Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 68: A State of Unreality (w/ special guest Liliana Segura)

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Today we're joined by Liliana Segura, who writes about the death penalty, prisons, and the criminal justice system for The Intercept. We discuss the death penalty, and about how to situate it in the larger context and apparatus of the carceral state. Here are links to some of the articles mentioned in this episode: https://theintercept.com/2018/08/15/tennessee-restarts-executions-billy-ray-irick-death-penalty/ https://theintercept.com/2018/08/05/death-penalty-lethal-injection-trial-tennessee/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/17/lynching-museum-alabama-death-penalty/

is this this isn't our 69th episode is it uh this is our 68th so next one's our 69th we have to do something good we gotta figure it out i think i think this is our 68th i can't remember i got the count off a little bit maybe if we don't have a good one queued up we'll do a 68.5 okay we could we'll do a 68 and a half Yeah, sort of like the I used to read this book when I was a kid that was like about the 13th

floor or this building that didn't have a 13th floor because it was bad Bad luck Yeah, but they had like a 12.5 floor Oh, stupid. A lot of buildings don't have a 13th floor. Damn.

Yeah, you're right. Most buildings actually. They just go from 12 to 14. Superstition on a massive scale. Right. I feel like when I think about people who are superstitious, I don't think about construction workers that build

things. That's people who are superstitious. I don't think about construction workers that build things. That's people who are superstitious. But, you know, we all got grannies. We all got granny witches using home remedies on us, I guess. You're right. I don't know. Well, hello, Trillbilly audience. Hey.

Hey. Terrence and Tanya here. We just- We buried Tom in the backyard right before this episode. Yeah, well, we put him in that hole in his ceiling, sort of like Jimmy Hoffa. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to close him up.

We're going to fix his ceiling, but only after we stick him up there. Yeah, hell yeah. As an extra gift to Alex. Right, right. We'll fix your ceiling and your boyfriend. Yeah, I think this is the 68th episode. I hope it is.

What we were just recording and what you're about to hear is a pretty depressing episode, but we hope it's enlightening and you can share it with people who have you know, have an interest in these things. But more than anything, we're just talking at the front end of this episode because we want to encourage you to go to our Patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. Patreon. Doesn't it sound like a weird soap or something? It does.

I don't know. It's just such a weird word. It really does. Especially people who don't really have any frame of reference for it. They're like, what? So that's why I'm spelling it out for you. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trailbilly Workers Party. We have weekly episodes over there. Every Sunday we put out an episode.

This Sunday we have an episode with scott benson uh our good buddy scott benson who um who we talked a lot about christianity with him and christian music growing up christians one of our true themes one of three themes one of three themes exactly i'm not i wasn't there right i'm learning this yeah now well you were a backseat baptist and so me and tom we were really we really bought into this shit you know so yeah i mean we're now mining it for comedic material i mean i had to fake a holy spiritual like a holy ghost thing one time just to get out of whatever was happening because they were just like

knocking all the kids to the ground, you know, and I had to just fall over too. Like, okay, well, here we go. Well, we talk about that. We talk about that kind of stuff on this episode. Just so they would leave me alone. Just so they would leave you play acting like you're speaking tongues. Yeah. Like you've been healed.

I never could figure out the tongue. Yeah. The shame I internalized for years just because I hadn't been baptized at 15 like all my other friends had. Listen to this, Tanya. I was- This explains so much. Yes.

Well, most of my friends at that age were embarrassed they hadn't had sex yet. I was embarrassed that I had not been baptized yet. This is truly fucked. But, see, the thing is, I won in the long run because now I get to, like I said, I'd mine all that for comedic material. That's the only way I process my trauma. God. But anyways. I wonder how long it's going to take for Louis C.K. to process my trauma. God. But anyways.

I wonder how long it's going to take for Louis C.K. to use that argument. Right. Well, I was there all along. He was there all along. God. So go to our Patreon. You can hear more fun stuff like this. Today's episode is with Liliana Segura, who writes for The Intercept.

And we really hope you enjoy it. And like I said, spread it around, whatever. Do it everyone. It is pretty dark, hydrate. It's very dark, so yeah, hydrate and if you kind of are squeamish with like needles and stuff, this is the closest I get to like a trigger warning, content warning. Yeah, just maybe stay away from this one. But, you know, it does actually have a lot of interesting and important stuff about the carceral state and our relationship to it. So, anyways, check all of our stuff out.

And do you have anything, me and Tanya, oh yeah, by the way, me and Tanya are going to be at a show on Saturday night. Are you going to be there at that show? Yeah. At the Burl? We could sign autographs. I I mean if people want to bring a copy of not even our show manuscripts or

like a printed out picture of us we didn't have that one good photo shoot like I'll bring a magic marker I'll bring my own permanent marker I'm plugging it like it has it has nothing to do with me and Tanya we're just we have massive egos we just know we're going to be there. And we'll sign your shirts.

I particularly am interested in signing boobs, but that's just whatever. Show your boobs to Tanya. She'll sign them. Saturday night at the Burrell in Lexington, Slut Pill is playing with Sonora Mae. Luna and the Mountain Jets. Luna and the Mountain Jets. Yeah, it'll be a terrific show. My girlfriend's debuting at the Burrell.. Yeah, it'll be a terrific show. Yeah.

My girlfriend's debuting at the Burl. It's her favorite venue. No big deal. Who we've also had on the show. Yeah, y'all heard Slut Peel here first, many of you. Right. And you can hear them live in all their glory. Right. So please come on out for that.

My friends get paid. I like it when my friends get paid. I like it. Saturday, September 8th. That's right. So yeah, when my friends get paid. Saturday, September 8th. That's right. So yeah, come on out for that. And check out our Patreon and enjoy today's episode.

But buckle up. But buckle up. We'll see you later. Bye. Very fancy studio digs here. Exactly. So, Liliana, I'm Terrence, and I'm joined with my co-host, Tanya. Hello. Hi. We thank you for joining us today, and I hope your day's going all right. I was just reading before I got in here about Trump is pissed off that there's somebody in his administration that just wrote an op-ed.

Did you see this, Tonya? No, but I did see Tom tweet, if y'all think there's a resistor in the West Wing, I got a bridge to sell you. I assume this is what you're speaking of. Yes, that's it. are you? I assume this is what you're speaking of. Yes, that's it. Okay, well, Liliana, we'll just get straight to it. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Today we're joined by Liliana Segura. Did I say your last name right? Yeah, that's right. Okay. You write about a criminal justice system and the death penalty in prisons at The Intercept.

Is that an accurate representation of your work? Yes, I would say it is. Okay, good. So, yeah, today we're going to be talking about something that's a little more grim, kind of deviates a little bit from our sort of regularly scheduled programming of... Yeah, all the dick jokes. Right, dick jokes and irreverent humor. But we do have a few sort of objectives in wanting to discuss this.

I'll kind of just sort of set up the framework for it. The first is kind of just... You know, on this podcast, we cover prisons a lot because it affects us a lot where we live in eastern Kentucky. And so we kind of, I've been kind of wanting to do an episode about this for a while. Something that sort of situates or locates the death penalty in the sort of like larger context of the carceral state. And also something that sort of examines its racist legacy. And we'll get to that in a little bit.

Also something that sort of examines its racist legacy, and we'll get to that in a little bit. The sort of second objective for wanting to do this episode is there's kind of been a string of what I would call absolutely horrific executions in the media lately. But we kind of live in this world where, like, they crop up and you read them. You're like, this is terrible. And then they just immediately disappear. And there's quite a bit of apathy with regards to this issue in a lot of ways, I feel like. And so that's another reason why we wanted to cover this. The third is to kind of try to make sense of some recent executions that have happened. And so probably the best place for us to start, Leanna, would be the execution that took place last month in the state of Tennessee of Billy Ray Eirik.

