PTFO - Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison

Summary

Podcast Summary: PTFO - Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
• Hosts: Dan Le Batard, Stugotz
• Description: From the Elser Hotel in Downtown Miami, Dan Le Batard, Stugotz, and company share their unique perspectives on all things sports, pop culture, and more. Features original content, including the daily “Local Hour” focusing on the South Florida scene, the Big Suey, and additional surprises.
• Episode: PTFO - Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison

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Introduction

The episode titled “PTFO - Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison” delves deep into the intersection of sports fandom and the harsh realities of death row life. Hosted by Pablo Torre and Dave Fleming, the episode explores how a profound love for the Dallas Cowboys provides a semblance of normalcy and connection for inmates facing imminent execution.

The Premise: Death Row Inmates and Sports

Dave Fleming introduces the episode by sharing his discovery of a website that archives the final statements of every prisoner executed by Texas. This exploration leads to a startling pattern: many inmates use their last words to express devotion to their favorite sports teams, particularly the Dallas Cowboys.

• Notable Quote:
  Dave Fleming [01:21]: “It is a gut-wrenching, awful, exhausting experience.”

Research and Contacting Charles Flores

Intrigued by this phenomenon, Fleming connects with Charles Flores, a death row inmate and lifelong Cowboys fan. Despite Flores maintaining his innocence, he has been on death row for 25 years due to his conviction as an accomplice to murder, based primarily on questionable eyewitness testimony and the use of now-discredited forensic hypnosis.

• Notable Quote:
  Pablo Torre [06:19]: “Charles Flores… was sentenced to death row, where he has been for the last 25 years.”

The Interview: Life on Death Row as a Cowboys Fan

Fleming and Torre recount their visit to the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, one of the most notorious supermax prisons. The environment is stark and controlled, with inmates wearing mandatory white uniforms and enduring solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day.

During the interview, Flores discusses how sports, especially football, serve as a crucial emotional outlet. He details the rituals he and his fellow inmates engage in on game days, such as preparing special meals and strategizing fantasy football lineups despite the restrictive conditions.

• Notable Quotes:
  Charles Flores [20:11]: “It's the same thing back then. I would wake up early and I would start a letter and a lot of times I would leave it… after the game I would have comments.” [28:24]
  Charles Flores [25:14]: “That's what they're here for. But that's not the person that I know. I'm not that person.”

Insights and Reflections

The conversation shifts to the psychological impact of death row, with Flores reflecting on the concept of "social death" as defined by anthropologist Dr. Shannon Lee Dottie. Despite the isolating environment, maintaining a connection to sports helps inmates retain a sense of identity and humanity.

Fleming expresses profound empathy for Flores, noting how deeply sports have integrated into his coping mechanism. The hosts highlight the stark contrast between the inmates' passion for football and the dire circumstances of their lives, emphasizing the universal human need for connection and purpose.

• Notable Quote:
  Dr. Shannon Lee Dottie [44:57]: “They are trying to overcome the social death, and maybe they're successful by saying, no, I belong to a group.”

Conclusion

As the episode concludes, Flores shares his enduring hope for the Cowboys’ success, symbolizing his resilience and unwavering spirit despite the grim reality of his situation. The hosts reflect on the profound moments of the interview, recognizing the unique role that sports play in providing solace and maintaining humanity for those on death row.

• Notable Quotes:
  Charles Flores [47:06]: “I guess I've thought. I've thought about that. I'm like, man, will I ever see the Cowboys winning a Super Bowl?”
  Charles Flores [48:19]: “I have a soul, man. That's deep, man. That's profound.”

The episode serves as a poignant exploration of how sports can offer hope and a sense of normalcy even in the most extreme and dehumanizing circumstances.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. Pablo Torre [00:06]: “So much of living under a death sentence is the unknown… to be legally murdered. And that's pretty heavy, man.”
2. Dave Fleming [01:21]: “Time is of the essence with this episode in lots of very real ways.”
3. Dave Fleming [05:05]: “This guy just said, well, if you're so interested in talking, why don't you just come to Texas and we'll talk in person?”
4. Charles Flores [19:26]: “Can you hear me? Testing, test in 1, 2, 3.”
5. Charles Flores [22:03]: “We have to put an eye between the grates. And so we can stand at the door and we can talk.”
6. Charles Flores [30:09]: “Everything that's made is precooked… the trick is knowing how to mix everything and warm it up together.”
7. Charles Flores [39:21]: “Some guys lose their mind… I think fandom is part of family, too, because it's part of that bond that we have.”
8. Charles Flores [42:43]: “So I'm still a cowboy fan. And I'm gonna declare it at the very end with, you know, reminding the world of what tribe I was from.”
9. Charles Flores [47:14]: “I've made peace with the fact that this year is not the year officially for his Dallas Cowboys.”
10. Dave Fleming [49:44]: “And now we're packing up and he has to wait for a guard then to recuff him… you just feel so helpless and you just feel so much empathy for this other human being.”

