Pod Insights Revisionist History The Alabama Murders - Part 7: The Second Warrant About this episode Holman Correctional Facility. January 2024. Over three decades after the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, the failure cascade comes to an end, but not before claiming one more life.
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Transcript 6,584 words · 12 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:03 Malcolm Gladwell? Previously on Revisionist History.
2:12 Speaker 02 Had my wife just been murdered in my home, I couldn't tell you nothing. My mind's gone. But he knew everything in detail. That's a red flag.
2:22 Speaker 03 I can't remember how soon they figured out that, you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that, but it was, you know, it was pretty obvious pretty quick.
2:34 Speaker 02 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.
2:45 Malcolm Gladwell? Thirty-five years. That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur. Thirty-five long years.
2:57 Speaker 04 He was just having severe nightmares of being executed over and over. He sort of came out of the depression and then the second execution came up.
3:18 Malcolm Gladwell? So at some point during your conversations with him, he gets his second warrant?
3:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:23 Malcolm Gladwell? When is that?
3:26 Speaker 04 So we got a second warrant in November, a year later, for a January execution. So, you know, they take you, as soon as they give you the warrant, by the way, this is another particularly cruel thing. This is a man who's been 34 years, he has a cell, he's, you know, they call it their house, their cell. So his house was nice, you know, he had his stuff in there and he, and once they take you to the warden and tell you they don't take you back to your cell, that's it. You get put in the death chamber cell, which is this totally isolated cell. Very hard.
3:57 Malcolm Gladwell? Kate Porterfield, the psychologist hired by Kenny Smith's legal team.
4:03 Malcolm Gladwell? Once he was given the second warrant and taken to the death chamber, did you lose contact with him?
4:07 Speaker 04 No, no, we were able to talk. We talked up until about, I think we talked up until about December. And then he got very, you know, he turned his attention to facing what was probably going to happen. His lawyers were working very hard to still stop it. I testified in a hearing about what I believed was going to happen to him with his post-traumatic stress if he had to go through this again. And I testified, which I believe to be true, that this man was going to go into a state of such severe symptomatic PTSD as to be really just devastated. You know, to be, to be taken into that same thing again was going to just be, you know, catastrophic to his psyche.
4:52 Malcolm Gladwell? Cruel and unusual.
4:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, and those words cruel and unusual is like the legal term. And so what I was saying is this man's going to be absolutely devastated within his psyche and disorganized and, and completely symptomatic because he's got a severe condition that you guys did to him, by the way, that was brought about by what was done. So this was not a guy who had PTSD before this.
5:16 Malcolm Gladwell? Do you remember the first contact you had with him after he got his warrant?
5:20 Speaker 04 Um, I mean, I remember some of it. I mean, he was very focused on fighting, you know, he was very focused on fighting it and he was very worried about his family. He was super worried about his mom and his grandson and his wife. So he was very focused on them. And he also said, you know, I've had the greatest lawyers, we're going to keep fighting this. I mean, look, he was anxious. He was really starting to fall apart, but he was also trying to be focused on hope.
5:58 Malcolm Gladwell? My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to The Alabama Murders. This is the final episode in our series. We started with the murder of Elizabeth Sennett on Coondog Cemetery Road. And now we're going to end with what happened in Kenny Smith's last days. The bizarre and grotesque final act to the Sennett cascade, where the state of Alabama endeavored to figure out and justify another way of executing Kenny Smith. This is episode seven, "The Second Warrant."
6:46 Malcolm Gladwell? Just over a month before Kenny Smith's second execution date, his legal team made one last big push to save his life. A lawsuit, heard in US District Court in Montgomery, Alabama. Kenneth Eugene Smith v. John Q. Hamm. Hamm, the defendant, is the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections. Bulldog of a guy, maybe six feet, bald, white mustache and goatee, dark suit, white shirt, red tie. If you're curious about Hamm, you can find him on YouTube, where he's a regular.