Am I saying his name correctly? Mm-hmm. Yep, you are. Okay. So I just kind of wanted to know if you could maybe, you know, this was the first execution that took place in, what, almost nine years? That's right. And they're trying to sort of rush two more before the end of the year. Is that correct?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what's that? I said, wow. Yeah. Trying to get it in before the fiscal year ends or something. I guess so. You were at the prison, the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison when it happened, talking

to some of the protesters and supporters. I just wondered if you could give us, and you wrote a piece about it. It's in The Intercept, obviously. I just wondered if you could maybe just give us a little bit of background and sort of political context in which this particular execution took place. Sure. So, I guess, well, let me just start by saying, you know, I've lived in, I've only lived in Tennessee for just over three years. I moved here from New York,

where I lived for about 16 years. And in New York, even though I was very much involved in sort of earlier on as a student and sort of early in my career, I was involved in anti-death penalty organizing and sort of those are my roots. But in my time living in New York, New York really didn't have an active death penalty. And it's been a really new, sort of somewhat bizarre experience to move to a place where an execution was carried out, basically almost literally in my backyard, you know, something like 20 minutes from where I live. And so this issue that I've been covering in my work for years and years suddenly sort of came home. And so I'm still, I guess I say that just to sort of preface everything, because I'm still learning, you know, about the context in which I find myself

now here covering this issue here locally. So the politics aren't as familiar to me as they might be had I lived here all my life. But I will say that researching Tennessee's death penalty and reporting on it and reading what I could, one thing that struck me in advance and after the execution was certainly there was a lot of media coverage. A lot of local reporters did a really, really good job covering the execution, contextualizing it, especially when it came to the lethal injection protocol that was really controversial. But given that we're in a major election year, in a major election year, and sort of the kind of lightning rod that the death penalty has been traditionally here, it wasn't like this major political issue. You know, like there was not like politicians have sort of been happy to sort of, you know,

ignore the death penalty and this execution in particular as they've been, you know, on the campaign trail. It, you know, I spent a lot of time looking at archival news articles in all kinds of states, you know, just sort of as a part of my research. And even though it had been, you know, as you say, almost nine years since the last execution, it just wasn't kind of the major political event or controversy that one might expect, you know, in a state that's carrying this out for the first time in a long time. So, and I think there are a lot of reasons for that. You know, I think, you know, as we know, Trump from day to day kind of dominates and hijacks the news cycle. No matter what's going on, it can feel like everything is just kind of cast aside for whatever craziness is going on in Washington. And then, you know, and like I said before, it's a big election year. There's a lot of other things going on in Tennessee. It's a lot of other issues on people's mind.

But as you mentioned before, you know, we've seen a number of botched executions, what we call botched executions, right, these really ugly episodes where people appear to suffer and struggle on the gurney. And, you know, this appeared to be one of those. I only know what I heard from friends and colleagues in the press who witnessed, who were able to describe some of what they saw. But what we saw play out was something that I've seen now play out in many states, which is that an execution appears to go poorly. It appears that the drugs didn't work as intended.

But there's no sort of acknowledgment of that on the part of the Department of Corrections or on the part of the state, and sort of everything continues as normal. And that's definitely what we've seen here in Tennessee. So, and I'm sorry, I'm sort of forgetting the original question, but you had asked me for this sort of political context, sort of what that looks like here on the ground. And yeah, I guess it's, I agree with you that there's a certain level of apathy, but in particular among the people in charge, the politicians who might actually be in a position to do something about this. There really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of concern over the humaneness of this process.

Yeah, and I apologize. My question was very, very long. He's known for these. Yeah, what Tanya said. Yeah, no, so that's a very good answer, though. So it is an election year for governor? Are they electing a governor in Tennessee? Yeah, I mean, it's like, I swear, it's like every position is being, you know, there's, yeah, there are a number of positions opening up.

But yeah, the governor's race is the big one. And it's just interesting. It used to be in the 90s and the 80s, the death penalty was this major issue. And now, I guess, we have immigration, we have all kinds of different kinds of fear-mongering that politicians are able to indulge in without the death penalty. So it's been sort of striking, though, to compare that. to indulge in without the death penalty. So it's been sort of striking, though, to compare that.

Right. And probably maybe one of the reasons for that is because we're kind of in this weird sort of state right now, and I'm just sort of deducing this from what I've read of your work and maybe in a few other places, where it seemed like for the longest time, the death penalty was actually used less and less in a lot of states. And there's a lot of different reasons for that, some like sort of legal stuff, and maybe we can get into that a little bit. But it does feel like we're in a sort of weird place where it's only used as either

a sort of political buzzword, maybe for sort of cynical political reasons, or sort of cynical, what I sort of deduced maybe from some of your writing Is it's also used in a cynical way in a prosecute a prosecutorial sense? I'm not gonna get that. I'm just shrugging at me Mostly just because it's Effective as a coercive measure, people can get more sort of plea deals out of it by, I guess, maybe prosecutors say, you know, if you don't admit to this, you're looking at the death penalty or what. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And actually, when I wrote my piece on Tennessee, you know, one thing I sort of love to do and my piece on Tennessee, you know, one thing I sort of love to do and have started trying consciously to do in recent years is to find the authors of the sort of death penalty laws on the state in various, on the books in various states. You know, the sort of quick and dirty death penalty history that sets up our sort of modern death penalty era, as we call it, is, you know, in 1972, the Supreme Court case, Furman v. Georgia, struck down the death penalty across the country, or at least the statutes as they existed, and basically said the death penalty as it's being carried out, it's arbitrary, it's unfair, it's capricious, it's all these things. And so,

all these states had to sort of scramble to rewrite their statutes. And by the time the U.S. Supreme Court upholds, you know, those statutes or some segment of those statutes in 1976, you know, there are all these new laws on the books across the country. And what I found is that when you talk to some of the authors of those laws, the people who really thought that they were going to go and write, you know, a kind of good, new, improved death penalty statute that stood, you know, the sort of constitutional muster. A lot of those people who are still alive, you know, have a really different perspective on that now. And in fact, you know, either regret their role in authoring these statutes or just recognize that in practice

the death penalty, their laws sort of failed to ensure that the death penalty would be carried out fairly. And the reason I bring that up is that in Tennessee, Tennessee's law, new law, was written by a guy named David Rabin, who I spoke to on the phone, I guess, last month or in July, just to sort of get his story of how, you know, what that looked like. And he's a guy who was more or less fresh out of law school, found himself working in the AG's office.

Their initial attempt to revise their death penalty statute after Furman had failed and they had to kind of start from scratch or they had to start, you know, they had to sort of rewrite it and that fell to him, you know, basically a kid in his early 20s. And he's the one who told me that, you know, eventually he left the AG's office. Now he's a defense attorney. He's had experience with death penalty cases. He actually witnessed one of his clients' executions. He told me, you know, look, bluntly, the real value of the death penalty to prosecutors is for that coercive effect that you're mentioning. You know, he's like, it's a tool to get guilty, please, to first-degree murder. You know, and he's like, and that's why it's so near and dear to prosecutors' hearts.

And, you know, I've heard some version of that from, you know, many people, and it sort of plays out, you know, I don't know what sort of statistics could show that, but I think it's a widely sort of acknowledged tool in that way. Yeah, and something that I found so fascinating reading a lot of your writing is that not only did they go back in the late 70s, early 80s, try to rewrite a lot of these laws, but over time lawmakers started adding more offenses to the list that could be prosecuted by the death penalty, even though it was being used less and less.

