The Shady Business of Lethal Injection: The Quality of Mercy

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Shady Business of Lethal Injection: The Quality of Mercy"

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Produced by: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Date: November 6, 2025
Hosts: Michael Phillips, Stephen Monticelli
Featured Guests: Rais Bhuiyan (hate crime survivor and activist), Rev. Jeff Hood (priest and execution witness)

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Overview

This episode concludes a multi-part series on the history and current practice of lethal injection in the United States, focusing on the human stories behind executions, the technical and legal challenges of obtaining execution drugs, and emerging alternatives such as nitrogen hypoxia. It highlights both systemic flaws and acts of extraordinary personal mercy that have shaped the modern death penalty, centering on the story of Rais Bhuiyan, a survivor who campaigned to save his attempted murderer from execution, and the perspective of Rev. Jeff Hood, a priest who has witnessed multiple executions. The show also tackles the political, ethical, and practical crisis facing capital punishment in America today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Hate Crime That Sparked a Movement (02:28–08:33)

• Background of the Crime: After September 11, 2001, Mark Stroman, a meth-addicted, neo-Nazi ex-con, embarked on a shooting spree targeting people he believed were Arabic or Muslim.

  • He fatally shot Waqar Hasan (Pakistani immigrant) and Vasudev Patel (Hindu Indian), and severely injured Rais Bhuiyan (Bangladeshi).
  • Rais Bhuiyan’s Testimony:

    "As soon as he walked in, I said, Sir, here is all the money, take it, but please do not shoot me. ... He mumbled the question, 'Where are you from?' Before I could say anything, he pulled the trigger." — [Bhuiyan, 05:11]

  • Bhuiyan survived but was blinded in one eye and traumatized, both physically and financially due to lack of health insurance.

• Aftermath and Transformation: Stroman was sentenced to death. In a profound act of forgiveness and in line with his religious promise, Bhuiyan launched an international campaign to spare Stroman’s life.

  • "I felt that by executing Mark, we would simply lose a human life without dealing with the root cause." — [Bhuiyan, 11:23]

  • His efforts, though unsuccessful in saving Stroman, led to significant reforms impacting lethal injection protocols.

2. The Global Fight Against Lethal Injection (18:23–26:08)

• Activism and Advocacy: Bhuiyan, with human rights activists, pressured European pharmaceutical companies and governments to halt distribution of execution drugs to US prisons.

  • Landmark Action: Lundbeck (Danish pharma) and Hospira (US/Italian) ceased sales under pressure.

    "After one hour of great conversation, they agreed to write a letter to the governor of Texas asking him not to use their product to kill human beings." — [Bhuiyan, 19:51]

• States' Shady Workarounds:

  • Faced with shortages, states engaged in illicit means—buying drugs with cash in suitcases, flying across state lines, or buying from poorly regulated compounding pharmacies.
  • Example: Ohio’s infamous $15,000 suitcase deal.

    "The state took $15,000 in cash in a suitcase ... chartered a private plane to Washington where they did an under the table deal for drugs with this little pharmacy ... in a Walmart parking lot." — [Prof. Lane, 26:08]

  • New secrecy laws now shield suppliers and sources from scrutiny.

• Shift in Execution Methods: As legal access to drugs withered, some states revived firing squads and engineered new, largely untested methods, such as nitrogen gas hypoxia.

3. Witness to State Violence: Rev. Jeff Hood's Perspective (33:30–47:08)

• Rev. Jeff Hood’s Background: Once a conservative Southern Baptist, his views shifted dramatically after personal revelations and experiences with brutality in America (BLM protests, targeted by Fox News, etc.).

• Role as Execution Witness: Hood began accompanying condemned men in their final hours after a Supreme Court ruling granted this right.

  • Describes profound trauma and visceral violence he witnessed, debunking the myth of the "humane" lethal injection.

    "In every lethal injection, I have immediately heard ... more of a gurgling kind of snoring ... it's like drowning someone who's completely paralyzed." — [Hood, 41:15]

• Nitrogen Hypoxia—A New Horror:

  • Hood witnessed America’s first nitrogen execution (Kenneth Smith, 2024, Alabama).

    "What I saw during that nitrogen execution is indescribable. I think I would rather be burned to death ... it is that bad." — [Hood, 42:17]

  • Smith convulsed for over 22 minutes; the process was chaotic and potentially dangerous for all present.

    "Somebody behind me was screaming, 'Stop, stop, stop, please stop, stop, stop.' And it was an absolute nightmare." — [Hood, 46:18]

• Impact on Witnesses and Society:

  • Hood describes moral injury and recurring nightmares resulting from participating in executions.

    "These images don’t leave you ... I always say these guys haunt me. ... Trauma is something I’ve come to know very well." — [Hood, 47:08]

4. The Shifting Politics and Future of the Death Penalty (47:48–53:45)

• Legal and Policy Landscape:

  • Supreme Court has effectively undercut the Eighth Amendment’s 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause by permitting executions with an acknowledged risk of extreme pain.
  • Under Trump, a spate of federal executions took place; Biden, by contrast, commuted the sentences of nearly all remaining federal death row inmates. Trump promises to "make the death penalty great again."

