Pod Insights Revisionist History The Alabama Murders - Part 3: A Peculiar Institution About this episode Colbert County. May 1989. One of the men charged with Elizabeth Sennett’s murder stands trial. But the prosecution’s case has problematic inconsistencies. His fate comes down to the jury’s decision –– at least at first.
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0:28 Malcolm Gladwell? This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on, and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet,
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2:05 Malcolm Gladwell? Hello, hello, Malcolm here. Before we get to the episode, I want to let you know you can get this entire season now, ad-free, by subscribing to Revisionist History on Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.
2:38 Speaker 02 Previously on Revisionist History.
2:41 Speaker 03 Thirty-five years. That's how long Elizabeth Sennett's family waited for justice to occur.
2:49 Speaker 04 He backhanded his child. I don't know what the child had done. You just don't do that to a child across its face.
2:56 Speaker 03 Thirty-five long years.
3:00 Speaker 05 And I answered the call, and I got all the information on who done it, who was all involved, and all the particulars.
3:09 Speaker 04 The viciousness was there that he could do something like that. I don't know.
3:22 Malcolm Gladwell? When Elizabeth Sennett was murdered, Patterson Hood, one of the lead singers of the legendary southern rock band The Drive-By Truckers, was living in the Shoals.
3:30 Speaker 06 Obviously, it was the big front-page story for, you know, weeks, because it was such a horrific, grisly murder. And all of the different-- as more details started coming out about it, you know, it just kept getting worse and worse.
3:48 Malcolm Gladwell? He was 24, working at a pharmacy in Florence, looking for a way out.
3:53 Speaker 06 They closed the Ford plant in 1982, which was the year I graduated from high school. And when it was gone, not only was it gone, but then all these other businesses that depended on people who made the money working at the Ford plant, that stuff started going. It's really bounced back in the last-- Last fifteen, twenty years, the town's almost unrecognizable because of all the really positive things that have happened. But in eighty-eight, it was pretty fucking grim.
4:24 Malcolm Gladwell? Years went by, and the story of what happened to Elizabeth Senate stayed with him.
4:28 Speaker 06 I don't know why it resonated with me, but I first started writing it thinking in terms of writing it more as like a short story, or a book, or something like that. And I kind of wrote it in that form, and then at some point started turning it into a song.
4:46 Malcolm Gladwell? The song was called "The Fireplace Poker." He released it on the album Gogo Boots, which came out in 2011. Maybe you've heard it before.
5:15 Malcolm Gladwell? Patterson Hood got his inspiration from what one of the regulars in that Florence drugstore, a local police officer, told him back in 1988.
5:24 Speaker 06 He was the chief of police in Florence. And so he was all up in any, any police business anywhere in the area, whether it was in his jurisdiction or not. So he would come in and just talk about stuff. And it was interesting to hear, for sure. He theorized really early on that, that it wasn't like it was, like it was supposed to be looking like it was.
5:51 Malcolm Gladwell? What everyone first thought was that Elizabeth Senate had been murdered by two local kids, Kenny Smith and John Forrest Parker. They were the ones who drove out to Coondog Cemetery Road on that March morning. It was Parker's knife found in a pond behind the house. They confessed they were charged with capital murder. Everything that would happen in the Senate case over the course of the next thirty-five years, the controversies, the outrage, the moral calamity that would ultimately take place in home and prison, was based on the assumption that the justice system in Alabama had correctly determined who was responsible for what happened that morning. Namely, Charles Senate was the mastermind
6:32 Malcolm Gladwell? who ordered the hit on his wife, and Parker and Smith were the killers. But that's not what the Florence police chief told Patterson Hood.
6:44 Speaker 07 The Reverend came home from work and found the missus dying. Life was falling from her grasp, but still she lay there trying. No one will ever know what she told him or know what he told her. Cause the Reverend did his wife in fifteen whacks, fireplace poker.
7:23 Malcolm Gladwell? The Reverend came home from work and found the missus dying. Life was falling from her grasp, but still she lay there trying. No one will ever know what she told him or know what he told her. Cause the Reverend did his wife in fifteen whacks, fireplace poker. Wait, the Reverend did his wife in? My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode of The Alabama Murders is about the trial of John Forrest Parker, one of the three young men charged in the killing of Elizabeth Senate.