7:21 Malcolm Gladwell? He's the person in Alabama's state government whose job it is to stand up at press conferences and announce that one of his prisons has just executed another person.
7:31 Speaker 05 By order of the Alabama Supreme Court, tonight, the state of Alabama carried out the execution of James Barber by lethal injection at Williams A. Holman Prison.
7:41 Malcolm Gladwell? He answers questions about how things went.
7:44 Speaker 05 How many IVs did you need to have in him, too? We had two, so there were three sticks and six members.
7:52 Malcolm Gladwell? And lets the world know they've done their job well.
7:55 Speaker 05 We carried out a successful execution of the inmate as a regular.
8:07 Malcolm Gladwell? John Q. Hamm.
8:10 Malcolm Gladwell? This is who Kenny Smith's legal team is up against. The basis of their appeal was a new method that Alabama intended to use on Kenny Smith. Having lost confidence in the ability of its execution team to find one of Kenny Smith's veins, the state decided instead to strap him to a gurney, put a mask over his face, and pump him full of nitrogen gas, a method that had never been used in a judicial execution before in the United States, or, for that matter, anywhere. They were attempting to make history. And in response, Kenny Smith's lawyers argued that the use of an untested method like nitrogen
8:50 Malcolm Gladwell? asphyxiation would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. They wanted a preliminary injunction.
9:01 Malcolm Gladwell? Tell me a little bit about nitrogen gas.
9:05 Speaker 06 It's not, in its pure form, it's not used, you know, in medical situations.
9:10 Malcolm Gladwell? This is Joel Zivit, the Atlanta anesthesiologist who we've heard from many times in this series.
9:16 Speaker 06 You know, in the air we breathe, air is actually, is a mixture of about 79% or 80% nitrogen and 20, 29% oxygen. Why don't we breathe pure oxygen? If the atmosphere of the earth was pure oxygen, it would be on fire and there would be no life. So to make it kind of work in the body, we have to water it down, so to speak, with nitrogen gas.
9:45 Malcolm Gladwell? We breathe in oxygen, which keeps us alive, mixed in with enough nitrogen to make it safe. Nitrogen is inert. It just passes in and out of the body.
9:54 Speaker 06 Like, it doesn't kind of hurt to inhale it. But what it does do is that it doesn't, you know, it doesn't light the fire of life. It doesn't support the cellular combustion that is required with oxygen. So it's like putting the candle, you know, under the glass and the candle eventually uses up all the oxygen and nothing remains.
10:21 Speaker 06 So the theory was that because nitrogen gas was not noxious, it would be, it could be given to someone as a kind of, you know, method of, of gas execution that would not be so troubling to them. Because they would breathe it and not know it. And that they would then lose consciousness and die.
10:47 Malcolm Gladwell? All you needed was some pure industrial-grade nitrogen gas and a tight-fitting mask. That was the theory. And the great appeal of nitrogen to a state like Alabama, where the execution teams were not always up to the challenge of executing people the conventional way. But in practice, there are complications. Like if some oxygen seeps into your mask while you're being fed nitrogen, then you could end up in a vegetative state, alive but brain-dead. There's also the possibility, since pure nitrogen makes people nauseous, that the prisoner being executed could throw up in their mask and choke to death, which achieves the same end. But inducing someone to asphyxiate on their own vomit
11:31 Malcolm Gladwell? is not a Supreme Court-approved method of execution, as yet.