    “Let’s go for the death penalty anytime we can. Let’s execute everybody.” — [On executive priorities, 50:31]

• Declining Support and Abolition Trends:

  • Death penalty support is at record lows, especially among younger Americans and Gen Z.

  • "People have less confidence in the death penalty. They don't trust the death penalty, nor should they. 200 people have been exonerated from death row." — [Prof. Lane, 50:40]

  • Trends point toward further repeal or curtailment nationwide.

• Historical and International Perspective:

  • Attempts to "sanitize" execution methods—from hanging to electric chair to lethal injection—have each ended in revelations of cruelty and public revulsion.

  • “The quest for a humane way to kill people … has been futile.” — [Host, 52:30]

  • Over two-thirds of countries have abolished capital punishment; the U.S. is increasingly isolated in persisting with executions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mercy & Transformation:

  "I told him … I never hated you, I forgave you, and I’m doing my best to save your life. … And he said, 'Rais, I never expected that from you. I love you, bro.' … This is the same human being who shot me.”
  — Rais Bhuiyan recalling his final conversation with Mark Stroman [21:22]

• On Systemic Injustice:

  “When they needed me to testify in court to convict him … I was a good victim. Then when I tried … to have a mediation dialogue, I became a bad victim because I asked for my rights.”
  — Rais Bhuiyan [20:19]

• On the Illusion of Humane Execution:

  “It’s like drowning someone who’s completely paralyzed. ... There is a level of suffering that is hidden.”
  — Rev. Jeff Hood [41:15]

• On Nitrogen Execution:

  "I would rather be burned to death than be executed by Nitrogen."
  — Rev. Jeff Hood [42:17]

• On Death Penalty Decline:

  "The death penalty is dying in this country for reasons that an executive order cannot fix."
  — Prof. Lane [50:40]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Content | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:28 | Mark Stroman’s attacks after 9/11 and introduction to Rais Bhuiyan | | 05:11 | Bhuiyan recounts being shot and the aftermath | | 08:33 | Bhuiyan’s campaign for mercy and its impact on execution protocols | | 18:23 | Activism against pharmaceutical companies supplying death drugs | | 26:08 | States’ desperate and secretive drug procurement tactics | | 33:30 | Introduction of Rev. Jeff Hood and his path to execution witness | | 41:15 | Hood details the violence of lethal injection | | 42:17 | Hood’s account of the horror of nitrogen gas execution | | 47:48 | Supreme Court, federal executions, and politics of the death penalty| | 50:31 | Declining public support, wrongful convictions, broader trends | | 52:30 | Historic efforts to “sanitize” executions and their consequences | | 53:15 | Optimistic closing thoughts on abolition and dignity |

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Conclusion & Tone

With a mix of investigative rigor, somber reflection, and hope for progress, the episode exposes the realities of America’s execution system—from the psychological toll on survivors, witnesses, and even executioners, to the crumbling legal, political, and ethical foundations of lethal injection. It is an unflinching yet compassionate look at mercy, trauma, and the possibility of justice without irreversible violence. Ultimately, the episode leaves listeners with a sense that change—perhaps abolition—may finally be on the horizon.

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Transcript

[A]

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The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[D]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[B]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[E]

Join me Danny Trejo in Nocturnal Tales.

[C]

From the Shadows.

[D]

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends.

[E]

And lo of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the shadows.

[C]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[D]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at.

[E]

Him and said, this isn't a joke.

[D]

A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old and a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years.

[E]

How can 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[D]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

Cool Zone Media A Warning this episode includes violent content which some listeners might find disturbing.

[E]

I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a history of racism in Dallas called White Metropol and the co author of longtime journalist Betsy Freeof, of a history of eugenics in Texas called Purifying Knife.

[A]

And I'm Stephen Monticelli. I'm an investigative journalist in Dallas who specializes in political extremism and the far right, and I report for places like the Texas observer, the Barbed Wire, and more.

[E]

Like millions across the United States, Mark Anthony Stroman was startled by the events that unfolded on the terrible morning of September 11, 2001. The disbelief that greeted the terrorist attacks against the World Trade center and the Pentagon can be heard on the first announcement of the tragedy on a Dallas Talk radio station, WBAP. All right, thank you Lars. 7:51 nine minutes before 8:00 clock at.

[A]

News Talk, 8:20, WBAP here on the.

[D]

Here on the Tuesday morning. And the reason I am hesitating here, there's word of a plane crashing into the World Trade center in downtown Manhattan.

[E]

And the World Trade a plane actually.

[D]

Crashing into the side of the World Trade Center.

[E]

We're gonna have details for you on.

[B]

That from ABC News in just a couple of moments.

[E]

Stroman later wrote that September 11th filled him with a great sense of rage, hatred, loss, bitterness and utter degradation. He blamed Arabs and Muslims as a group for the events that day and wanted, quote, unquote, those Arabs to feel the same sense of insecurity about their immediate surroundings. I wanted to feel the same sense of vulnerability and uncertainty on American soil.