8:06 Malcolm Gladwell? And all of the ways the catastrophe that unfolded in the Shoals, the failure cascade set in motion by the murder could have been averted. The counterfactual version of events, the what ifs. Episode three, A Peculiar Institution.
8:39 Speaker 05 I've had, you know, other cases that technically were probably factually more complex, but this is, yeah, this is.
8:51 Speaker 05 The one that I will, is still on my mind, even without y'all coming.
8:57 Malcolm Gladwell? Tom Heflin was John Forrest Parker's attorney. He remembers exactly where he was the day Elizabeth Senate was murdered.
9:05 Speaker 05 I had been to Red Bay, Alabama, which is on the Mississippi border, down the same highway where this happened. I may well have seen John Forrest Parker and Kenny Smith in their car. I don't know that for a fact, but I may well have. Then I got the call that the court was going to appoint me and Gene Handy to represent him.
9:30 Malcolm Gladwell? Heflin is the son of the former US Senator from Alabama, Howell Heflin. In his living room, Heflin has a portrait of his famous father. And father and son look very much alike. The Heflins have large leonine heads and a kind of rumbling southern gravitas. So you were court-appointed attorneys?
9:48 Speaker 05 Court-appointed attorneys.
9:49 Malcolm Gladwell? Yeah, yeah. How much of your practice would have been that kind of work in those days? Zero. This is unusual.
9:57 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
9:57 Malcolm Gladwell? So why, how did it come about then?
10:01 Speaker 05 Uh, I think we'd had a string of capital murder cases. And, you know, everybody kind of is expected to serve.
10:12 Malcolm Gladwell? Parker's trial took place in May of 1989 at the Colbert County Courthouse, a graceful, white, neoclassical building on the town square in the center of Tuscumbia.
10:23 Speaker 05 All right, we're at the Colbert County Courthouse. If we look across, you see a three-story building with a razor wire around it and a fence. That's the county jail.
10:37 Malcolm Gladwell? Heflin gave my colleague Ben Daf Hafray a tour of the courthouse.
10:41 Speaker 05 We don't have full lights.
10:46 Malcolm Gladwell? The courtroom was small, gray and white. On the wall, there's a portrait of the judge in the Parker case, Inga Johnson, long blonde hair, blue eyes.
10:55 Speaker 05 So where did you guys sit? There. And so the jury box, that's interesting.
11:00 Speaker 07 It sort of faces the judge.
11:03 Speaker 05 Drew Box is there. Witness would be there. Court clerk over there, obviously judge, court reporter here.
11:12 Speaker 07 Like, some of the jurors would have had like a direct view of John, like from feet away.
11:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, he would have been probably, we probably would have sat him there. I think we did.
11:22 Speaker 07 Well, because.
11:22 Speaker 05 Inside where we blocked him off to a certain extent.
11:25 Speaker 07 Why do you want to block him off?
11:26 Speaker 05 Well, he is shackled.
11:28 Speaker 07 Yeah.
11:29 Speaker 05 You know, um. That's basically, I just don't want to emphasize that he is a prisoner at that point. Even everybody knows he is.
11:42 Malcolm Gladwell? Most criminal trials, particularly older ones, don't have an audio or video record. There's just a transcript created by the court reporter. The transcripts can run for thousands of pages, and they're their own unique literary form. Because there's no description or elaboration or context, they read as flat, banal. It takes a little bit of time to learn how to use your imagination to fill in the empty spaces. And in the case of John Parker, what becomes clear when you learn how to fill in those empty spaces is that the prosecution's case was really, really weak.
12:24 Malcolm Gladwell? The state's problems started with Parker, sitting there in the docket a few feet from the jurors. This was a case about a murder-for-hire, a contract killer. And he just didn't look the part of a contract killer. Tell us about Parker.
12:39 Speaker 05 Parker was like 18. Uh, actually, a good family, uh, solid people. He had had some prior childhood trauma that I think probably created a little mental. He had some drug problems.
12:59 Malcolm Gladwell? Tell me more about your impressions of him.
13:05 Speaker 05 A kid who had been drugged out and didn't know what they were doing.
13:10 Malcolm Gladwell? John Forrest Parker had been arrested on multiple occasions for minor crimes: breaking into cars, stealing gas. He'd failed ninth grade three times. In one of his psychiatric evaluations, done after one of his previous arrests, there's this quote: "John's childhood history includes a brain concussion at the age of two. He reportedly was unconscious for 36 hours following his concussion. His parents reported that due to his brain concussion, they had not expected very much of John."