11:37 Speaker 06 So like in lethal injection, you know, once the vein is cannulated and the drugs are flowing, it's hard to stop. Okay, you can't kind of block your own vein or do something. But in, in gas execution, you have to participate in your own demise by breathing. Okay, so the first thing that you're going to do is that you hold your breath. Okay, because you don't want to breathe. So now you're holding your breath, you're holding your breath. And as you hold your breath, your own carbon dioxide gas, which is something that we normally exhale and is sort of finely regulated, starts to rise. And it's the rising of carbon dioxide
12:22 Speaker 06 that is very uncomfortable when you hold your breath. It makes you want to take a breath. So that starts to, at some point, you can't stand it, okay? And you've got to take a breath. So you breathe in at that point, you breathe in this nitrogen gas that, you know, has a very different kind of impact on, on what's happened to you. Because by virtue of holding your breath, it dilates the blood vessels in the brain. Okay, so now you've got this flush of nitrogen gas that's traveling, you know, at volume into your brain. That may be why you have a seizure. And it seems to create a cascade of other kinds of physiologic changes,
13:06 Speaker 06 none of which is instantaneous unconsciousness followed by death.
13:16 Malcolm Gladwell? The effectiveness of nitrogen gas as a euthanizing agent has actually been extensively studied in animals. A group of researchers in Zurich, for example, recently took 60 rats, implanted them with biomedical sensors, divided them into groups, each with a different lethal method: carbon dioxide, a powerful anesthetic called isofluorane, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen. They euthanized all the animals, videotaped their final moments, necropsied the bodies, and collected cardiovascular, respiratory, neural, biochemical, histological, and behavioral data. Their conclusion?
13:58 Malcolm Gladwell? Carbon monoxide and nitrogen resulted in longer times to loss of consciousness, induced seizures before loss of consciousness, increased stress levels, and caused higher lung damage. Therefore, carbon monoxide and nitrogen are not humane alternatives and should not be used for euthanasia.
14:22 Malcolm Gladwell? They weren't talking about the applicability of their findings to human beings. They were simply addressing their colleagues who use lab animals for research purposes. They were telling them, even the smallest and most despised of animals deserve some degree of consideration. Please don't use nitrogen. A rat deserves a better way to die. So this was the point of the final lawsuit. Kenny Smith's lawyers wanted to know, had Jon Hamm and his colleagues thought about this new method of killing people with anything like the rigor of the lab rat community?
15:14 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.
15:51 Malcolm Gladwell? A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options, like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail, your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated.
16:33 Malcolm Gladwell? Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes, and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com. 4imprint, for certain. 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.
17:17 Malcolm Gladwell? 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. 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.
18:01 Malcolm Gladwell? December 20th, 2023. It's a month before Kenny Smith's second execution date. John Kuhem took the stand in the morning. He began by laying out Alabama's proposed protocol. They would be using, he said, "the same execution chamber as the lethal injection attempt, the same gurney. The execution team would have the same captain. 10 of the 12 members of the execution team would be the same. Each step of the protocol would be the same. The only difference would be no IV this time, just a mask hooked up to a canister of pure nitrogen." The cross-examination was handled by one of Kenny Smith's lawyers, Andrew Burns Johnson out of Birmingham.
18:45 Malcolm Gladwell? Can you tell the court what deliberation you had relating to what to do in the circumstance of vomiting in the mask when nitrogen is being applied? Answer: We just had conversations about, like I said, sitting around, hypotheticals. So we sat around and we came up with those ideas, or excuse me, the side effects, so what we would do in that situation. Question: Did you consider that vomiting in a mask could cause asphyxiation? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Did you consult with any medical personnel about how to lessen that risk? Answer: No, sir. Did you talk to any medical personnel about how to alleviate that risk? No, sir.
19:29 Malcolm Gladwell? Did you talk to any medical personnel about what to do in that situation as it's happening to prevent asphyxiation? I did not.