[A]

Stroman, a Dallas resident, had already served two prison terms during which he had joined the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Addicted to meth and sporting neo Nazi tattoos, he began cruising Dallas in his 1972 Chevy Suburban, hunting for quote, unquote, Arabs. As he later admitted, he wasn't entirely sure what an Arab looked like, but nevertheless, he stalked people with shawls on their faces.

[E]

Stroman launched his crusade by running cars into ditches if he suspected the vehicles were driven by Muslims. He escalated his campaign of terror. On September 17, 2001, he fatally shot Waqar Hassan, a 46 year old Pakistani immigrant, as the clerk grilled a hamburger at Mom's grocery in Dallas. A few days later, Stroman found his next victim, a former pilot for Bangladesh's Air Force named Race Bouillon. Mr. Bouillon, who has experienced robberies prior to his encounter with Stroman, told us what happened that day.

[C]

September 21, 2001. It was Friday around noon. A customer walked in wearing bandana sunglasses, baseball cap and holding a double barrel, a sort of double barrel shotgun on his right side. And from the previous robbery experience, I thought it would be in the robbery. So I put all the money on the counter and offered in the cash as soon as he walked in. And I said, sir, here is all the money, take it, but please do not shoot me. Basically, I begged for my life and his gaze remained fixed. And then he mumbled the question, where are you from? Before I could say anything more than excuse me, he pulled the trigger from point blank range. I felt it first, like a million bees were singing, my friends. And I looked down and saw blood pouring like an open faucet from the right side of my head. And I remember screaming mom on top of my voice. And I looked down, saw blood pouring like an open faucet from the right side of my head. And then I looked left. I saw the gunman still standing, pointing the gun directly at my face. And I realized that if I did not do something to show that I'm dying, he might shoot me again. So I fell to the floor and he finally left after a few seconds.

[A]

Beyond survived the attack, but he was blinded in his right eye. He would endure not only multiple painful surgeries, but also the unique financial horrors of the American health care system. Meanwhile, Stroman was not done terrorizing the Dallas area Muslim community. On October 4, the shooting spree came to an end when the white supremacist pulled up to a Shell station in mesquite at about 6. 45 in the morning and ordered the clerk, 49 year old Vasudev Patel, a Hindu immigrant from India, to hand over all the money from the cash register. Patel reached under the counter for a.22 caliber pistol and seeing the gun, Stroman fired his weapon. The bullet struck Patel in his chest and killed him. A security camera captured the scene, and Dallas police arrested Stroman the next day.

[E]

At Stroman's home, investigators found a semiautomatic rifle, an Uzi knockoff, a.44 Magnum, and a.45 Colt. They also found evidence that Stroman planned to attack a mosque in a nearby suburb. The jury found Stroman guilty of capital murder on April 5, 2002, and sentenced him to die by lethal injection. The story then took an unexpected turn. During a 2009 pilgrimage to Mecca, Buyan said he realized that simply forgiving his assailant would not be enough. He believed he had a moral obligation to do all he could to prevent Stroman's death. Bouillon filed a lawsuit attempting to halt Stroman's execution in spite of Bouillon's best effort, the suit was rejected by state and federal courts, and Stroman died by lethal injection July 20, 2011.

[A]

Bouillon's Campaign of Mercy, however, made a major impact on capital punishment in the United States. He effectively shamed European drug companies into banning the use of the products used in the lethal injection that killed Stromany. In turn, some states, like Texas, decided to start buying lethal drugs illegally. In this final episode on the history of the lethal injection in the United States, Bian will tell us about his campaign against capital punishment and its impact. We'll also speak to a priest, the Reverend Jeff Hood, who has accompanied, by the time of this interview, 10 men to their executions. He will also tell us why he has devoted himself to showing love to people so despised and. And also address the future of the death penalty in the United States.

[E]

After being blinded in a hate crime race, Bu yan struggled through numerous traumas. He told us that after getting shot at the convenience store where he worked, he ran to a barber shop next door. There, he had the first sight of his injuries.

[C]

I caught myself in the mirror, and the image reflected back was gruesome, like something out of a horror movie. And on my way to the hospital, I felt my eyes were closing. I felt that my time was up. And, you know, while I was reciting from the holy Quran and asking God for mercy and forgiveness and giving me a second chance, I also begged him to, you know, to save my life, to give me a chance to live. And I promised God that if you give me the chance to live, I would help others.

[A]

In the emergency room, doctors put bian on life support. For a time, his condition was touch and go. Buyan, a young immigrant living on his salary as a convenience store clerk, said that when he next opened his eyes and doctors told him he had survived, he cried tears of joy.

[C]

My eyes were full of tears, not from the pain, but from the joy of still being alive. But that joy did not last long because the hospital where I was taken was private and expensive, and I had no health insurance at that time. So they discharged me within a couple of hours and told me to arrange follow up medical treatments on my own. So, you know, the first part of my American nightmare was being shot in the face after 9, 11. And second part began when I was kicked up from the hospital. So as a result of this shooting, I underwent several eye surgeries. Unfortunately, though I lost a vision in one eye, I still carry more than three dozen shotgun pellets on my face. And my father suffered a stroke when he heard what about what happened to me? But luckily he survived. I lost my fiance, but gained more than $60,000 in medical bills.