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Final Thoughts:

This episode sheds light on the often-overlooked human aspects of those condemned to death row. By focusing on Charles Flores’s passion for the Dallas Cowboys, the hosts highlight how sports can serve as a lifeline, offering inmates a sense of community, purpose, and humanity amidst their isolation and uncertainty.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Charles Flores]

So much of living under a death sentence is the unknown. You know, we're sent here, we were convicted and sentenced to death and sent to death row to have our lives taken from us, to be executed, you know, to be legally murdered. And that's pretty heavy, man.

[Dave Fleming]

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[Pablo Torre]

Dave Fleming. Time is of the essence with this episode in lots of very real ways. Thank you for being here.

[Dave Fleming]

My pleasure, as always.

[Pablo Torre]

This one started, as many great things do, with a website I had never heard about.

[Dave Fleming]

It started with me coming across a website, a database where you can read the final last statements of every prisoner that's been executed by the state of Texas. Me being me, I went down that rabbit hole, started reading them. It is a gut wrenching, awful, exhausting experience.

[Pablo Torre]

The very basic premise of there's a publicly available website that records the last things that every executed prisoner on death row in the state of Texas says.

[Dave Fleming]

You're mesmerized. Right. You can't stop scrolling. This is William Prince Davis, prisoner number 614. He was executed on September 4, 1999. His last statement was, quote, I just thank the Lord for all that he has done for me. That is all. That is all I have to say, Warden. Oh, and I would just like to say in closing, what about those cowboys?

[Pablo Torre]

What's staggering is that that guy, the guy you just quoted, William Prince Davis, is not alone.

[Dave Fleming]

No, no. There's a. There's a shockingly large amount of death row prisoners who use that final opportunity to shout out their favorite sports teams.

[Pablo Torre]

John burks, inmate number 949. His last statement says, quote, the Raiders are going all the way, y'all. Y'all pray for me, and it's going to be all right. That's it. And it's time to roll up out of here. It's going down. Let's get it over with. That's it. June 14, 2000. And so this is obviously the most remarkable proof of the power of sports that I'd ever encountered. Just that alone, this very basic fact. You're about to die, killed by the state. And you want everybody to know that the last thing you cared about was the Dallas Cowboys.

[Dave Fleming]

I think your initial reaction was the same as mine, which is just, sports means too much. This is crazy. Why wouldn't you talk about the victim or your families or regrets or anything like that? You're going to shout out the Cowboys. It's like, what do sports really mean to people?

[Pablo Torre]

Right? And also, therefore, what's it even like to love sports on death row?

[Dave Fleming]

How do they even have access to sports?

[Pablo Torre]

Right?

[Dave Fleming]

How can they be Cowboys fans and Raiders fans?

[Pablo Torre]

Are they arguing about Dak Prescott? Right?

[Dave Fleming]

Are they playing fantasy football? Are they. Is there trash talk? Is that dangerous?

[Pablo Torre]

And so with these curiosities in mind and with me immediately, immediately, just saying, okay, this is assigned. Who do you decide to reach out to?

[Dave Fleming]

There are websites, there are databases where they will connect you to be a pen pal to people in prison, especially to people on death row who are exceptionally isolated. Usually you get to look at their bio, sort of what their crime was when they were put in prison, what are their interests. And I came across a guy who had potential. He was a lifelong Cowboys fan, grew up in Fort Worth. His dad was in the Air Force. They had a family ritual of going to church every Sunday and then coming home and sitting down in front of the TV to watch the Cowboys. You know, you just kind of knew right away. It was like, okay, this guy is.

[Pablo Torre]

A legit sports fan, but how does one arrange an interview Phlegm. With somebody on death row?

[Dave Fleming]

We correspond back and forth over several weeks. I would say about half a dozen emails in. This guy just said, well, if you're so interested in talking, why don't you just come to Texas and we'll talk in person?

[Pablo Torre]

And so the prison warden okays this, the inmate in question okays it, his attorney okays it, and then all that's left is for us to be like, do we really want to send one of our correspondents to a supermax prison?

[Dave Fleming]

Yes. And the next thing I know, I'm on a plane to Texas.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I do need to establish just who it is exactly that we sent you to go and visit with. Because the inmate in question is somebody that we had to collectively and exhaustively research and figure out why exactly this man had been sentenced to death by the state of Texas. So who is he? What is his name?

[Dave Fleming]

His name is Charles Flores. In 1999, at the age of 29, he was sentenced to death for his role in a burglary in the town of Farmer's branch, Texas, which is near Irving, which is actually where the cowboys, their whole facility is. Yes, it's their headquarters. During this burglary, a 64 year old woman named Betty Black was killed. And Charles was then convicted for being an accomplice to that murder, which was part of the burglary. He was then sentenced to death row, where he has been for the last 25 years. And the default in Texas is solitary confinement for death row prisoners for up to 23 hours a day.