19:42 Malcolm Gladwell? I can only imagine what was going through the mind of Kenny Smith's lawyer in that moment. Is it bafflement? Disbelief? I mean, for goodness sake, a research team in Zurich went to enormous effort to figure out whether nitrogen was worthy of lab rats. Could the Alabama State Department of Corrections, an organization with a budget of over $700 million, really just be winging it? Wait, we're not finished. Question: Okay, you certainly had medical personnel available to you to ask that question. Answer: I could have sought out medical advice, yes. Question: Okay, did the state have medical personnel involved in this process of developing
20:27 Malcolm Gladwell? this protocol that you signed? Answer: The Department of Corrections did not have medical personnel involved. Question: Were you ever involved in meetings with medical personnel where the issue of vomiting in the mask was discussed at all? Answer: No, sir. Question: Have you had an opportunity to review the declarations of the experts in this case who talk about the effects of vomiting in the mask? Answer: I have not.
21:00 Malcolm Gladwell? This goes on and on, by the way. Other witnesses from the state of Alabama get called. Has anyone thought about what would happen if outside air came into the mask? No. Where did you get that mask, by the way? Well, they don't really make masks for execution purposes, do they? So we're using an industrial mask, the kind that a construction worker might use. We did some internet research. Literally, the person who the state asked to figure out the mask question, who they brought to the hearing to support their case, admitted that he'd never used these kinds of masks, had no expertise in the characteristics of these masks, and knew what he knew because he'd spent some time online.
21:43 Malcolm Gladwell? Kenny Smith's lawyer then brings up the testimony of a previous witness, who had stressed the importance of the mask fitting perfectly so no outside air would leak in, and asks Jon Q. Hamm about it. Question: So in order to be properly placed, one would have to ensure that there's no outside air coming in? Answer: That was his opinion. Question: Okay, assuming his opinion is correct, what's done in the execution chamber to make sure that no outside air gets under the mask? Answer: Well, that's a hypothetical on his opinion being correct. Question: Even so, what is done to make sure no outside air comes in?
22:25 Malcolm Gladwell? Answer: I don't know specifically what the team captain does to make sure the air does not get in, but I'm sure they do practice quite regularly. Question: Do you agree with me there's nothing in the protocol that would let us know what's going to happen to make sure there's a proper fit? Answer: That is correct. Later in the day, Kate Porterfield was called to the stand. She had spent more than a year assessing Kenny Smith. She had submitted her report to the court. She probably knew more than anyone at that moment what he was feeling, and how he was doing, and how he might react to being re-executed by the same crew on the same gurney in the same execution chamber as the first go-round.
23:09 Malcolm Gladwell? But do you know what she was asked at the beginning of her cross-examination by the attorney for the Alabama Department of Corrections? Had she properly accounted for the possibility that Kenny might be malingering?
23:22 Malcolm Gladwell? What if all that PTSD stuff that he claimed was about being jabbed with needles for three and a half hours was just him faking it? A long technical discussion follows about how you can tell if someone's actually faking it. And from there, the questioning moved to the vomit issue.
23:39 Speaker 04 And astonishingly, oh, gosh, the focus of that hearing, this is where the legal system sometimes is just, you can't make it up, this stuff that becomes the issue. Because he had to have a mask over his face to get the gas for nitrogen hypoxia execution, and sorry, the details of this are gross, his lawyers argued he is, because of his post-traumatic stress, going to possibly throw up. And if he throws up in his mask, it's going to be, you know, he could get asphyxiated that way. Now, of course, you are listening and thinking, this is so, like, talk about absurd, right?
24:21 Speaker 04 So I was asked to testify about his post-traumatic stress and his nausea, which was one of his symptoms. And, you know, I was asked to testify, would he throw up if they put a mask on his face and tried to kill him? Which, you know, it's just incredible to be asked that in a court of law. And I had to say, you know, I'm not a medical doctor, first of all, so I can't speak to the gastrointestinal system and what it does. I can tell you, as a psychologist, from this kind of severe post-traumatic stress and the fact that Mr. Smith's had really severe nausea and so vomiting, there is a high likelihood that could happen,
25:05 Speaker 04 yes, because he's going to go into a serious state of distress. But it kind of boiled down to whether or not he would, you know, vomit as whether they could stop this. And they, you know, the judge said, the judge said, don't let him eat eight hours before. That's what they did, moved the last meal earlier.