[E]

As stroman languished on Texas death row, Buyan began picking up the pieces.

[C]

I moved on, rebuilding my life. I worked in restaurant. I went back to school. And slowly I was climbing the ladder and getting better in my own life journey. And in 2009, I went to naca for pilgrimage. My mother and it was in Mecca. I deeply realized that though I forgave my attack on Mark Sterman, it was not enough. I felt that by executing Mark, we would simply lose a human life without dealing with the root cause. I strongly believe that if he was given a chance, he might be able to become a better human being. And I began to see him as a human being like me, not just simply a killer. I saw him as a victim too, and I deeply felt for him. And I remembered my promise on my deathbed that if I get a chance to live, I would help others. And I felt that I need to start with him first to give my promise. So I returned from Mecca with a very changed heart, with a clarity and a newfound purpose, and I launched a campaign to try and save my attacker's life. From Texas death row, we'll pick up.

[A]

The story of Beyond's campaign to spare Strowman's life and how his efforts changed the history of the American death penalty after a word from our sponsors.

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[D]

All I know is what I've been.

[E]

Told and that to have truth is a whole lie.

[B]

For almost a decade the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[E]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[B]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[E]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[B]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[D]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said. They literally made me say that I.

[B]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[D]

They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[B]

From Lava For Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[D]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[B]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

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You know the shade is always shadiest right here.

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Season six of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Gisele Bryant and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday as two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac.

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We're giving you all the laughs, drama.

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And reality news you can handle. And you know, we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay? The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. No way I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know.

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All.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[C]

We had 30 agents ready to go.

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With shotguns and rifles and you name.

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It, but what they find is not what they expected.

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Basically your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin.

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They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes.

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They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

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Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

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Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[B]

Listen to the ChinaTown's on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[A]

Dr. Rick Halperin began teaching human rights courses at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1990, where he now heads one of only nine human rights programs at universities in the country. He has also chaired Amnesty International's board of directors three times, and since 1972 has been an anti death penalty activist. Halperin became famous on Texas Death Row as a result of his efforts and after Stroman was informed of his July 20, 2011 execution date, the condemned man wrote a letter to Halperin asking for help in making final arrangements, such as locating an affordable undertaker.

[E]

By coincidence, shortly after Stroman reached out to Halperin, the professor received a surprise visitor to his office. The stranger was Stroman's victim, Race Bouillon. Bouillon, who had recently become an American citizen, hoped Halperin could help him find a creative and effective way to fulfill the promise he had made to God. When he thought he was dying, he began his campaign to save Stroman's life. Bouillon, Halperin and another human rights activist, Hadi Jawad, carried their efforts from Dallas to the state capital, Austin, and as far as the European Parliament.

[A]

A weak point in the American death penalty machinery was its reliance on companies that provided the lethal injection chemicals. In 2011, Italy, an anti death penalty nation, successfully pressured the Illinois company Hospira to stop selling sodium theopental, the muscle relaxant used in the three drug lethal injection protocol used in Texas since the early 1980s. That same year, Reprieve, a British human rights nonprofit, arranged for Brian to travel to Europe to meet face to face with executives at the corporate headquarters of the Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck. Aware that the meeting would put them in the international spotlight, Lundbeck three days prior announced that they would stop shipping the sedative Nembutol, which was being used as a substitute for sodium theopental, to American prison systems. Buyan described his conversation with the Lundbeck company in an interview with us.

[C]

After one hour of great conversation, they agreed to write a letter to the governor of Texas asking him not to use their product to kill human beings.

[E]

The state of Texas, however, was unwilling to grant a crime victim his fervent wish, even though Texas politicians repeatedly claim they execute murderers to bring the victims closure. Boogie on said he was denied this by the Texas board of paroles and pardons and and then governor Rick Perry.

[C]

I reached out to the prison system and asking for a mediation dialogue, but unfortunately, you know, they turned down my request multiple times. And the reason that they showed was it would re victimize me. So basically a mediation dialogue I thought would be helpful for me to find closure, to find a lot of answers, but it was for them it would be a revictimization process for me. So they rejected my request multiple times. And it really made me sad that when they needed me to testify in the court to convict him to get the death penalty, I was a good victim. But Then when I tried to exercise my right as a victim to have a mediation dialogue, I became a bad victim because I asked for my rights.

[E]

In his final hours, Stroman spoke directly to his surviving victim.