13:46 Malcolm Gladwell? On the drive to Kundogu Cemetery Road on the morning of Elizabeth Sennett's murder, Parker and Smith had a bottle of whiskey between them on the front seat. Parker injected himself with a healthy dose of opioids on the way over. Charles Sennett gave them some money to buy a gun. They used it to buy drugs instead. In every description of the crime, they come across as completely clueless. Parker is 19, Smith 22. They're so lackadaisical that after beating and stabbing Elizabeth Sennett, they threw the knife and the walking stick they used into the pond behind her house, when there are literally thousands of acres of wooded wilderness on the drive back home,
14:27 Malcolm Gladwell? where something could be thrown away and it would never, ever be found. Yes, Parker and Smith hurt Elizabeth Sennett badly and took money to commit acts of violence. But when we hear the phrase "contract killers," we think of assassins: mafia hitmen, stone cold, hard-bitten, lethal. These were screwed-up kids.
14:52 Malcolm Gladwell? One of the biggest points of weakness for the prosecution emerged in the testimony of the surgeon who was on duty at Helen Keller Hospital when Elizabeth Sennett was brought into the ER, David Parks McKinley. He was the one who first saw her injuries, who tried to save her life, who pronounced her dead. The direct examination by the prosecutor is brief and to the point. The police had found a knife, a hunting knife, in the pond behind the Senate house. This was a knife that both Smith and Parker admitted to bringing with them to Kundogu Cemetery Road. The prosecution just wanted to establish the connection between that knife and Elizabeth Sennett's death.
15:34 Malcolm Gladwell? Question. Doctor, can you tell us what you recall about her physical appearance? Answer. The most striking thing was multiple stab wounds, particularly over the right side of the chest and at the base of the neck. There were also some wounds of the forehead and scalp. McKinley testified that the cuts on the forehead and scalp looked like they were from a blunt object. The wounds to the chest and neck were caused by a knife. He went on to say, "It is likely that the chest wounds were by and large the cause of her death." Prosecutor. Thank you, Doctor. That's all. Heflin knew the prosecution was calling McKinley, so he did a little homework beforehand.
16:18 Speaker 05 We're starting trial on the Tuesday following Memorial Day. I know they're calling. State medical examiner was coming up to testify what the fatal wounds were describing. Then they were bringing the doctor who treated her in the emergency room there. And I called up the doctor and said, "What are you going to say tomorrow?" And we talked about it and visited, kind of knew each other.
16:51 Malcolm Gladwell? What the doctor told him made Heflin realize he could lay a trap. So in court, Heflin gets up and in cross-examination asks McKinley about the knife. Question. Have you ever been shown the knife that the state removed from the pond in this case? Answer. I have not seen it. No, sir. Heflin turns to the prosecutors. Do y'all have the knife? This is one of those moments when the transcript is of little help. You have to fill in the empty space. The prosecutors are anxious. They thought the identity of the murder weapon was a settled fact. So why does Heflin want McKinley to see it? They hesitate. The judge immediately intervenes. Can I see y'all at the bench?
17:35 Malcolm Gladwell? Both sides huddle with the judge. The judge says to Heflin, "Do you just want to show him the knife?" Heflin says, "Uh huh." The judge turns to the prosecutor. Why don't you get it? More hesitation from the prosecutors. The judge repeats herself. Y'all go get it. The prosecutors rummage in their evidence box. Take it out. Heflin hands it to the doctor. I asked Heflin to read aloud from the trial transcripts from the crucial moment of his exchange with McKinley.
18:05 Speaker 05 You saw the wounds inflicted on Ms. Sennett for us when she came into hospital, didn't you? Yes, sir, I said. Examining that knife, do you have any opinion whether or not that was the instrument that could have inflicted those wounds?
18:20 Malcolm Gladwell? And McKinley answers simply.
18:22 Speaker 05 I would frankly be surprised this was the knife based on what I saw or the sharp object based on what I saw on the patient. I don't have any further questions.
18:36 Malcolm Gladwell? The government's own witness testifies that the alleged murder weapon isn't actually the murder weapon. The chest wounds are of a much smaller knife.
18:46 Speaker 05 Yes.
18:46 Malcolm Gladwell? Than was. The neck wounds are consistent with the large knife that Kenny and John have. The chest wounds, which are the fatal wounds, seem to be made by a smaller knife, and we can't find the smaller knife.