Is that true? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So what you're identifying, I mean, one thing that you saw in Tennessee, that we see in Arizona, we saw in California, is what another man I've spoken to called aggravator creep, essentially. It's like, you know, the whole logic, the whole idea in Furman was that the death penalty was being carried out arbitrarily, which is sort of a code word for, I mean, it was definitely racist. There was a certain level of acknowledgement that

racism was a problem, but it wasn't sort of at the heart of the ruling. It was sort of, that's a whole other topic for a whole other podcast. But what Greg v. Georgia in 1976 did was essentially say, okay, you know, the death penalty can be carried out constitutionally along these lines. And it meant that there had to be a sort of narrowing. It had to be reserved for, you know, truly the worst of the worst. There had to be safeguards to ensure that it was carried out fairly. And so what states did was essentially,

what the court was sanctioning essentially was that states had identified clear aggravating factors, you know, that represented the worst crimes and only people who, you know, whose cases involved these aggravating factors were going to be eligible for the death penalty. Except for what states then did was expand, you know, start adding all these aggravators. You know, legislators started passing new laws, you know, amending their statutes to add aggravator after aggravator. And so that sort of happens over the course of the next couple decades. And this was at the heart of a recent challenge to Arizona's death penalty statute, which, you know, they were seeking.

There was a cert petition before the Supreme Court basically asking the court to rule and make a ruling not only on Arizona's death penalty, but on the death penalty writ large on the basis that, you know, the aggravators have expanded to such a degree that there's no longer a meaningful distinction between the first-degree murder cases that, you know, that end up with the death penalty and those that don't. And you see that phenomenon on display in Tennessee. And, yeah, even today, you know, that remains true. But. But the coinciding trend has been that, especially in the past couple of decades, death sentences have been dropping precipitously. There are just fewer and fewer being sought, fewer and fewer being handed down. It's a bizarre, counterintuitive trend. Yeah. And so I think that's a really good sort of framework, a political sort of social framework for where we're currently at.

And where we're currently at, from my understanding, again, this is mostly from reading your work and a few others, is that a lot of states have sort of drug protocol. I mean, the predominant form of the death penalty in this country is lethal injection, correct? Mm-hmm. So, you know, you have this sort of situation where you are, I don't know, to me, like, once you take it in a sort of composite as a holistic whole, you've got several different trends that are sort of contradictory, but the sort of effect at the end is just this really macabre

situation. Like, I'm quoting from one of the women you interviewed in one of your articles, Attorney Christine Freeman. She said, the system pushes everyone into a place of unreality. and she said the system pushes everyone into a place of unreality. And I found that a lot with prisons, just the entire criminal justice system in general. I mean, me and Tanya do a lot of work here at the station with prisoners in the sort of listening area around us. And I found like that it's not like that just with the death penalty.

It's also like that with visitation, and it's like that with solitary. I mean, it's just from top to bottom. Yeah, it's just really phenomenal because you've got these sort of liberal politicians who try to make it not seem as fascistic and macabre as it actually is, and maybe lethal injection is a kind of byproduct of that, where they've tried to make it look like it's this routine medical procedure. I mean, I remember reading in one of your pieces that in Texas, the very first lethal injection, they brought out a gurney specifically just for no other reason than it just looked

antiseptic and medical. It didn't have any real actual functional purpose. That's right. So, I mean, I guess, I don't know. So, moving from that to the current situation, you've had a string of what I would say are just absolutely horrific botched executions. There's one you wrote about in Alabama. Was his name Doyle Hamm? That's right.

And then there was one in Arkansas, Kenneth Williams. There was one that really stood out to me that was just phenomenal. I think his name is Joseph Wood. Was that correct? Yeah. Arizona, I believe. And it took over two hours to try to – his execution took over two hours. Jesus.

Yeah, and they counted that he gasps for air more than 400. I mean, what is going on here? Like why, you know, without getting too deep into sort of like medical and legal weeds, why are these box sticks, I mean, as you write, they're rare, but at the same time, it does seem like we've seen quite a bit of them recently. Yeah, yeah. So there are a number of ways to answer that. And I guess what I would say, you know, one thing that I've learned since I've been, you know, covering lethal injection and

sort of studying up on it is, you know, this form of execution, like you already identified, is always sort of a farce. You know, it was sort of, it was invented in this way that was meant to, you know, have the veneer, put a medical veneer on what is actually killing a person. It's adopted, but not only the tools of medicine in terms of these pharmaceuticals and whatnot to kill a person, but then just all the bizarre iconography of a hospital and a clinic and make it look like this clinical procedure. But, you know, you scratch beneath the surface and there's just nothing there that, you know, it's still murder and it's still ultimately what's been happening

lately is that it's looking more and more like murder. And the reason for that is—well, there are a few reasons for that. But what we've seen really over the past decade, almost a decade at this point, is that states have been experimenting with their lethal injection protocols. And just to sort of back up, I mean, around the same time, we already discussed, you know, the sort of history, late 70s history, when the Supreme Court, you know, sort of restarted executions in 1976, right? 1977, in Oklahoma, a lethal injection was invented for the first time. And it was invented essentially by a guy named Jay Chapman, who was a medical examiner, who, you know, sort of flat out kind of acknowledged that he didn't really know much about,

you know, killing people, but he studied plenty of dead bodies and sort of felt like he could come up with a way to kill people that looked humane and sort of rational. And so he came up with what we now know as the three-drug protocol that was adopted from state to state, first carried out in Texas, as you mentioned, with the gurney and all of that. And so it was this three-drug protocol that, you know, the first drug was supposed to be this anesthetic, and by and large, states were using sodium thiopental, which is a barbiturate. The second drug was a paralytic. And this drug really should be

much more controversial. It is very controversial, but should always have been the subject of greater controversy, because really it doesn't serve any... Well, the Supreme Court has claimed that it serves a legitimate purpose because it hastens death. But in fact, the main purpose that it serves is to hide the effects of any of the other drugs. It paralyzes the person on the gurney, including the muscles they use for respiration. So they're paralyzed. And the third drug is the drug that stops the heart. So this protocol was invented essentially by Jay Chapman. It was really left to the Department of Corrections to decide which drugs were used and what what amounts of those drugs would be used. So, you know, they're right right off the bat.

You know, you have these wardens and people with no medical background kind of being like, well, you know, these are the combinations of drugs we're going to use. And sort of states talk to one another, and this three-drug protocol spread across the country. So, for a long time, you know, there were definitely executions that appeared to go wrong. You can find many examples going back to the beginning, including in Texas. But the role of the paralytic was really critical in hiding a lot of the evidence that the first drug wasn't working as it was supposed to. In other words, the sodium thiopental, if given a sufficient

amount, should anesthetize a person, and they wouldn't feel necessarily the effects of the second and third drug. But in the absence of an efficacious dose of that drug, there was going to be a tremendous amount of suffering because of the way in which those drugs interact, you know, and have an effect on the human body. And especially the third drug, you know, there are many descriptions of what that would feel like to be injected with the third drug. You know, it's like being burned alive on the inside, you know, sort of these really

vivid, awful descriptions of what one would feel. And so there's plenty of documented, you know, sort of bad executions that were carried out where things went wrong, not even necessarily where the first drug didn't work as it was supposed to, but more sort of pedestrian, you know, bungling of IV lines. You know, people in prisons who are carrying out executions are not generally trained to do anything, you know, of medical nature. And so there's a lot of, you know, setting of IV lines improperly, you know. And so a number of botched executions actually are to do with that. You know, some of the grisliest examples,

the execution of Clayton Lockett, for example, you know, the drugs went, essentially, the lines weren't placed correctly. Same with an execution in Florida, this guy, Angel Diaz. So, you know, it's kind of a mess from the start. But the reason we've seen so many recently, and I think that the reason that they've gotten more press attention, especially a few years ago, is that, so sodium thiopental was the drug that was being used, you know, for years and years and years. And then, and I should mention, actually, you guys are in Kentucky, you know, there's this sort of seminal Supreme Court ruling upholding that three-drug protocol was in a Kentucky case,