[C]

I had the opportunity to talk to him on the phone before he was executed. And it was the day of his execution where he put my name as one of the people he would be able to talk. So I was lucky enough to talk to him. And when he came on the phone, I was about to go to the court to give a last fight to stay the execution. So I was thinking, what would I say to a human being who is allowed to be executed in a couple of hours? And I'm going to go to a call to give a last fight to see if he could save him. So I was very emotional when he came on the phone. I told him that, Mark, you know for sure that I never hated you. I forgave you, and I'm doing my best to, you know, save your life, you know, to this court hearing. And he said that race, I never expected that from you and I love you, bro. And that brought tears into my eyes that this is the same human being who shot me for no reasons other than having hate and violence in his heart. And now 10 years later, he saw me, he could see me as his brother and he said he loved me. Why he couldn't see me as his brother 10 years ago and why he couldn't say the same thing 10 years ago. So, you know, at least it helped me to find closure a little bit. It helped me to move forward. At least I had the chance to talk to my attacker and then give me a lot of hope that people can change.

[A]

The execution itself, however, left Buyan cold.

[C]

Well, definitely this execution was not for the victims because the victims and the victims family members requested and also fought for clemency. We went ahead and requested the governor of Texas, the board of burdens and paroles that do not execute him in our names. Show mercy.

[A]

Mark Stroman died as scheduled on July 20, 2011. And though Bian and Halperin failed to stop it, they had helped start an international movement to thwart the ability of states to carry out such lethal injections. As Professor Clarina Lane revealed in her book Secrets of the Killing State, after Hespera stopped producing sodium theopental, the vacuum was filled by a fly by night company called Dream Pharma. The drug distributor quote turned out to be two desks at a filing cabinet hidden in the back of a London driving school. As Lane wrote. Once this operation was exposed, Great Britain banned sodium theopental sales to the United States.

[E]

By December 2011, the entire European Union had tightened export controls on any chemicals that could potentially be used in executions. The new expanded EU ban made life much more difficult for would be executioners in the United States. In 2012, when the state of Missouri announced it would use the drug propufol as an anesthetic in its executions, the EU said it would cut off exports of that drug, which is used for surgeries in the United States about 50 million times a year. Combine these moves created a lethal injection drug shortage that changed how executions took place in 2012.

[A]

Texas moved then to a single drug protocol using penobarbital alone, rather than the old three drug cocktail made out of thin air by Oklahoma coroner Stephen Coleman back in the 1970s. Autopsies reveal that prisoners executed with this single drug protocol die from pulmonary edema, a condition in which the lungs fill with fluid. Medical experts believe prisoners suffer intense chest pain as they suffocate, even if they appear fully unconscious. Execution witnesses also say they have seen prisoners eyes pop open, their eyes fill with tears, have seen them pull against restraints and have heard them groan and clasp their jaws during such executions.

[E]

As the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections become harder to find, states have to rely on shady tactics so they can keep on killing. Officials have lied to pharmaceutical companies that are buying drugs to provide medical care for prisoners that they later use in the death chamber. Death penalty states have violated federal laws. They have illegally swapped these drugs across state line or they bought them on the black market or the legally marginal so called gray market. Professor Lane describes the shady lengths the state of Ohio went to in order to buy these drugs.

[B]

The state took $15,000 in cash in a suitcase. I mean, you can't make this stuff up, you know, and chartered a private plane to fly over to Washington where they did an under the table deal for drugs with this little pharmacy. You know, you need a prescription for these drugs.

[C]

And so here's a pharmacy that for.

[B]

$15,000 is willing to sell drugs under the table. And allegedly in a Walmart parking lot.

[A]

To cope with the shrinking supply, states have made illegal purchases overseas. Like other states, Texas has tried to circumvent tightening restrictions by purchasing death penalty supplies from loosely regulated compounding pharmacies. And some of them have been here in the states. In 2018, it was revealed that Texas repeatedly bought drugs from the Green park compounding pharmacy in Houston, which is a company that had been fined 48 times by federal regulators for safety violations, including providing the wrong medication to children who were subsequently hospitalized. The number of agonizingly prolonged executions in Texas suggests that the drugs the state buys are often out of date or impure.

[E]

Finding out where the lethal drugs are coming from is becoming increasingly difficult. A number of states have passed laws making it illegal to report on who carries out the execution, what companies supply the drugs, or how these drugs were purchased. In any case, the difficulty in getting execution drugs has led to a decline in the death penalty across the nation. At the time of the landmark 1972 Furman v. Georgia case that temporarily halted executions in the United States, 40 states had the death penalty, currently only $27. In 2024, four states alone, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas carried out 76% of the executions that unfolded in the United States.

[A]

Some of the remaining states with the death penalty on the books have responded to the shortage of lethal drugs by authorizing the use of the firing squad and killing prisoners with nitrogen gas hypoxia, which suffocates them by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen. After another ad break, you'll hear from a priest who has witnessed executions in 10 different states, including death by nitrous hypoxia, and we'll end this three part series by discussing the future of the death penalty.

[B]

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[D]

All I know is what I've been.

[E]

Told and that to half truth is a whole lie.

[B]

For almost a decade the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved Until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[E]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[B]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[E]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[B]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[D]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said. They literally made me say that I.

[B]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[D]

They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[B]

From Lava For Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[D]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[B]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[A]

Foreign Jenna Jameson, Vivid Video and the Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, host of Heidi World, the Heidi Fly Story, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild ride through adult films. We get paid more than the men.