25:27 Malcolm Gladwell? And with that, Kenny's fate was set.
25:36 Malcolm Gladwell? In the months leading up to his execution date, Kenny Smith began to put his affairs in order. In his words, he loved up on everybody. He named his witnesses. He wanted his family there. His mom, his wife, his sons, his spiritual advisor, his lawyer, Robert Crass.
25:55 Speaker 07 So tell me about that evening.
25:57 Speaker 08 So I arrived. I was supposed to go to the prison at 5:00. So I got there at 5:00.
26:09 Malcolm Gladwell? Everyone on the list arrived at home in prison on the afternoon of January 25th. The corrections department gathered them and put them in a van to drive to the execution chamber.
26:20 Speaker 08 At some point, it started to rain and you could hear on the roof, you know, you could hear the rain falling on the roof.
26:31 Malcolm Gladwell? They emptied their pockets. No watches, no phones. At 6:52, one of the drivers of the van got a phone call. It was moving time. A police car with flashing lights led the way, through a gate at the back of the prison, from there to a holding room. Another wait, maybe an hour. Lee Hedgebeth, the local reporter who did some interviews for us, was there. So was Kenny Smith's mom, Linda.
27:00 Speaker 07 He'd survived that first attempt. Did you think there was any chance that he would survive the second time?
27:07 Speaker 09 You know, I really didn't.
27:11 Speaker 09 Did you?
27:17 Speaker 07 I don't know. Part of me thought we might all die because they didn't know what they were doing. It was the first time it had ever been done.
27:25 Speaker 09 Yeah.
27:26 Speaker 07 You know, he's got a mask that leaks and...
27:32 Speaker 07 I don't know.
27:33 Speaker 09 Somehow, I just knew that that was... that was going to be it. And when he... Well, he said, when he seen them coming, he said, "Well, Mom, they're coming to get me."
27:47 Speaker 09 And, you know, we said our goodbyes and, you know, the last thing he said was, "I love you, Mom.
27:57 Speaker 09 I gotta go."
28:01 Speaker 07 So the last time he saw him was when I was there in that room and they come and get him. Do you remember, is that what he said to you then too?
28:14 Speaker 07 What, do you remember what you said to him?
28:16 Speaker 09 I told him I loved him too.
28:20 Speaker 09 He said, "I know mom."
28:25 Speaker 09 And then I just can't get that picture out of my head when he's there walking him back and he looked back and he was just smiling.
28:36 Speaker 07 Yeah.
28:37 Speaker 09 That haunts me.
28:42 Malcolm Gladwell? At some point, everyone was led to the witness room.
28:46 Speaker 08 A curtain was drawn by the windows. There were four seats in the front, which we took. There was a box of tissues to my right, near the windowsill or on a windowsill.
29:07 Speaker 08 And then a little after that, they opened the curtain.
29:16 Speaker 08 We could see Kenny strapped to a gurney. He was strapped across his chest. His arms were strapped to the side and he was wearing a mask. The warden entered the room. He read the death warrant. He asked Kenny if he had, if he wanted to make a statement, which he did. So they put the microphone. They unscrewed a valve to the mask. They put the microphone there and he made his statement. Warden then left the room.
29:56 Malcolm Gladwell? What did he say?
30:00 Speaker 08 He said something along the lines of that Alabama was taking a step backwards that evening, and he said, "I love you all. I'm going with peace," and I forget exactly what it was, but it was something along those lines. The warden left the room, and then they started the procedure, or at least that's what it seemed like, and that was you know, pretty ugly to watch, because Kenny,
30:43 Speaker 08 they had been saying all along that Kenny would be unconscious in, you know, seconds, you know, less than a minute, and this would be a painless thing. I'm not a medical person. I can't opine on the on what happened. The only one who can tell us if he experienced pain is not here to describe it. But what I observed anyhow did not look like what Alabama had advertised, because there were violent seizure-type movements.