Bays v. Kentucky, about 10 years ago. And that, essentially, the Supreme Court was confronted with, you know, evidence of botched executions, essentially, and lawyers arguing that their clients faced an intolerable risk of suffering, of cruel and unusual punishment, essentially, because things were likely to go wrong. And there are a number of examples shown, but the court sort of disregarded them. They said there isn't, you know, it's not essentially enough of a risk. And it sort of enshrined or gave legitimacy, legal legitimacy, to the three-drug protocol, as used in Kentucky and just about every other state. So, soon after this ruling comes down, sodium biopentol essentially becomes unavailable. And the reasons for that are a really interesting story. But suffice to say, anti-death penalty

activists, this group called Reprieve that you may be familiar with, based in the U.K., essentially launched a campaign to prevent drugs from being imported to the United States for the purpose of lethal injection. The main source of sodium thiopental, the manufacturer in the U.S., had stopped making it and attempts to procure the drug from, I believe it was an Italian manufacturer, were essentially blocked successfully by activists who then made it their business to stop European countries from providing the U.S. with drugs for execution. And this whole thing, there's like a domino effect where sodium biopentol becomes increasingly unavailable.

States start seeking new sources in sort of increasingly shady places. There's this famed example of a, there was this driving school in the back of a building in a London suburb that was housing a company supposedly called Dream Pharma that was offering to provide, youto-get drugs. I remember reading about that. Yeah, and this is a while ago now. So these drugs end up, these sort of shady providers ship drugs for execution to the United States. Some of them have expired.

Those drugs are also linked to troubling, if not botched, executions in various states. I think one of the first pieces I wrote about this was in The Nation magazine, where there had been a series of executions in Georgia, where the men who were executed died with their eyes open, which is a major red flag. Even if there was no larger outward sign that they had suffered, as we've seen sort of more recently, they should not have, you know, their eyes should not have been open. It was a sign that things had not, you know, that the sodium thiopentyl hadn't worked. So fast forward, basically what's happened is that states stopped carrying out the three drug protocol that had just been upheld by the Supreme Court

and started sort of experimenting and, you know, just sort of messing with their protocols. And Ohio, you know, was one of the states that really changed their protocol, just started swapping out different drugs. There was a period where a bunch of states moved to a one-drug protocol using this drug pentobarbital. Then that started, you know, sort of becoming unavailable. And so we've just seen a tremendous amount of chaos and just really like craft kind of grotesque human experimentation. I mean, that's really what it is because each protocol sort of that's rolled out,

trying a new drug, it's never been used before. You know, there aren't tests to be done, you know, to sort of see whether or not this can kill somebody humanely. And so, yeah, I mean, it's been actually a very hard phenomenon to follow because it's just this constant moving target. But where we've landed and where we landed in Tennessee, is with this drug, this essentially a sedative called midazolam, which was the drug used to kill Billy Ray Eyrich. It's been used to kill a number of other people, especially in Florida, which is the first state to ever use it. Expert after medical expert anesthesiologists have warned that, you know, unlike sodium biopentol, which is a barbiturate sort of designed for the purpose of general anesthesia,

midazolam doesn't have the same properties and cannot, just simply cannot work to properly anesthetize a person for the purpose of execution. Great. Or go ahead, Tonya. Well, and it's not like any of these facilities have a professional executioner or some shit on staff. It's like, can you imagine the backroom conversations about how they're figuring this bullshit out? Like, are they drawing straws here about who does what? Right, right.

My sister-in-law is a nurse. Maybe she'll come in and help. You know, like, who the fuck? Yeah, it's like, it's your classic situation of, and again, you can find pretty much this, you can find this pretty much anywhere in our society. But it's this classic situation of people in positions of power who are not only profoundly stupid, and they're not even necessarily malicious. Exactly.

It's just that the system has, like, it's sort of terminal logic has brought them to this place where like, they're, they're experimenting with certain drugs. I mean, just like when you detach yourself from, from what you're saying, it's just absolutely insane. It's just completely crazy. Yeah, no, exactly. And that's why I love that quote that you brought up of Christine Friedman's because she, it's, so accurately captures not only the just the surreal, you know, for lack of a better term, by sort of prison officials to the general public. You know, basically, you know, I was in Arkansas. I don't know if you would have seen the piece that I wrote.

I wrote a series of stories last year when Arkansas, talk about trying to rush through executions, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Asa Hutchinson, yeah, had decided basically that they were going to try to kill, to execute, you know, eight people over the course of ten days. Or do I have that backwards? I think it was. Kind of a long day.

No, no, no. I think it was 11 people in eight days, I think. I think so. I've got it written down. I'll tell you in a second. And the reason it's not, you know not at my fingertips is that in the end, I mean, it was so chaotic, but in the end, they only managed to push through four executions. And of course, the reason that they wanted to rush through these executions, this was

over the course of a really crazy stretch in April of last year, was that one of the drugs in their protocol was going to expire at the end of the month. And I would talk to people about this. It's like, they're like, I'm sorry, what? They're like, you know, they want to kill all these people in this short period of time because the drugs are going to expire. Like, that's the big rush. That's the reason. And yeah, that really was it.

And yeah, that really was it. And the reason was, you know, these drugs have been difficult to procure. It just was just shameless, you know, and there was sort of no, there was no better explanation I could offer. You know, it was literally there was a ton of litigation over it. The governor, I don't know how much money was spent trying to push through and, you know, beat back these legal challenges. But essentially, over Easter weekend, you know, the great, you know, Christian governor Asa Hutchinson had an army of lawyers, you know, trying to push through these executions and ultimately succeeded in getting, you know, for culminating with the execution of Kenneth Williams. And what happened that night, I was at the prison that night. That was an execution where the witnesses came back, the media witnesses came back and immediately described, you know, that he gasped and appeared to struggle and lurched against the restraints on the gurney and all this stuff. And it's like, without blinking an eye, a spokesperson for the governor who had not witnessed the execution,

he was like, well, I think we can agree that everything went fine. And, you know, there's basically nothing to see here. I mean, it was really staggering. It was like, again, the place of unreality. You know, it was just like I nearly lost my mind in the prison that night. place of unreality you know it was just like i i nearly lost my mind in the prison that night and um i remember there were these bbc uh documentary filmmakers who were um i guess they were making a film about all of this and um somewhere in the universe and i don't know where there's probably footage of me you know just losing my shit with this spokesperson because i'm like did you just

hear what they said like are you are you seriously saying this to us right now you know You just heard what they said, and you're just telling us you didn't hear that. You didn't see what you saw. And that sort of happens, I think, more than anybody realizes. And attorneys who witness their clients' executions and deal with the system day in and day out are some of the people who can describe it the best, aside from people in prison themselves. Yeah. I mean, there's one case I'm going to get to. Oh, and just by the way, you were right. It was eight executions in 11 days. Okay.

But, you know, there was one case I was reading where I think it was a prosecutor or it was an attorney for, it was the Chancery Court trial when they were trying to determine whether midazolam should be used or not in Tennessee. And the attorney, I guess, on behalf of the government in that case, they were relying on a doctor who was getting his information from like drugs.com. You know what I mean? So it's like this issue, I think sometimes in my sort of, I don't know, leftist sort of radical circles, I mean, sometimes this sort of issue of the death penalty is kind of forgotten or at least it's like that doesn't give as much attention, maybe kind of gets pushed into this realm of maybe being sort of like a liberal issue or whatever.