[E]

We call the shots.

[B]

In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our Life.

[A]

In the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson crossed over into mainstream culture, redefined stardom, then left it all behind. I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a man. With a cast of hundreds of actors and comedians playing key figures, we'll take a look at how adult films became legal in the 70s, hugely profitable in the 80s and 90s, and fell off a financial cliff in the 2000s. Listen to Gentleworld on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[C]

We had 30 agents ready to go.

[E]

With shotguns and rifles, and you name it.

[B]

But what they find is not what they expected.

[A]

Basically, your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin.

[D]

They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes.

[A]

They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

[B]

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them. The women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

[A]

Once I saw the gun, I tried.

[E]

To take his hand and I saw.

[A]

The flash of light.

[B]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[E]

Born in the South Atlanta neighborhood in Georgia, Jeff Hood grew up in a religiously conservative home and was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister when he was only 22. His worldview, however, was shaken when he attended to his religious mentor, who was dying of lung cancer. Before he passed away, the 75 year old confessed to Hood, quote, I'm gay and I've always been. Hood described this moment as earth shattering, and his religious views transformed dramatically from what he later called his backwards thinking.

[A]

When Hood moved to Dallas in the early 2000 and tens, he became well known in his new home as he fought to make local churches more inclusive of the LGBTQ community. And he got arrested along with other clergy outside of the White House in 2014 when he was protesting President Barack Obama's aggressive campaign to deport migrants. On July 7, 2016, Hood led a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas, during which a sniper opened fire and targeted police officers.

[E]

Micah X. Johnson, an Iraq War veteran, was enraged by the police killings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. So Johnson shot and killed five police officers, the deadliest incident for law enforcement since September 11, 2001. Police killed Johnson that evening by detonating a bomb carried by a robot to the shooter's hideout in a parking garage, marking the first execution by robot in American history. Revan Hood was traumatized not only by the sniper attack, but also when he got scapegoated for the deaths. That day, Fox News host Megyn Kelly put a target on Hood's back. In the aftermath of the sniper attack, Jeff Hood, he was one of the organizers of the march and quickly condemned the shootings.

[D]

Today, never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that five police officers would be dead this morning.

[E]

But critics were quick to point out that we were hearing a very different message from the reverend just a short.

[B]

Time before the shots rang out last night. Here is some of that, but I'm.

[D]

Going to channel an old preacher that I admire tremendously, Jeremiah Wright. And I'm gonna say, God damn white America. God damn white America. White America is a lie. I'm sick of the bodies of black and brown people being slaughtered in our street.

[E]

Hood agreed to be interviewed by Kelly, but the minister soon realized that Fox viewers blamed him for the officer's death, and they threatened vengeance.

[D]

I mean, after July 7th, man, there was talk about threats. Didn't PD was having to take the kids to school, and it was. It was absolutely horrible.

[E]

Witnessing people die that day, including the sniper. Johnson's impromptu execution via remote control robot deepen Hood's opposition to violence, including state killing. In 2022, he is ordained again, this time as a priest in what is called the old Catholic faith, which accepts many of the doctrines and rites of the Roman Catholic Church, but rejects the doctrine of papal infallibility and authority. Hood began writing to those on death row and then talking and praying with them in person. In 2022, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Ramirez vs Collier case that condemned prisoners have the right to die in the company of a spiritual advisor. Hood became a companion to the condemned in their last minutes.

[D]

I began to have people reaching out during that time, you know, and asking me if I would accompany them to the death chamber. And, you know, it's one thing to be willing to have relationships with people who are executed. It's a whole nother thing to be asked to participate in the process. And so since then, I've witnessed or been in the chamber with 10 different guys. So from January of 2023 to now, I've watched 10 different men be executed by the state.

[A]

Hood attended his first execution when the state of Oklahoma put Scott Eisenberg to death on January 12, 2023. Twenty years earlier, Eisenberg murdered an elderly couple, including a man he bludgeoned to death.

[D]

My first execution was Scott Eisenberg in Oklahoma.

[C]

And he.

[D]

Scott had a number of things going on, but we were very close. He had a lot of anger issues and, I think difficulty controlling his temper and whatnot. And, you know, so the reality was I was very frightened before I went in because I thought Scott was just going to go ballistic. And, you know, to be in that room with someone that goes ballistic, I mean, it's. It's already traumatic enough, as I'm sure you can imagine, without, you know, something like that. But then again, you couldn't. You can't blame them for wanting to, you know, push back and fight for their lives and whatnot. I found myself shaking, just, you know, my hands and my legs. Just terror. I mean, just utterly terrified. And then they open the door, and I was led in, and I saw Scott. And it's incredibly strange to see someone hooked up to machines that look like they're there to support life, and yet, you know that they're there to take his life. And so I wasn't able. I mean, I knew that there was a window on one side. I wasn't able to see through that window because there was a curtain down. And I began to pray with Scott. Scott had asked me to read a number of scriptures and I did. And I dropped my Bible at one point because I was. I'm shaking so bad. I was having trouble holding it. You know, he notices that I'm shaking. He notices that I'm upset. And he looks at me and tells me everything's going to be okay. And I'm thinking to myself, no, it's not. Like, no, it is not. And I'm thinking, you know, you're going to die and I'm going to be scarred for life. Everything is not going to be okay. And I went to the scripture in John, chapter 8, where Jesus encounters the adulterous woman. And there's that famous line, famous verse, you who are without sin, cast the first stone. And I read that in the chamber. And one of the lighter moments when we were in there was when I read that, you who are without sin, cast the first stone. I remember Scott looking up and pointing at the executioners and saying, you know, he's talking to y', all like, this is about y'.