31:23 Speaker 08 You know, it was kind of as best he could against the constraints. You could see his head come back and violently come forward and violently go back. You could see his fists clenched and his arms straining against the restraints. And as I said, I didn't have my watch, and I wasn't cognizant if there was a clock in the room, but I can tell you that that went on, you know, that was minutes, not seconds, that that appeared to be going on. There was what appeared to be gasping for air after that, for again, another period of
32:07 Speaker 08 you know, minutes, not seconds. At
32:17 Speaker 08 At some point, you could see him kind of fall back into, you know, into the gurney and lay there.
32:30 Speaker 08 Then they escorted us out of the witness room, took us back, put us back in the van and brought us back to the parking lot where we had gathered. And that was that evening.
32:54 Malcolm Gladwell? Can you describe your feelings when it was over?
33:03 Speaker 08 It's hard to describe. You know, that was about 18 years of effort that ended up being unsuccessful. I felt awful about that. I felt awful for Kenny. I felt awful for Kenny's wife, his children, his mother, his extended family. He had, you know, grandchildren by that point, nieces, nephews.
33:41 Speaker 08 The point of the 18 years of representation was basically to avoid, to prevent that moment.
33:52 Malcolm Gladwell? Do you miss him?
33:55 Speaker 08 I do. I actually, you know, I think about him. His birthday was July 4th.
34:07 Speaker 08 So I was thinking about him then and I think about him often.
34:26 Malcolm Gladwell? Can you tell me a little bit more about, sorry?
34:31 Speaker 08 I'm sorry, you know, I wish I could. Every time I tell this story, I wish I could tell it with a different ending.
34:41 Speaker 08 And a different beginning for that matter.
34:50 Malcolm Gladwell? We'll be right back.
35:04 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.
35:41 Malcolm Gladwell? A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options, like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech, totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail, your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated.
36:23 Malcolm Gladwell? Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes, and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at fourimprint.com. Four imprint for certain. 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.
37:07 Malcolm Gladwell? 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. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:51 Speaker 05 Tonight, the state of Alabama started carrying out the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith by nitrogen epoxy at the William C. Holman Correction Facility. Smith was executed for the 1988 Capitol murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Senate in Calvert County.
38:09 Malcolm Gladwell? After it was all over, John Quaham, the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, held a press conference, as he always does. Podium, big banner right behind him with the words, "Professionalism, Integrity, Accountability." Charles and Elizabeth Senate's two sons stand off to the side.
38:30 Speaker 10 Commissioner, Mr. Smith appeared to shake and ride on the jury for at least two minutes at the start of the execution. Was that expected?
38:39 Speaker 05 Appeared that one, Smith, was holding his breath as long as he could. And then, there's also information out there, he struggled against his restraints a little bit, but there's some involuntary movement and some agonal breathing. So, that was all expected, and it's in the side effects that we've seen or researched on nitrogen epoxy. So, nothing was out of the ordinary, what we were expecting.
39:05 Malcolm Gladwell? Nothing out of the ordinary, just what they were expecting.
39:10 Malcolm Gladwell? Then, more questions.
39:11 Speaker 10 He appeared conscious for the first several minutes. Do you agree with that? The Attorney General’s office in court filings said they thought that nitrogen would cause a lack of consciousness within seconds.
39:22 Speaker 05 I don’t know. I couldn’t really see his face from where I was sitting. Y’all might have had a better view of that.
39:28 Speaker 06 Any plans to implement the smoke method for future inmates on death row?
39:33 Speaker 05 That’s not hurt. This is the state law for the state of Alabama that nitrogen epoxy is one of the three methods of execution. So if inmates choose it, then that’s the method we will use.