But for me and like with the carceral state in general, it just sort of strips down just all the pretenses of what the state of what purpose it serves anyways, and what the criminal justice system serves. I mean, it just shows you the sort of like, yeah, just the,

the violence and just the, the, the blood thirst at the center of it. That is, I don't know. It's just, it's just to watch them go to these lengths just to actually, for example, for them to actually have ruled that midazolam should not be used in the execution

of Billy Eyrich, they said that, and I might be getting this wrong, not only did they have to prove that it wasn't constitutional, they also had to give an alternative, correct? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, That's right. That's right. And that's because, and that's where, I mean, I think about this a lot. To me, the death penalty, it's that sort of, the tip of the spear of this unbelievably dehumanizing system where, you know, people in prison aren't human beings, and so we can do what we want to them, whether it be solitary confinement, whether it be medical neglect, with all the torture and inhumanity that occurs from day to day.

You see sort of in this unbelievably concentrated, warped form in the death penalty. And what's so striking about that that you just identified, you know, so this goes back to, so there was Bates v. Reese, which was the Kentucky case that upheld the three-drug protocol, the lethal injection protocol. More recently, the controlling case log is a case called Glossett v. Gross, which was the Supreme Court basically ruling, upholding the use of midazolam in Oklahoma. And what that ruling basically forced, the new sort of perverse standard that that ruling promulgated and continues to sort of impact every case that we see is the standard that you're describing,

you know, every case that we see is the standard that you're describing, where basically it says that if a person facing execution is challenging the protocol being used, you know, the planned protocol that's going to be used, you know, prefer, you know, lethal gas. Tennessee now, the most recent thing is they're arguing in favor of the firing squad. I mean, these are defense attorneys who are trying to save their clients' lives. again, place of unreality, right? Like into this position where they are advocating a different, more sort of obviously violent form of execution for their own clients. And their clients, you know, I've talked to them, what does it mean to have that conversation with your client? And they say, well, they understand, you know, that this is the law. But that in itself is just like such a perfect sort of snapshot of the cruelty and dehumanizing nature of

this whole system, but really the perverseness of the death penalty in general. Right. There's something I want to pivot to, although it's not much of a pivot. The reason I wanted to establish all that at the front end was because, obviously, maybe one of the biggest arguments against the death penalty is how difficult it actually is to prove that the person you're executing is actually one of your pieces that was just released. What was it? Tennessee. I'm sorry, Lillian. I can't remember the name of it now.

That's okay. Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy. That's what it was. Right, right. And they said 2,514 people found guilty of first-degree murder in Tennessee between 1977 and June 30, 2017, 192 were sentenced to die. Of those, more than half, 106 people, had seen their sentences or convictions vacated. African Americans represent 14% of Tennessee's population, but 44% of its death row.

And so, like, that to me just kind of, like, gets at the meat of kind of, like, what is the issue here. That to me just kind of like gets at the meat of kind of like what is the issue here. You know, obviously we've got this sort of carceral state and it's sort of inner workings. But we know that a lot of it is mostly just an extension of what we would call, you know, Jim Crow laws. And I don't think that the death penalty is really all that different. And, you know, I don't want to speak for you, but, you know, you had an article, the title of it, The Stepchild of Lynching, where you basically connect the two. And so I'm wondering, you know, again, as you said earlier, this might be a whole different podcast, but I'm wondering if we could just sort of look into that just a little bit.

Like, what do you mean by lynching is the sort of ancestor of what we would call the death penalty? Yeah, yeah. And just to be clear, I mean, you know, when I say it's a whole other podcast, it's not because it's like a separate topic. It's just, it's the sort of, it is the issue, right? Right, right. It's the heart of this whole rotten thing.

And, you know, and that's because of the history of this country and the history of, you know, of, you know, the experience of enslaved people and the evolution of, you know, slavery intoal Justice Initiative opened up its National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is the monument to victims of lynching. And I knew that this, you know, EJI as an organization for decades has been representing indigent clients on death row, not just on death row, but a lot of their work has been on death penalty cases. And what I've always admired about Bryan Stevenson as the founder of EJI is the way in which, you know, he brings a sort of race analysis to his work. He always has brought, it leads, you know, he leads with a sort of analysis of racism in his work. He's built his career doing this. And I think the first time I saw him speak, he was essentially addressing a room full of lawyers. And at the

time, there was something of a controversy, I would say, in the anti-daedalus movement around how much emphasis, you know, do we place on race and sort of as advocates, as sort of as a legal strategy, et cetera, et cetera. And he basically, you know, made the case that, like, it always has, you know, it can never go unnamed. It's always relevant to the system that we're talking about, you know, in various ways. And so I've always sort of held that to be, I mean, to be true and went down to Alabama to go to this monument to try to sort of explore the connections that I've long known exist between, you know, lynching and the death penalty in the South specifically. I mean, those connections exist in other places, but especially in the South,

where we see, you know, the death penalty traditionally and still, you know, sort of, it's been most aggressively pursued in the states that were, you know, the former lynching states. That's you know, you can see that that trend very clearly. So I wrote that piece essentially to kind of to try to draw that line a little bit. And the stepchild of lynching, I mean, that's really Bryan Stevenson. Those are his words. You know, he he he draws that sort of connection historically between extrajudicial, you know, killing for the purpose of racial control and the death penalty. And, you know, it can be a hard line to follow up to 2018, but the places where you see it most clearly are in the sort of early history, you know, the turning point at which sort of lynching, you know, lynching reaches its peak. And then right sort of soon after, the point at which the death penalty becomes a legal

statute and sort of legal executions take over, lynchings start to start to drop in the South. And it's kind of a, it's kind of a stark graph to the extent you can sort of visualize it. You know, it really, those two trends do seem to work in tandem. But one of the most important things that I think gets lost about the racism at the heart of the death penalty as it exists is that, you know, the sort of early statutes, both before Furman and then right after Furman, so much of the death penalty, the justification, the rationalization for the death penalty, was the exact same rationalization, justification for lynching, which was that white women had

to be protected from, you know, black criminals. And you see the sort of rhetoric in white newspapers in the South justifying lynching almost word for word, you know, the same sort of fear mongering around this idea that without this penalty, without this deterrent, that, you know, white women would never be safe from, you know, whether it be freed slaves or from black criminals. And that thinking sort of evolved. And where you see the starkest race statistics around, you know, sort of disproportionate use of the death penalty is against black men convicted of rape. You know, it's no longer constitutional. You know, the death penalty for rape was struck down basically in 77. But in so

many states, you know, rape was more than murder. You know, that was the crime that sort of was presented as the reason we needed either lynching or, as it evolved, you know, a legal death penalty, essentially. And so, the piece that I wrote in Alabama was sort of exploring that, looking at the places that were represented at this lynching memorial, and then sort of doing a deeper dive into Alabama and how that played out and how that evolved. So, it's sort of a hard piece to distill. It's kind of a hard piece to distill, you know, it's kind of a hard piece to summarize, but that's essentially what I was looking at, you know, and because I think to understand why we have the death penalty and why it looks the way it looks, you really need to kind

of reach back that far and understand that, you know, that this was always about race and it was always really about this idea that white women had to be protected from black men. And I think I certainly had sort of lost sight of some of that early history and the way in which it continues to animate our entire system across the board. Yeah, it's really fascinating. It's almost, in a lot of these rulings in the 1970s, these Supreme Court rulings, it's almost like the elephant in the room that they just refuse to address. I mean, you said it earlier that it's racially coded the way that they talk about how it was being applied capriciously and arbitrarily.