[C]

All.

[A]

Hood said that any sense that death by lethal injection is non violent is an illusion.

[D]

In every lethal injection, I have immediately heard snoring and what sounds not like, you know, snoring from, you know, that one would have when they sleep or whatever, but more of a gurgling kind of snoring. And, you know, it's. The body responds in a very panicked fashion. And so it's almost like it's like drowning someone who's completely paralyzed. And I think that that's. I think that's what it's been like every time. I think that there is a level of suffering that is, that is hidden. There's a reason that, again, that it's made to look like a medical procedure, because it does look like a medical procedure. I think it is a con.

[E]

Hood found the lethal injections traumatizing, but that did not prepare him for what he witnessed when Alabama began executing prisoners through nitrous hypoxia.

[D]

I can tell you that as horrible as a lethal injection is, and yes, it is a con job, I can tell you that what I saw during that nitrogen execution is indescribable. I can tell you that I think I would rather be burned to death than be executed by Nitrogen. I mean, it is that bad.

[E]

Hood attended the hypoxia suffocation of Kenneth Smith, a contract killer, on January 25, 2024, the first such execution in American history. Smith had been sentenced to death 36 years earlier. Hood said the horrors for him began when he stepped into the death chamber and saw Smith outfitted with a large mask that would deliver the poison gas. Attending this execution actually put Hood's life in jeopardy.

[D]

I can describe it for Yalls listeners, but the mask, which I'm holding right here, a replica, is basically something that is gas netting in the back. It has silicone straps. It's put over the back of someone's head, and it is strapped as tight as possible to try to keep it on. And it looks like a firefighter's mask with sort of a Plexiglas plate on the front. And then there's a hose that's going from the firefighter's mask with the plexiglass plate to the nitrogen. And so what ends up happening is they try to pump as much nitrogen as possible through. Through this line. The problem is, is that these masks don't. Don't completely hold the form, I guess, is the best way of saying it in that it's difficult for. For you to get an airtight seal. So the more oxygen that gets in here, the more it's displacing nitrogen, and so the more oxygen that's in here. And obviously, there's going to be oxygen in the tube, there's going to be oxygen in the mass before the thing even starts, is going to create more suffering. It's going to create a longer process.

[A]

Hood knew that he would be in a chamber in which poison gas would be released, and he felt obligated to tell his children in advance that he could be harmed. They were terrified, of course, but he felt an obligation to provide Smith company And compassion as well. Again, we remind listeners that what they are about to hear might be upsetting.

[D]

So by the time we get to the point where they turn the nitrogen on all the witnesses, everybody in the room is, like, going, nobody knows what's about to happen because it's never been tried before. And so they turn it on, and Kenny immediately begins to heave back and forth and back and forth over and over. And every time he heaves forward, the back of the mask was strapped to the gurney. So every time he heaves forward, his face is hitting the front of that mask over and over and over and over. And so it's like watching someone get, like, hit Their face against a plate glass window. And it's like his nose and his face is flattening every time he does it. And he begins to shake back and forth and back and forth, heaving up and down. I see spit and saliva and snot and, you know, eye water and all sorts of fluid is coming out of his face. And that fluid begins to build up on the front of the mask and it begins to drizzle like a waterfall.

[E]

Smith convulsed with so much force, prison officials worried his mask might come off, interrupting the execution and possibly killing Hood and maybe others in attendance. A window separated Hood from other witnesses, and the violence of Smith's death caused a commotion.

[D]

The windows are like super thick. I shouldn't have been able to hear anything, but I could hear somebody behind me screaming, stop, stop, stop, stop, please stop, stop, stop. And it was, it was an absolute nightmare. And Kenny did not die for at least 22 minutes. And it's very possible that he didn't die for a longer period of time. But the state of Alabama declares. They say, oh, you know, he's not breathing, he's dead. Then they push everybody out of the room and then they bring the doctor in after everybody's left to declare him dead.

[A]

Hood admits that some of the men he's counseled are capable of unspeakable evil, even after years on death row. But he still recalls each death he's witnessed with pain.

[D]

I feel morally compromised, horrified, but I feel called or push to keep going because I think that the more traumatic thing would be to leave these guys alone. Now, in terms of actually seeing it, I think that it's. These images don't leave you. There's nightmares, there's they. I always say that these guys haunt me. They come night after night, you know, I'll see them at the end of my bed. I mean, I mean, just. Yeah, so trauma is something I've come to know very well.