18:59 Speaker 05 That's right.
19:01 Malcolm Gladwell? From there, you would think, the reasonable doubts grow. Were Kenny Smith and John Parker actually the ones who stabbed Elizabeth Sennett to death? The pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Elizabeth Sennett's body testifies. She described Sennett's chest wounds as rapidly fatal. When asked about this by prosecutors, she said bluntly, I don't think she lived very long after those wounds were inflicted. Once again, one of the government's own witnesses undermines their case. Think about the timing. At 11:44 in the morning, Charles Sennett calls Ronnie May in hysterics to report that his wife has been attacked.
19:44 Malcolm Gladwell? At 12:15, the paramedics discover that Elizabeth Sennett has a pulse. At 1:00 PM, she arrives at Helen Keller Hospital, and she's still alive. McKinley, in fact, doesn't pronounce her as dead until 2:05, a full hour later.
20:01 Malcolm Gladwell? But according to the prosecution's own witness, John Parker and Kenny Smith were back home in Florence by 11:30 that morning. It's a 30 to 40 minute drive from Kundag Cemetery Road to Florence, and it's pouring rain outside. The timing doesn't work. They must have left the Senate's house by at least 11:00. There's no way Parker and Smith could have inflicted rapidly fatal wounds at mid-morning if she was still alive at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Meaning, Smith and Parker must have been long gone by the time the fatal wounds were inflicted.
20:37 Malcolm Gladwell? Later in the trial, another pathologist who'd examined the Senate autopsy made the same point. Here is Heflin questioning him. Question: If the evidence in this case shows that the Cherokee Rescue Squad detected a heartbeat on Mrs. Senate at approximately 12:15 PM on March 18, 1988, based upon your years of experience as a pathologist and your review of the exhibits that you just named, do you have an opinion as to what time prior to 12:15 PM the fatal wounds were delivered? Answer: Within a very few minutes.
21:16 Malcolm Gladwell? The judge, the jury, the lawyers on both sides, the journalists covering the trial, are all listening to this testimony with its unmistakable implication. Someone else must have stabbed Elizabeth Senate in the chest with a smaller knife. And who was the only person at the house at the time of the 911 call? Charles Senate. If Senate does it, the timing makes a lot more sense. He shows up after they've left.
21:42 Speaker 05 Stabs, calls.
21:43 Malcolm Gladwell? Stabs and calls. Yeah.
21:47 Speaker 05 Or even they'd called and then stabbed.
21:49 Malcolm Gladwell? Yeah.
21:53 Malcolm Gladwell? A knife that doesn't fit, a timeline that makes no sense. And if the jury still had any lingering doubts about Charles Senate's culpability, there was also what they heard from Elizabeth Senate's friend, who had a front row seat to the inner life of her marriage. That's after the break.
22:24 Speaker 00 This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.
23:01 Malcolm Gladwell? This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over-the-limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time
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24:30 Malcolm Gladwell? These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez has racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction.
25:15 Malcolm Gladwell? Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
25:29 Malcolm Gladwell? Susan Mosley was a nurse at a weight loss clinic in Muscle Shoals. Elizabeth Sennett was one of her patients.
25:36 Speaker 07 And I noticed she was extremely quiet, introverted, no self-esteem, but was a brilliant, brilliant woman.
25:51 Malcolm Gladwell? Mosley sat down with a local reporter named Lee Hedgebeth, who has written about the Sennett case and did some interviews for us. She shared with him what she remembered about Elizabeth in the months leading up to the murder.
26:03 Speaker 07 So she would come once a week to the clinic, and I would go over, I would weigh her, her blood pressure, talk to her about, okay, how's your weight doing?
26:14 Malcolm Gladwell? Mosley said that Elizabeth Sennett didn't seem happy. She would sit in the waiting room with a napkin crushed in her fist. One day, Mosley decided to confront her.
26:28 Speaker 07 And I said, "Liz, now listen to me.
26:33 Speaker 07 You've been going up and down your way. So, I'm gonna close this chart.
26:40 Speaker 07 And I'm just gonna turn it on, I'm gonna shut my eyes. I can do that. And how about you, to close your eyes, and just tell me what you think is the biggest problem? If you eat potato chips or hot dogs every night, we'll get baked ones, or we will do something. Just let me know." And I heard, I nearly opened my eyes and I heard the chair rustle, and I still kept it shut. And she said, "I need to talk.