But what they mean by that is that it was predominantly directed at black people. But they didn't address that at all. They left race out of all of those rulings. Right, right. And it's, you know, somebody who's written very well about that specific issue, who I mentioned in the piece is Stephen Bright, who's, you know, a very well-known attorney who, you know, spent his career essentially doing this kind of litigation. And he and Bryan Stevenson handled the case of Warren McCleskey, who was a black man whose case went up to the Supreme Court and became really one of the worst decisions, I would say, you know, widely sort of held up as one of the most tragic decisions in terms of, you know, any hope of finding justice or, you know, for black defendants in the courts.

It was McCluskey versus Kemp, and it essentially held in a five-to-four decision that discrimination in the criminal justice system was inevitable and raised the burden of proof to proving racism in the criminal justice system to a sort of impossible standard. and the criminal justice system to a sort of impossible standard. And that case is—the implications of that case, it essentially has closed the courtroom door on just generations of defendants moving forward, because it means that, you know, you have to essentially show that the state was being deliberately racist in its treatment of your defense. You know, it just kind of was a way of denying what everybody knew to be true. And the same is true, actually, in the ruling, the Supreme Court ruling that, to its credit, the court struck down the death

penalty for rape. But in that ruling, despite the fact that there had been all this ample evidence of just how racist that was in practice, you know, just the fact that the death penalty was constantly being used against black defendants accused of raping white women, the court in its ruling, striking down the death penalty for rape, completely ignored race altogether. It was like that wasn't even mentioned in the ruling, which is another form of denial. And so Stephen Bray, I think he has, he has this article that I can't remember now the exact original title.

It's been reproduced in many forms, but it essentially takes the Supreme court and other courts to task for, for this, this epic blind spot, you know, where they just cannot grapple with, with, with the real role that,

that racism plays in the criminal justice system in general, but especially in the death penalty. And just how insidious that is, you know, because of what it means to try to combat this system. Again, it's another sort of kind of gaslighting, you know, it's like this isn't, you know, everything, all this evidence doesn't amount to anything and the system is fine, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have a quote in one of your pieces from Stephen Bright.

He says, it's just crazy to put a number on it. 80% of all death sentences are in states from the old Confederacy. Yeah, it's wild. You know, it's wild. And, you know, one thing to kind of, you know, bring this discussion to the present that Stephen Bright told me a few years ago in an interview, I was doing a big piece about a Georgia case. And I find this a lot. I find this in Tennessee. I find this some version of this is true, I think, everywhere, which is that, you know, in its heyday, you know, when the death penalty was really sort of at its peak in the 90s. sort of at its peak in the 90s, all these, you just saw all these sentences coming down in all these different states against defendants who had, you know, shitty lawyers, you know, where the evidence was really weak, or you had, you know, really aggressive prosecutors who,

you know, every single murder case is going to be a death penalty case. You know, prosecutors who, you know, every single murder case is going to be a death penalty case. You know, there's kind of this wave of punitiveness and aggressive sort of, you know, seeking of death sentences. And then today, you know, that has changed for many, many reasons. You know, capital defense, the quality of capital defense, it's much better. You have offices that are well-funded. You have, for better or worse, you have life without parole as an option now. And that's had huge implications for, you know, the way juries and prosecutors handle

death penalty cases. For all these different reasons, you know, laws have been passed to try to improve, you know, and reform the death penalty in all these different states. And so some of the cases like Billy Ray Irix, you know, this is a guy with severe mental illness. There are all sorts of problems in this case. Some of the cases that somehow managed Billy Ray Irix, you know, this is a guy with severe mental illness. There are all sorts of problems in this case. Some of the cases that somehow managed to sort of survive, you know, the review by the courts and make it to execution. Stephen Bright calls them these zombie cases, like zombie cases from like the 80s and 90s that, you know, it was they're the product of this different system, which isn't to say the system works today, you know, but a person going on trial for their life today, chances are, has a much better shot, you know, of avoiding the death penalty than somebody who went to trial, you know, in the 90s. And so when we talk about these zombie

cases, it's like, there's a reason that so many of these cases are just, I mean, the unfairness and the racism and the bad lawyering and the mental illness and all these horrible factors just leap off the page. And you see it again and again and again. And so, you know, and that's not to say they're the exception. I mean, it's almost completely the rule. You know, the death sentences that didn't survive, you know, didn't pass muster. You know, those people have either been resentenced or, in some cases, exonerated. Many, many people have died on death row, committed suicide, et cetera.

So the cases that actually end in execution are a tiny, tiny percentage of the people who've been sentenced to death under these incredibly flawed systems. Right. Well, Liliana, I don't have any additional questions for you at this time um kind of curious if you could tell us a little more about what the activism like the resistance to the death penalty looks like i was really surprised to hear about this like import situation that's a pretty wild and creative yeah is that just because form of resistance that i have not i mean there's a ton of shit i would like to keep from being imported into the U.S.

You know, like what a tactic. Fuck. Well, I mean, I guess that's because in the U.K. they don't have the death penalty. Is that correct? I mean, in a lot of European countries, they probably don't. I don't know. Right. Yeah.

No, absolutely. Well, so reprieve, if you don't know reprieve, it's a group worth knowing, not just for their work on the death penalty, but for, you know, reprieve for years has been out front doing a lot of work on, for example, against drone strikes. I mean, they're human rights lawyers, essentially, who are UK-based. And the way I got to know Reprieve is through a lawyer who spent a good amount of time in Louisiana, actually, representing people on death row, this guy, Clive Stafford Smith, who's the head of Reprieve, or at least one of the, I can't remember his exact position, but essentially, he, you know, he and other people who were doing work in the U.S., you know, they started out, or they were representing clients, indigent clients, and sort of all the same work we've been talking about. He eventually went on to represent clients at Guantanamo, and, you know, it moved back to the U.K. But that office, yeah, has always sort of

been involved, or for years anyway, in trying to stop executions in the U.S. by whatever means necessary. And they've done pretty remarkable work. Maya Foa, who's kind of one of the main activists there, she's the person who's been leading efforts to essentially convince pharmaceutical companies to keep their drugs from being used in executions. I mean, this is something she's still doing, you know, today. And it's, yeah, it is a really interesting, unique form of resistance. In the Glossop case at the Supreme Court, it was kind of surreal to hear Alito and Scalia complain about, you know, this guerrilla warfare that's been, you know, waged against the death penalty because all these activists have made it impossible for states to get, you know, the good drugs, as they sort of put it. And so they were really talking about reprieve then.

You know, unfortunately, in a sense, you know, they're the victims of their own success in that the more successful they've been in preventing states from getting, you know, drugs like sodium thiopental, the more states, rather than respond, you know, rather than states saying, OK, well, you know, these drugs aren't available. maybe we should just hold off or impose a moratorium or, I don't know, even abolish it, you know, stop using, stop executing people. I don't know that I could have predicted that states would go to such insane lengths to just carry out executions anyway, you know, just substitute whatever drug or bring back the electric chair as states states are doing, or, you know,

all the kind of crazy ends to which, you know, states are trying to do, like, trying to preserve their executions. So, yeah, so that's one piece of the sort of anti-death penalty movement, I suppose, if you want to call it that, that exists. You know, Reprieve is a great group doing great work. But I got to say, you know, there are national abolitionist groups. I think it's really unfortunate that in the past couple of decades, really, a lot of the activist energy that existed when the death penalty was at its peak or executions were at their peak in the 90s has really, you know, it's for a number of reasons. Like, it's just, we just, there isn't a movement on that level today. There isn't kind of a really active network of anti-death penalty activists that sort of, you know, spans from the local level to nationally.