[E]

In 2019, the United States Supreme Court ruled that prisoners do not have a right to a painless death when it greenlighted the execution of Russell Bucklew, who had blood filled tumors in his head, neck and mouth that could have broken open as he was put to death. The highest court seems to have rendered the eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment moot.

[A]

Meanwhile, in recent years, it has not only been states that have enforced the death penalty. Between 1960 and 2019, the federal government carried out only three executions. But in 2020 to early 2021, during the last six months of Donald Trump's first term as president, the Federal government executed 13 men and women. These included Brandon Bernard, who committed a double murder when he was only 18, and another, Lisa Montgomery, who psychologists believed was severely mentally ill and detached from reality at the time that she murdered a pregnant woman and cut the baby from her victim's body in order to raise the child as her own.

[E]

Joe Biden, on the other hand, at the end of his presidential term, sought to prevent a similar execution spree. 40 people were on death row, and he commuted the sentence of 37 of them. The remaining three were Zokar Sarnev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dylann Roof, who massacred nine members of the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Back in power, however, Trump has vowed to make the death penalty great again. Anybody murders something in the Capitol, capital.

[A]

Punishment, capital capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in The Capitol.

[E]

Washington, D.C. we're going to be seeking the death penalty, and that's a very strong preventative.

[A]

Trump's immediate plans aside, the future of the death penalty in the long term is not so certain. According to a 2024 Gallup opinion poll, support for the death penalty has sunk to its lowest level in half a century. Only 53% of Americans favor capital punishment, but that number skews heavily towards older Americans. More than half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 43 oppose the death penalty. And almost 60% of the so called Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012 are firmly against the death penalty law. Professor Corinne Lane believes that even record low support for the death penalty is exaggerated and that support for capital punishment drops even further when other options are provided to voters.

[B]

You know, the president issued this executive order, a day one executive order. Let's go for the death penalty anytime we can. Let's execute everybody.

[C]

And one of the things to realize.

[B]

Is that the death penalty is dying in this country for reasons that an executive order cannot fix. People have less confidence in the death penalty.

[C]

They don't trust the death penalty, nor should they.

[B]

200 people have been exonerated from death row.

[E]

And Ray Spujan agrees.

[C]

The decline in executions in the United States reflects a broader shift in how society views death penalty. I mean, more states are repealing it, juries are imposing it less often, and public support, while still dividing, has steadily decreased, especially as concerns about wrongful convictions, racial bias and the high costs of capital punishment came to light at the.

[E]

Beginning of the 19th century. Hangings were public, but they so often went awry and produced such grisly scenes. States moved those executions inside prison yards and sought a more humane alternative. That new method, the electric chair, proved horrifying as well, and was deemed unsuitable for general audiences. The supreme court imposed a four year pause in the death penalty beginning in 1972 because of its random application. In 1976, the High Court reauthorized capital punishment. A crisis ensued when a Texas TV reporter sued for the right to televise executions. Horrified at the prospect of the condemned essentially being burned alive in the electric chair in front of a primetime audience, States approved the latest innovation, state killing death by lethal injection.

[A]

But throughout this history of execution, insurmountable flaws have remained consistent. The quest for a humane way to kill people is on an announced schedule has been futile. Each form of the death penalty has been proven to be violent and cause suffering at great expenditure of public money. And plausibly innocent people have been put to death as the people in charge of punishment have changed execution methods over the years. They've also tried to prevent public backlash to revolting scenes of suffering, which could create the opposition to capital punishment that they fear. Politicians, eager to prove they are tough on crime, have also fought to hide these gruesome spectacles from public view. Nevertheless, Reis Bullion is optimistic that this grim aspect of life in the United States might soon come to an end.

[C]

More than two thirds of countries have abolished death penalty in law or practice, with only a few countries carrying out the vast majority of executions. And I think the future is one where the death penalty continues to strength worldwide as the values of human rights, dignity and justice without irreversible punishment to gain ground.

[E]

Until next time. I'm Michael Phillips.

[A]

And I'm Steven Monticelli. Thanks for listening. It Could Happen.

[B]

Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media.com or.

[C]

Check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[B]

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening. The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[D]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[B]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[A]

I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded.

[B]

I felt it rip through me.

[A]

In season two of Rip Current, we ask who tried to kill Judy Berry and why?

[C]

They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods.

[A]

She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing.

[D]

I think that this is a deliberate.

[A]

Attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of rip current season two are available now. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Jenna World, Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video and the Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert and I'll be your tour guide on a wild trip through adult films. We get paid more than the men.

[B]

We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our life.

[A]

Listen to General world on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers.

[C]

Ten years later, they were gods.

[A]

Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent open heart surgery. Welcome to the wild west of American medicine. Hi, I'm Chris Pine and this is Cardiac Cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys.

[E]

Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever.

[B]

You listen to podcasts Sponsored by Jasper AI AI. Built for marketers, this is an iHeart podcast.