27:11 Speaker 07 Open your eyes." She said, "Turn around here." And I'll never forget, I turned to my left, I turned around, off this, and she was standing there. And I'm gonna tell you before we go any further. I'm gonna cry. She had a thunderbolt.
27:27 Speaker 07 It poured it down from about an inch above
27:37 Speaker 07 where a short sleeve would come
27:42 Speaker 07 all over the chest.
27:45 Speaker 07 And you can imagine,
27:49 Speaker 07 her buttocks, her legs, to a certain area where a skirt would come.
27:55 Speaker 07 The spot.
27:57 Malcolm Gladwell? Black. This senate was covered in bruises.
28:02 Speaker 07 I got up and I had this hope, but I didn't ask no questions. I didn't ask anything. I cracked the button a little thing back up, and I go like that. And she sat down.
28:14 Speaker 07 "You wanna talk about this?" And she began to tell me this story
28:20 Speaker 07 about her relationship
28:23 Speaker 07 with Mr. Simmons.
28:27 Speaker 07 She began to tell me that she just didn't know how that he was going to kill her. And that she knew this, and she had been saving her money
28:44 Speaker 07 for the wars.
28:49 Speaker 07 And then the rabid attorney, she was going to do this, going to charge her $400.
28:55 Speaker 07 She said, "I'm worried about this, and worried about this, but once I do this,
29:02 Speaker 07 you will lose this shirt."
29:08 Speaker 07 And she said, "I know.
29:15 Speaker 07 I don't think I'll ever be free again with her for the children."
29:23 Malcolm Gladwell? She didn't know how, but he was going to kill her. And she didn't think she could break free. Mosley said she tried to help Elizabeth to find a way to leave Charles, leave the marriage. She told Elizabeth, "You can come and live with me if you want." She tried to help her find the words to communicate to her husband it had to end.
29:45 Speaker 07 We would sit down all the, and then me right after she was playing, say, "Okay, now, say, play this.
29:52 Speaker 07 Charles, we need to talk.
29:55 Speaker 07 I cannot continue to be low over with all these meetings and then go to church on Sunday and Sunday and try to cover up all this, wearing a long sleeve shirt and in a hundred degrees out. Somebody is going to figure this out. I can't continue like this."
30:12 Malcolm Gladwell? Mosley gave a deposition to investigators, and her testimony was recounted to the jury by Ronnie May from the Colbert County Sheriff's Office in the flat, affectless tone of official speak. But even then, it's impossible to miss the power of what she saw. Listen, this is what May said.
30:33 Malcolm Gladwell? Mrs. Mosley said that she had been told by Mrs. Sennett that around Christmas of that year, Charles's family came to visit, and they had come up from Florida. Mrs. Sennett stated that some of the family went hunting. She stated that Charles became extremely upset over some conversation between he and members of the family, and Mrs. Sennett stated that during that outburst at Christmas with his family members, he laid down on the floor and screamed and cried and seemed to be paralyzed at different times. Mrs. Senate stated that this went on for some time at the House, and as a result, Charles's family left and returned to Florida. Mrs. Mosley stated that Mrs. Senate told her during this argument
31:15 Malcolm Gladwell? that Charles, at one point, had pulled and waved a gun in the direction of his father.
31:25 Malcolm Gladwell? On one of my visits to the Shoals, I sat in Tom Hefflin's living room and tried to make sense of all the things the jury learned about Charles Senate, who had taken his own life so quickly after his wife's murder. I mean, of all of these three potential murderers, Parker, Smith, and Senate, Senate is the only one with a documented history of violent, highly aggressive behavior. He's the one who beat his wife. To me, this is all about Charles Senate, the whole thing. He sets the whole thing in motion. He's the charismatic persuasive adult who... He's a predator. He really should be the one on trial.
32:07 Speaker 05 And without having gone back, maybe we didn't try him hard enough.
32:16 Malcolm Gladwell? This, I think, is what was on the police chief's mind when he gossiped about the case with Patterson Hood, lead singer of the Drive By Truckers at that drugstore in Florence.
32:27 Speaker 06 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, you know, that those guys, they were fuck-ups. They took what was gonna be a simple go-in, you know, kill her, make it look like a robbery, and turned it into this gruesome thing, and she was still alive. And so the preacher did what, you know, he then did. And, uh, I mean, it's, God, it's just such an awful story on every imaginable level.