And I think, you know, I think there's a number of reasons for that. But you do find, in my experience, you know, there's some really good dedicated people who stand outside the prison and protest. A lot of them come from faith communities, you know, but it's just not the kind of, I don't know, for an issue that is so rooted in racial injustice and racial violence, you know, it would be awesome if there was sort of a more vibrant activist push against the death penalty. But again, it's not the issue that affects people on a personal basis in a day-to-day way, the way, say, like police shootings, you know, the kind of injustices that launched

Black Lives Matter. You know, it's kind of this weird issue. You know, it's kind of what you said before, Terrence. Like, I think it's got this sort of liberal, anti-death penalty activists, yeah, come from sort of liberal communities that aren't necessarily identified with, like, the radical activists who take on other aspects of the carceral system. So yeah, I wish I could describe a better activist landscape, but it's pretty local and pretty small, to be honest. One thing I did find fascinating, if there's any kind of glass half full you can take from

it, it seemed like there was more protesters at riverbend where they executed billy ray iric it seemed like there were more protesters against the execution than there were for it is that correct oh definitely yeah that's definitely true yeah and as i mentioned my piece i mean um people show up in support of an execution yeah people show oh yeah showed up in support of an execution just to rally outside like, yeah, give it to them. Not only that, Tanya, not only that, they were playing, what was it, Liliana, Hell's Bells? That's right, ACDC. Yeah, that was crazy. When I was in Arkansas outside the prison for a couple of those executions, there were also people who showed up to show their support.

Nothing like, again, in the 90s when you had executions happening there were also people who showed up to show their support. Nothing like, again, in the 90s, when you had executions happening on a regular basis. I mean, there were people, you know, in Texas and Florida who would, you know, I mean, there was a whole scene, you know, like really like sort of bloodthirsty kind of circus-like atmosphere around certain executions. I've never seen anything like that in recent years. You know, it seems like if anyone's bothering to show up to support the execution, it's really a tiny handful of people. And so, yeah, outside the prison that night, it was a small handful of people. And this one woman who I had a kind of surreal exchange with that's mentioned in the piece where she was just flabbergasted that, you know, people, you know, self-described Christians would come out to oppose this execution.

And she, you know, firmly believes that God wants people like Billy Ray Irick to die for their crimes and,, yeah, this guy who was playing the ACDC. But by and large, yeah, it was, you know, dozens of people there to oppose and, you know, sort of stand and be counted, I suppose, against this execution. And as I mentioned in the piece, I mean, Riverbend is very close to downtown Nashville. You know, it's kind of unique in that way compared to other maximum security prisons and other prisons that, or at least where executions are carried out. You know, it's not some far-flung location. You know, you can go. So there's a very steady kind of visitation that happens. There's a lot of good sort of organizations and groups and people who visit death row on a regular basis and volunteer and

all that sort of thing. So that was actually quite moving to see and to talk to some of the people who really felt impacted by this execution because it represented harm against the community that they've come to know. And that community is the condemned population at Riverbend. It's kind of rare that I've encountered that in other states. Yeah. There is some resistance to speak of here in Kentucky, but I think it's pretty, like, narrative organizing-based, and it might even be faith-based, but I'm curious what your experience with this strategy is. There, at least I know a couple years ago,

there's a man who was on death row in Kentucky and new DNA, whatever, revealed him to be innocent to the crime he was convicted guilty of. And so then he was working with this abolitionist group out of Louisville, touring the public opinion. But it just doesn't even seem like, you know, like, is death penalty going to be on the ballot? Like what, you know, it doesn't even seem to me like that makes, I don't, I don't know. I guess I'm just curious if you've, if you are familiar with this tactic and have seen it work and like, what is the actual, you know, the actual, you know, the short of blocking imports of what does activism look like? How can people put pressure on this subject? Yeah, no, and I'm glad to come back to that because I don't mean to, I actually know many,

many dedicated, awesome anti-death penalty activists who, you know, have made it their work to do, you know, the work that you're describing. Oftentimes, you know, innocence is a really compelling, you know, narrative for people. And so and we have a lot of death row exonerees. And so there are many groups who and many exonerees who have hit the ground running. and many exonerees who have hit the ground running, I mean, leave prison and go and speak to whoever they can speak to, do radio shows, do, you know, media describing their case, what happened, and just sort of opening people's eyes to what, you know, to the basic fact that innocent people can be on death row, and these are their experiences, and this is why people should be concerned. And so, you know, Anthony Ray Hinton is a recent exoneree, fairly recent, who was exonerated in 2015.

The Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson's group, exonerated him, you know, won his exoneration after many, many years of fighting. And so he's one of those guys, right? He's kind of a unique case in that, you know, he's become sort of super famous as exonerees go. He wrote a book, which now has been selected for, you know, by Oprah for her book club. I mean, he's now kind of broken into the mainstream consciousness, I suppose you could say, with his story. And it's, you know, it's a really awful story about how he was essentially framed in Alabama in the 80s and his experience on Beth Rowe. There are a lot of groups who host events where someone like Anthony Ray Hinton will come and speak and tell his story. He's a really powerful speaker.

Actually, one thing that I interviewed him earlier this year, and speaking of resistance, I really loved, there's a speaking of resistance, you know, I really loved, you know, there are, there's a lot of resistance that happens on the inside. In Alabama, you know, prisoners on death row organize and have their ways of resisting. And, you know, I know you guys did an episode on the prison strike, you know, all of that organizing is really important. And there's a long tradition in Ohio and other states, you know, of condemned people, you know, trying to preserve their humanity and protesting executions. And one thing that Anthony Ray Hinton talked about is the way in which on nights where an execution was being carried out in Alabama,

everyone on death row, you know, would bang the bars. It's just like this deafening, you know, sort of collective banging of the bars that could be heard at the execution chamber, which was right next to death row, but it could be heard on the outside. And people in other states do this, too. I've heard about this for many years. And it's a really know, a really powerful thing to know that that, you know, that's also resistance. And a lot of, you know, those men and women have people on the outside who have their own, you know, forms of activism. And so, yeah, I didn't want to sort of under, I certainly don't want to fail to give credit to the people who are really doing this hard work in a dedicated way. It's just, you know, there aren't, it's as a sort of national movement, you know, it doesn't have the prominence that once had, but, you know, groups like death penalty, but there's groups like, you know,

the National Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty and Death Penalty Focus. But then there's, you know, I would say that some of the people working the hardest are these grassroots activists, like this guy I know in Ohio, Abe Bonowitz, who literally drives to wherever he can where an execution is happening and stands outside the prison, banging this bell and just sort of being present. And he's part of Ohioans Against the Death Penalty and has a lot of different sort of, he's plugged into a lot of different local organizations. But those are some of the people doing some of the hardest work. The other thing, you know, there's exonerees and innocents, but there's also some of the most powerful activists I've ever known are people like this man, Bill Pelkey, who founded

the Journey of Hope, which is a group basically of primarily it's people whose lives were impacted by violence, you know, murder victims, relatives, loved ones. Bill's grandmother was murdered decades ago. And they, you know, they all have sort of their personal journeys, but essentially it's a group of people who go on tour pretty much every year, tell their stories and explain to people why they're against the death penalty. And they're some of the most compelling speakers, you know, you'll ever hear. And they, you know, they don't necessarily all come from like a sort of left political,

you know, sort of place, but they have a way of sort of humanizing the issue and making people reconsider it in a way that, you know, that's really, really moving to watch. So, yeah, there's really good work happening. It flies beneath the radar. But especially what you were describing, you know, people who, you know, have been cleared by DNA or otherwise have left death row. So those are some of the best sort of organizing tactics I've seen because, you know, it's that storytelling that really forces people to think about this issue. Yeah, I thought the banging on the bars was interesting because I read that interview you did with Anthony Ray Henson. And the explanation for that, I thought it was pretty fascinating. It's basically that, like, when you're on death row, a lot of the people in your life have abandoned you by that point, friends and family.

