing his findings, thinking he had to share what he'd found with the world. I've had trouble getting this published so it's now available as something called a preprint so it's easy to find as a preprint and it goes over this I certainly

why have you had trouble getting it published because people don't want to publish it it's like it's something that I can't place you know it's it's so I don't know grisly unusual that put it in the medical journal, you know, it just doesn't, can't seem to find the journal for it. We are now at the second stage of the failure cascade, indifference. We'll be right back.

Let us tell the story of John Parker's execution a second time. was there, remember. He pledged that he was willing to go all the way. Execution Day, you know, we started, we went in early that. I think John was executed around six, but we go in and it's just a good day. John's family was close to us. We tell the family any time you need a minute and you don't want us here, it's probably about five or six of us, I think they limit the room to 15 people on the Vistick. We call it the Visting yard, but it's just a little room. In fact, my Christian community air conditioned and put in new chairs

because it was so uncomfortable. It was these big metal picnic tables with these little round metal benches that were just portrait. We bought some chairs and tables and put air conditioning in, you know, so the inmates can have some comfortable when they visit. But we just visit. we sing a little but then they say we're getting too loud so we have to quit singing but we just talk and visit and get to know some of john's family that we had not met before so john and anybody else can have a soft drink anything they won't but one thing i will tell

you that that i think goes unsaid the the death squad the officers that perform it at more they do everything in their power to make it as digger's identified anything they could do for John and any of the 12 or 13 I've been with within reason they would do to make that last day as good as they could for the inmate. They don't get enough credit for that. I mean, there's certain rules they can't break, but anything they can do within reason, they do it. But anyway, so we go, and then you can tell when the clock starts getting, and we'll have, you know, usually they'll do some serious. is praying, and then we call it Circle Up. That's something we were doing on our weekends before we leave.

We make a big circle, and we pray out. Are you familiar with the song, Surely the Presence? Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. I can feel His mighty power and His grace. You know, I can hear the brush of angels' wings. I see glory on its face. Surely the presence of the Lord. They sang that a couple times.

They gathered for a prayer. Then they made their way to the execution chamber. We're over here, and the Senate family's over there. John's in the middle, and there's glass. And I can see them, but I can't hear them. And they can see me, and John's in the middle. And, you know, and then he looks up at me, you know, and he says, you know, I love your brother.

and I thank you for everything you did for me and, you know, take care of my mom and dad. I promised him I would continue to communicate and follow up with him. And then he says with the Senate family, I'm sorry I got involved in this situation. A hundred times I wish they're going to take it back. I was strung out.

I was young and I was stupid and I hope that, you know, what happens today can give you, you know, some peace. and then when they started you know he was a lethal injection and he rolled his hand that's sort of a symbol we get to hang with him but when we split up they won't any more physical contact when we leave and as we go we know that was our that was our deal it means I love you so that was our sign and Cairo's you know I love you brother and he rolled his hands up on there did that and then you know I watched his bottom jaw our mirror just seeing it start quoth quivered, and it, you know, it takes a lot longer than you think. Yes, it does take a lot longer than you'd think. First, a hundred milliliters of a sedative. After the sedative, Alabama's regulations require that, quote,

the team member position at the condemned inmate's left side will assess the consciousness of the condemned inmate by applying graded stimulation as follows. The team member will begin by saying the condemned inmate's name. If there's no response, the team member will gently stroke the condemned inmate's eyelashes. If there is again no response, the team member will then pinch the condemned inmate's arm. John Parker. John Parker. Stroke, stroke, pinch, pinch.

Then comes 60 milliliters of ro-coronium bromide. That's the muscle relaxant. than 120 milliliters of potassium chloride. That's supposed to stop the heart. Remember what Tom Perry said? It was peaceful. He didn't appear to suffer. Well, yes and no. He didn't appear to suffer.

That's because he was strapped down to a gurney and sedated and given a paralytic so he couldn't struggle or cry out even if he wanted to. But of course he suffered. His lungs were burning up from the insidated. inside, and he had a long, extended moment of absolutely excruciating pain. Of course, his parents break down, and they hugged me, and then I walk out, then I basically, I have a very good friend.

He kind of takes me and takes care of me, because I break down after I talk to the family, but did that kind of describe it for you? It's a hard, hard day. In many ways, it's a joy of. day up until, because you just, you see its goodness everywhere up until as far as John was concerned. Have you ever seen a picture of John? No, I haven't.

Hold on. I've got it. It's funny, I keep this in my office right by my license. You keep that memorial. I keep it right here, and I've got... Next to your license. Yeah. Actually, in the frame, I stick it in the frame, and I keep it.

it here. So, well, this is, this is, uh, uh, you can see me a much younger version. Yeah. I think it was June of 2010. This is John's father, Petey Parker. Yeah. His mother, Joan Parker. That's his brother Burke and John in the middle. And that was the day of his execution. The, the institution took the pictures for us. That means a lot. They don't give them three or four pictures in the entire family. wanted me and their family photograph. I mean, that's why I cherish this.

Now, Malcolm, I'm trusting you because I don't want anything to degrade or insult John's memory. So please don't do that. I will not. John, Tom Hiflin told me you were okay, or I wouldn't have spoken to you because I would be heartbroken. If there's something defamatory about John. Please don't do that. Yeah, don't, don't be, you should have no concern. Yeah.

And I'm trusting you now, Malcolm, not to do that to John and his memory. Tom Perry was the one who bothered to care. If you're wondering why people get so upset about the death penalty, it's this. It's that the people who are in favor of it. like to believe that it represents some great symbolic manifestation of society's judgment. But in fact, their method of choice is something that some guy dreamt up in an afternoon

and no one ever got around at checking. Symbolic manifestations of society's judgment should not be dreamt up on the back of an envelope. And if you're wondering why we're spending so much time on this, it's because the story of the long denouement of the Elizabeth Senate case is about to get worse. much worse. Next time on Revision is history.

I think he just got home from work and he come and he said, well, Mom, can you come? He said, the police are here. Then I went to Atmore, which is where Holman is. Visited with Kenny that morning, we were still waiting for the 11th Circuit's decision. What is taught either at nursing, school or as an EMT or as a doctor can not be lifted into the death chamber. Like it's not the same place. If these people are not patients, you know, they're not collaborators to you. It's been a great deal of media coverage, both local and national, about what happened in Kenny Smith's

execution chamber. Much of that coverage has seemingly been openly sympathetic to Smith and his cause, even with some going so far as to advocate for the abolishment of the death penalty. Revision's history is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Ben Nadaf Haferi, and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by Ben Didaf Haferi and Lee Hedgebeth. Our editor is Karen Shikurgy. Fact-checking by Kate Furr. Our executive producers, Jacob Smith, production support from Luke LeMond. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence.

Original scoring by Luis Gera with Paul Brannard and Jimmy Baud. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. I'm Malcolm Gladham. You can get this entire season. ad-free by subscribing to revisionist history on Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. slash plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges,

and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. This is an IHeart podcast.