33:06 Malcolm Gladwell? Which is why Patterson Hood wrote the crucial verse.
33:48 Malcolm Gladwell? To read the John Parker trial transcript with the full knowledge of what would happen over the following decades is to get angry, especially after what happened next: the sentencing.
34:14 Speaker 00 This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.
34:52 Malcolm Gladwell? These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype, from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio, is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction.
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37:00 Speaker 00 What was it like when you were sequestered?
37:02 Speaker 03 We spent eight days over here in the Ramada Inn.
37:07 Malcolm Gladwell? Gary Highfield, foreman of the jury in the Parker trial, talking to my colleague Ben Nadaff-Hafrin.
37:13 Speaker 03 It was good. I mean, you know, they fed us. And I mean, we got to go home and get clothes and all that kind of stuff, and then, you know, go down there. But they told us to prepare for clothes for a week. We got them and, you know, went to the hotel. I mean, it was all good.
37:30 Speaker 00 Did you guys hang out when you were sequestered?
37:32 Speaker 03 Nah. We really, they told us not to, you know. We just kind of, we did get to go to the pool. We did go to the pool one day.
37:42 Malcolm Gladwell? Highfield was 30 years old at the time, married, one kid and another on the way, sold insurance. He says, looking back, that the news coverage of the killing made the job with the defense very difficult.
37:55 Speaker 03 I think I get kind of handcuffed, I think.
37:58 Speaker 03 Because people had an idea of what had happened.
38:06 Speaker 03 There was so much put out there beforehand. And it's when you get something, when a person gets something in their mind, you know, it's kind of hard to change.
38:21 Malcolm Gladwell? So when they heard all of the discrepancies about the timing and the weapon and the character of Charles Sennett, it was hard for them to square that with their understanding of John Parker. He had agreed to go out to Kundog Cemetery Road. He had admitted he brutally assaulted Elizabeth Sennett. A dispassionate reading of the child transcripts today, years later, supports the idea that Parker should have been acquitted of the murder charge, just gotten something like conspiracy to commit murder or assault in the first degree. But this was a year after the crime, and it was very hard to be dispassionate.
38:57 Speaker 03 But, I mean, look.
39:05 Speaker 03 In that kind of situation, if you had, he, he meant to kill her with that pipe.
39:14 Speaker 03 I mean, if you mean to do something, you may not actually be the one that committed the death, the actual death, but torturing somebody that bad was, man,
39:29 Speaker 03 it was awful, dude. If you, if you're not, even if you're not the one that top, that was the one that fatally killed her,
39:39 Speaker 03 you did, you, I mean, it was proven that you did every bit of that stuff to this lady. I mean, she might as well have been dead, but anyway.
39:50 Speaker 03 I don't know, it's just.
39:53 Speaker 03 I mean, I, I don't even like to think about it too much. I don't know which one of them killed her, I really don't. But I think both of them got what they probably deserved.
40:07 Speaker 03 Legally and morally.
40:15 Malcolm Gladwell? They found Parker guilty of murder.
40:19 Malcolm Gladwell? So Parker's attorney, Tom Heflin, lost that round. But the prosecution was asking for the death penalty. And here, the jury hesitated. The picture that Heflin had painted of his client as a mixed up kid in over his head had left an impression. So the jury voted overwhelmingly, 10 to 2, for life without parole. The jury didn't think Parker deserved to die.
40:44 Speaker 03 I just don't think some of these people that were on the jury, they didn't want that to be on their conscience. The rest of their life, putting somebody into the death penalty.
40:56 Malcolm Gladwell? At this point, the cascade could have stopped, right? A cascade is unique as a category of catastrophe because it requires multiple stages in sequence. Remember our proverb from episode one? You need the nail, the shoe, the horse, the rider, the message, and the battle for the kingdom to be imperiled. And if any of those stages fall out along the way, if the rider loses his horse but quickly finds another, the kingdom is fine. A life sentence for Parker brings the whole saga to a close because it means that Kenny Smith would almost certainly get a life sentence as well when his time came. And for all intents and purposes, the case would be closed. Justice would be served. The rider found another horse.
41:41 Malcolm Gladwell? The kingdom is just fine. Except, that's not what happens. Why?