And, you know, that was their sort of sign of solidarity. Just like if they could hear. And this is interesting, too, because the guards let them do it. There was this sort of, like, understood culture. I mean, I don't know i get into like prison guards and etc but um but i thought it was interesting that like yeah in the execution chamber you would be able to hear those bars being um beaten being hit and it sort of reminded you that there was a uh you had solidarity there was other people out there who loved you and cared about you.

Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, when you think about when you the prison strike, you know, that's been going on is so important. What I think people don't remember is what kind of what even like sort of small acts of resistance can mean, you know, in the context of prison. You know, that the immense power of the state to just destroy you, to kill you, you know, I mean, when you're resisting that in any way, and it takes incredible courage, you know, and I always thought, you know, the banging of the bars, whether or not the guards let them do it, you know, it was about sort of, you know, insisting on their humanity, you know, we may be condemned people, um, and they may be killing one of us out there, but we, we don't accept it. We're still human. This affects us. Um, it's just, it's a simple, but like really powerful act. And I think, um, I think part of, I think in the interview that I

did, the Q and a, I did, um, it doesn't quite capture the full extent of how he writes about it in his book, which is really worth reading because on the one hand, the guards let them do it, you know, quote unquote. On the other hand, you know, he's very clear. Those same guards, you know, are the ones who one day are going to, you know, escort me to the execution chamber. They're the same guards that are taking part in these, you know, rehearsals. You know, they're practicing carrying out executions. They may be a member of the execution chamber. They're the same guards that are taking part in these, you know, rehearsals. You know, they're practicing carrying out executions. They may be a member of the execution team. So it's complicated. It's like, on the one hand, you know, people who work

in those positions, you know, in many ways get to know condemned people better than anyone and live and spend hours of their time, you know, in those spaces. Um, and I'm sure they're affected in some form or, you know, in many ways by, by executions. Um, but, but they're also playing this like unbelievably violent murderous role. Uh, and, and Anthony Rahenson just talks about the restraint, you know, the sort of holding those two things, um, uh, at once, you know, in a really poignant way. Um, two things at once, you know, in a really poignant way. I don't know why it always jumps out, but in Tennessee, a colleague or a friend who works at the Nashville scene who witnessed Billy Ray Eirik's execution, he wrote a great piece about how dehumanizing that whole process is for everybody involved and how at Riverbend, at least years back, the practice, as they call it, the rehearsals

for executions that they would have, you know, sort of on a semi-regular basis was known as band camp, you know, like band camp. It's like they're all going to band or I'm sorry, band practice, band practice, which is so twisted. You know, it's like there's something so twisted about that. It's just like this, I don't know. So it's the unreality thing. Exactly, exactly.

So, but yeah, it's, I think it's, I've never written a piece in Kentucky. I really would like to. I actually, it's an interesting state when it comes to death penalty. You know, there's a lot, a lot of that's familiar, you know, from what I can tell, you know, that exists in other places. But a lot of, I'm sure, sort of unique dynamics, especially in the context of what you guys are more familiar with. I guess it's been, what, like 10 years since Kentucky carried out an execution? Yeah, I was in college. I remember it.

You do? Yeah, I was bartending at the time. And they were, like, covering it on the it on the news around the clock or something. Like, two more hours. And I just remember bartending that day, and it being really surreal. Yeah. Yeah, it's not used as frequently in Kentucky, I believe. Yeah, yeah.

One Kentucky thing that I do remember seeing, a pretty significant headline, I want to say it was earlier this year. You know, in 2005, the Supreme Court basically declared unconstitutional executing people who had committed their crimes as minors. It was a ruling called Roper v. Simmons. So, you know, basically said, you know, if you commit a murder as a teenager, you can't be eligible for the death penalty. It's kind of crazy that it took until 2005 for that to happen. And the Roper decision, like a number of decisions regarding life without parole and sort of juveniles as a population, was based on, you know, sort of understandings of the brain and how, you know, how brains continue to develop well, you know, well past the teenage years into your sort of early 20s. And just to show, you know, that if you're gauging a kind of level of culpability,

that teenagers can't be held to the same standard as, you know, a fully full-grown adult. So that was sort of the science, the rationale underpinning Roper. And I want to say that earlier this year, a Kentucky judge essentially ruled, extended the logic of Roper to defendants, I believe, as old as under 21. So anyone under 21, you know, rather than anyone under 18, which was actually a pretty big deal in terms of how the courts think of the death penalty and the idea of culpability. I mean, you know, that's kind of a, it's a small tweak, you know, in a practical sense, but it also sort of acknowledges that, you know, that young people, you know, continue to grow and develop and change and are sort of evolving creatures.

I think that logic should be extended to all human beings. You know, this is like you stop changing or growing as a person once you reach 21 either. But it was, I don't know that I've seen a decision like that anywhere else. And that came out of Kentucky, and it was kind of, you know, Kentucky sometimes flies under the radar, but that was a pretty big deal in sort of, you know, death penalty sort of legal circles, for sure. Well, Lillian, I don't have anything else for you, and we certainly don't want to keep you.

It is an exciting Wednesday night. I'm sure you've got a lot of stuff to do rather than talk to two hillbillies about the death penalty. No, I appreciate it, though. I spent the entire day watching, yesterday and today, watching the Kavanaugh hearings, watching the Supreme, the Kavanaugh hearings, which are just mind-bendingly frustrating because it's just all sort of political theater and meaningless and pompous and awful. But one thing that never comes up in these hearings

is this issue, or even early prisons in general in any real way. And so it can sort of feel sometimes like all of this is invisible and doesn't matter. So I welcome the opportunity to talk for an hour about these things. It's what I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, well, we'll definitely spend more time thinking about it and writing about it because your writing is very useful, and it's very revel, yeah, it's just very great.

And so thank you for that. And thank you for your dedication to this. And thanks for talking to us. And, you know, when I get this posted or whatever, I'll send it your way. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks. And, yeah, no, I really have enjoyed it.

You know, check out a couple of the episodes of your podcast. And I've learned a lot, actually. I've enjoyed, you know, check out a couple of the episodes of your podcast. And I've learned a lot, actually. The one on the federal prison and that whole sort of local fight was fascinating to me. Like, really, really interesting. And I can't say that, you know, I mean, yeah, I learned a lot. So I'm just glad you guys are covering this in that way also.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you for listening to that. That's one of the ones I sent because I was like, this one. One of my favorites. It's very informative. It's great. It's great. No, it's... Yeah. I think it's really important that this sort of oversimplification of the rural population,

seeing prisons as this great job generator, you know, it's kind of without acknowledging the real dynamics at play and, you know, the fights and the organizing, I think that's really critical. So it's good for me as a journalist to be reminded, you know, not to make those, not to sort of reinforce those, you know, those sort of flawed narratives. So, yeah. Well, so, yeah, people can find you on Twitter, just like it's spelled, Liliana, at Liliana Segura, am I correct? Mm-hmm, that's right.

And you write at The Intercept. So everybody, please check out her work, and we hope to speak to you again sometime soon, Liliana. Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks so much, you guys. Have a good night. Absolutely. You do the same.

See you. Thank you. All right, bye. Okay. Thank you. I'm excited. I'm excited. door to door Can't find no heaven I don't care where they go Let me tell you people just before I go These hard times will kill you just a long time.

When you hear me singing my true lonesome song, these hard times can last us so very long