39:45 Malcolm Gladwell? Then came a press release from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office. Alabama has achieved something historic. It went on, “Despite the international effort by activists to undermine and disparage our state’s justice system and to deny justice to the victims of heinous murders, our proven method offers a blueprint for other states and a warning to those who would contemplate shedding innocent blood. This is an important night for Liz Sennett’s family, for justice, and for the rule of law in our great nation.” A man has an affair and in his madness sees no alternative but to kill his wife.
40:29 Malcolm Gladwell? He recruits two troubled young men who take the fall. Both of those men are redeemed while in prison. They discover their capacity to love and to be loved, but that is of no concern for the state of Alabama, which executes the first by setting his lungs on fire and executes the second twice, first in spirit and then in fact, letting him convulse on the gurney because no one bothered to check whether a method that is not even worthy of lab rats was a good idea for human beings. The cascade begins in obliviousness, then proceeds from indifference to cruelty, and ends in revision.
41:11 Malcolm Gladwell? When a senior elected official of an American state looks back over a 36-year-long cascade of moral failure and declares, without irony, “Alabama has achieved something historic.”
41:39 Malcolm Gladwell? Do you remember the last conversation you had with him?
41:42 Speaker 04 We still were very much talking about what his options were legally. And I didn't know it was going to be my last conversation with him. So, once it got very close to the warrant, I had said, "I'm here. Anybody would like me to do anything to assist with this post-traumatic stress or anything, please contact me." But he started to really have to focus on what he was about to do, what was about to happen to him. So I wrote him a letter at the end, and I sent it to him.
42:12 Speaker 04 I just wrote him a little paragraph, and I just said what it had meant to work with him. I gave it to him, I guess, the day before, and I just said, "Your spirit is just irrepressible." I did say, I liked this because it was true of Kenny. I said, "Your ability to build relationships behind walls is nothing less than miraculous." Because that's really what I felt about him. He built relationships, real ones, with his loved ones.
42:43 Speaker 04 And that's not easy. It's not easy when we're not in prison.
42:50 Malcolm Gladwell? Where were you when he was finally executed?
42:53 Speaker 04 I was home.
42:57 Speaker 04 So I have this thing I do where I talk to the lawyers always before and say where I'll be and stuff, and obviously if anyone needs me.
43:07 Speaker 04 And then I usually tell my kids when we're going to light a candle, and we light a candle for the person. And usually I put something pretty with the candle, and then take a picture of it. And I always send the picture of the candle to the lawyers and just say, "I'm remembering Kenny right now and whatever he's going through." And then I usually have a glass of wine and feel like shit.
43:45 Speaker 04 What are you thinking, may I ask?
44:06 Speaker 04 I'm sorry.
44:43 Speaker 04 It's a lot to think about.
44:50 Speaker 04 And
44:53 Speaker 04 you know, the normal thing we do, we make meaning, right? Is we think about other losses, you think about what the person's family went through, you think what you would go through if that was happening, you know? So it's, this is what being a human is. It's like, when you put your mind in this place, it's a lot. It's a lot.
46:04 Malcolm Gladwell? Revisionist History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Ben Danaf Haifry, and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by Ben Danaf Haifry and Lee Hedgesbeth. Our editor is Karen Shikurji. Fact checking by Kate Furby. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Production support from Luke Clamond. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Original music was composed, arranged and recorded by Luis Guerra with additional composition and recording by Paul Brainard. Drums by Jimmy Bott. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Cover art for this season was designed by Sean Carney. And special thanks to a whole host of people who helped us out. The good folks at Audible who came to our table reads.
46:47 Malcolm Gladwell? Talia Emlyn, Randy Suskin at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery who helped us out with research. Mike Cooley of the Drive By Truckers. And at Pushkin, Greta Cohn, Jacob Weisberg, Sarah Nix, Nicole Optenbosch, Jasmine Faustino, Christina Sullivan, Amy Gaines McQuade, Grace Ross, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Farah DeGrange and Sarah Brugger. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
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