41:48 Malcolm Gladwell? Because this is Alabama.
41:55 Malcolm Gladwell? To understand what happens next requires a brief digression into an obscure legal doctrine known as judicial override.
42:04 Malcolm Gladwell? Judicial override arose in the mid-1970s in response to the Supreme Court's insistence that states be more rigorous in the way they use the death penalty. The court wanted standards, rules. So the court divided capital cases into two stages. First, a jury was required to rule on the defendant's guilt. Then, the Supreme Court said it wanted juries to do something they don't do in normal criminal cases: decide on the appropriate sentence. Alabama's response was to pass a law giving the final word to the judge. And if the judge wanted to override the jury's decision to turn, say, life without parole into the death penalty, they could. A handful of states did something similar,
42:49 Malcolm Gladwell? like Florida. But in Florida, the law said that the judge had to give, quote, "great weight" to the jury's decision. In Alabama, a judge could do whatever they wanted. And over the next 40 years, judges did just that. The override was used over 100 times in Alabama, almost always to allow a judge to execute someone whose life the jury wanted to save, with judges saying all kinds of crazy things along the way. Like the time an Alabama jury went easy on a murderer because he was mentally disabled, and the judge overrode them because, and I'm quoting, "The sociological literature suggests gypsies intentionally test low on standard IQ tests."
43:33 Malcolm Gladwell? So, in the Parker trial, the jury rules, in the first stage, that he's guilty. And in the sentencing stage, they say, "No death penalty, life without parole." And what happens next? The judge, Inka Johnson, the one with a portrait on the wall in the courtroom, overrides the jury recommendation and sentences Parker to death. Heflin was not exactly surprised.
43:59 Malcolm Gladwell? When you heard her override decision, your reaction was you saw it coming?
44:05 Speaker 05 Saw it coming.
44:06 Malcolm Gladwell? Yeah.
44:09 Malcolm Gladwell? Do you, um, did she have?
44:10 Speaker 05 I think she, I think she, I think she, now, she's generally a good judge. I, I think she listened. I think she, you know, I'm not saying she had totally prejudiced it, but I think she, you know, it.
44:28 Malcolm Gladwell? She doesn't give in her sentencing decision. She doesn't really give specific reasons as to why she's overriding the jury's recommendation.
44:39 Speaker 05 In Alabama, you're not required to.
44:44 Malcolm Gladwell? The whole thing makes no sense, of course. If the Supreme Court wanted the states to make the application of the death penalty less arbitrary, how does just handing over power to judges to do whatever they want for whatever random reason fix the problem? Gary Highfield, the jury foreman, is still angry about it.
45:05 Speaker 03 What reason did I have to spend a week, over a week, in a jury, listening to this when she has the right to overturn my decision, her decision?
45:19 Speaker 05 Yeah.
45:19 Speaker 03 I mean, it felt like it was no reason for me to even be there. That's the problem I have with, that's the only problem I have with the whole thing. I don't, I, I mean, I just felt, I felt useless spending all that time on a jury and then she has the right to come back. I mean, there's no sense in even having a jury if you, if you're going to be able to overturn the jury, if a judge can overturn.
45:51 Speaker 05 Attorney.
45:53 Malcolm Gladwell? Parker gets sent to death row at Donaldson Prison in Bessemer, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham. This is 1989. His lawyers keep him alive, filing appeal after appeal. Thirteen years pass. He's still alive, and he gets one final chance by way of a new Supreme Court case. In Ring v. Arizona, the court throws out Arizona's practice of allowing judges to make sentencing decisions independently of the jury in death penalty cases. They said it violates the Sixth Amendment, which reads, in case you've forgotten, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury." If your life is at stake, then what happens to you shouldn't be left up to the whims
46:38 Malcolm Gladwell? of whatever judge you were assigned. Only a jury should be allowed to make the call of life or death, and that protection is right there in the Constitution. In response, Indiana, which had an override statute on its books, shuts it down. Everyone on death row in Indiana who was there because of a judge's override gets their original life sentence back. All eyes turn to Alabama. Surely, they have to follow suit, right? John Parker's going to live.
47:08 Speaker 05 When I heard that it was done, my feeling was John was off death row.
47:15 Malcolm Gladwell? This was 2002. For the next eight years, Parker got up every morning, waiting for the state of Alabama to acknowledge the fact that the law that put him on death row was unconstitutional. He waits and waits. Do you know when Alabama finally got around to abolishing judicial override? 2017, when it was too late to make any difference for Parker. In fact, it took Alabama 41 years to come to their senses, and even then, they couldn't help themselves. They say this reversal only applies to future cases. Anyone who's already on death row because of a judge's override in the previous 42 years stays on death row.
48:00 Malcolm Gladwell? In the years before the Civil War, there was a phrase Southern slave owners would use to describe their practice of owning their workforce. They called it “their peculiar institution,” a euphemism, a nice way of saying that things were done a little differently in their part of the world. Judicial override is, I think, a very good example of another Alabama peculiarity. And if you are at all curious about how this particular peculiarity works, I would direct you to the discussion that took place on April 17, 2024, in a hearing room at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery.
48:41 Speaker 03 Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you to the House Judiciary Committee. We’re glad to have each and every one of you here with us today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. England, you want to talk about 27? Absolutely.
48:58 Malcolm Gladwell? Representative England is Chris England, that rarest of species in Alabama, a Democrat, represents Tuscaloosa. He was the co-sponsor of the legislation back in 2017 that ended judicial override. Now, he wants to make an amendment to that law, House Bill 27.
49:17 Speaker 03 What this bill does, or seeks to do, is to make that application retroactive, so that, I believe, 33 individuals that are currently sitting on death row as a result of override could be resentenced.
49:32 Malcolm Gladwell? Representative England says, “We’ve all finally agreed that judicial override violates the constitutional right to a jury trial in death-bentley cases. So we should go back and restore the jury’s decision in the case of all those people who are only on death row because it took us 40 years to realize that back in 1975, we made a big mistake.”
49:52 Speaker 03 Mr. England, I hear what you’re saying, and I understand that an individual tried today would be subject to a different set of laws. And I’ve got you, but the individuals that were tried part of the time we changed the law were subject to those laws that were in effect at that time, and the law that was in effect at that time allowed judicial override, and these judges, in their discretion, overrode.
50:17 Malcolm Gladwell? Then comes this priceless bit of nonsense.
50:20 Speaker 03 Consequently, it’s very difficult for me to...
50:25 Speaker 03 Second-guessed or in effect override that which the judge overwrote.
50:32 Malcolm Gladwell? At this, there are lots of nods up and down the committee. This is the Alabama peculiarity. I have southern friends who get mad correctly at the way northerners always bring up slavery or get all worked up because people drive around with Confederate flags. But, come on. This isn't a random thing. This is a characteristic. There is something in the psyche of places like Alabama that really, really, really doesn't want to address the consequences of past moral failures.
51:03 Speaker 03 All right. Is there a motion to give this bill a favorable report? Thank you. And a second. Okay. I think we've had plenty of discussion. You asked for a roll call. Go ahead, Brandy.
51:15 Malcolm Gladwell? Maybe you see where this is going. They vote it down. There will be no overriding of the override.
51:23 Malcolm Gladwell? It seems really clear to me that John Forrest Parker didn't kill Elizabeth Sennett. He was back home in Florence when she received the stab wounds that killed her. He should never have been convicted of murder, but he was. And if he was going to be convicted, he should have served out the sentence given to him by a jury of his peers: life without parole. But he didn't. And once he was on death row, Alabama should have ended the practice that robbed him of a just result. But they didn't get around to it for over 40 years, and even then, they couldn't bring themselves to override the override.
52:01 Malcolm Gladwell? John Forrest Parker never stood a chance.
52:22 Malcolm Gladwell? Next time on The Alabama Murders.
52:26 Speaker 04 This is how lethal injection actually kills you. It kills you by burning your lungs up. So the last thing that, you know, you may know is that you're on fire from the inside and the blood is filling up your lungs as you die. Is this too graphic?
52:44 Speaker 03 Look, if you come back here and you start coming and these guys ask you to go all the way with them, you gotta be willing to go. And I said, what's all the way? And he said, well, you know, if they're executions 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.
53:08 Malcolm Gladwell? Revisionist History is produced by Ben Nadaf Hafry, Lucy Sullivan, and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by Ben Nadaf Hafry and Lee Hedgesbeth. Our editor is Karen Shikurji. Fact checking by Kate Furby. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Production support from Luke Lemaire. Original scoring by Luis Guerra with Paul Brainard and Jimmy Bott. Sound design and additional music by Jake Korski. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
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