[Pablo Torre]

And I do think we just got to clarify this because he's in solitary in a supermax prison, has been for a quarter century now. But he was an accomplice to a murder, not the actual killer.

[Dave Fleming]

Were saying he was not the gunman and was never accused of being the gunman. There is no DNA evidence linking him to the crime whatsoever. Charles has always maintained his innocence and he's actually provided an alibi for the night of the of the burglary and the murder. But that's not even the craziest part of this whole story. The craziest part is that the actual gunman, Richard Childs, he pled guilty immediately. He served 17 years of a 35 year sentence. And as we speak right now, he is free and out of prison. He's a free man. He was actually released in 2016, right about the same time that Charles got his execution date from the state of Texas.

[Pablo Torre]

Charles Flores got that execution date because of something in Texas that I want to briefly explain here, which is called the law of parties, which is to say if you are an accomplice to a murder, you are going to be sentenced, treated as if you are also a murderer.

[Dave Fleming]

Right. If you are part of a felony, it's like everybody pulled the trigger.

[Pablo Torre]

So this is where a show that otherwise enjoys diving deep into the worlds of, say, athlete branded weed or celebrity. Family feud, for instance, should probably explain the bizarre details of why Charles Flores was not executed as scheduled on June 2, 2016, and why the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals finally granted him that stay of execution just six days before that date. Because all of this has to do with the eyewitness testimony that led to the capital murder conviction of Charles Flores in the first place. You see, the eyewitness in question was the victim's neighbor. And what she reported seeing on the night of the burglary was a car with two men driving up to the house across the street. The driver she easily identified as the aforementioned and eventually admitted gunmen, Richard Childs, a white dude with long dark hair. As for the passenger, what this neighbor recalled was that he was also white with long dark hair.

[Guard]

So tell me, what. What is it that you remember about the incident that day? Offhand? Thank you. First thing I remember is when I looked out the window and I saw a car pulled up into the driveway. I remember it was her VW Bug. And I remember seeing two guys get out, and I remember looking at the passenger as he got out and remembering his dark hair, but basically the same as the driver's.

[Pablo Torre]

But Charles Flores, a local drug dealer who was one of the police's main suspects, absolutely did not look like that, as you'll see. In fact, this neighbor failed to pick Flores out of a lineup. And what happened next was something that I didn't even know was a real thing until I started studying this case, which was that the neighbor then submitted to a long standing practice that has been around since the 1950s, known as forensic hypnosis.

[Guard]

Have you ever seen a documentary film, like on tv, like with the Animal Kingdom show or. You know what we're gonna do is when we get you into a deep state of hypnosis, we're going to take you to a theater. It's going to be your own private theater. And basically what it is, you're going to be seeing the documentary, and you're going to be seeing the film of the events that occurred on that day, on that morning. Okay?

[Pablo Torre]

Forensic hypnosis is basically what it sounds like. Police investigators hypnotize victims and witnesses so that they can relax, ostensibly, and then recall traumatic events with an even greater clarity.

[Guard]

Relax. This sensation that you're peeling on the bottom of your feet, I want you just to imagine it now shooting up through your ankle. Name through the thighs of your legs, feeling more and more relaxed. I want you to imagine the stress, the ceiling moving in and out of your leg, your calves just separating the muscles and all the tension.

[Pablo Torre]

According to a 2020 Dallas Morning News investigation, police in Texas had used hypnosis in this way nearly 1800 times over the past 40 years.

[Dave Fleming]

So this woman comes out of hypnosis, they draw a composite sketch. It looks like the guy who actually pulled the trigger and admitted pulling the trigger. Skinny, white, long hair. Charles is heavyset, Hispanic, and he had a buzz cut at the time.

[Pablo Torre]

But Charles Flores, again, was one of the main suspects. And over the following year, as this case proceeded, something else happened. His actual mugshot got plastered in newspapers all across the state.

[Dave Fleming]

So it wasn't until 13 months later in a court, when the woman said, oh, yeah, there he is that's who she pointed out as being at the scene of the crime.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the thing that spared Charles Flores in 2016, six days before that scheduled execution date, and after more than a decade, by the way of exhaustive appeals, here was a groundbreaking new law, a Texas Statute passed in 2013 known as the junk science law. Now, in recent decades, as you might imagine, the credibility of forensic hypnosis have been called into serious scientific question. Evidence has shown that police hypnosis often distorts witness memories and leads to false convictions. And 27 other states, at last count, have banned the practice for this reason. And yet, while Charles Flores did get granted that stay of execution, as well as a new evidentiary hearing in 2018, relief still was ultimately denied. Prosecutors claim that the eyewitness testimony in question wouldn't have mattered anyway because they had other evidence placing him at the scene of the crime. And the Innocence Project subsequently filed multiple amicus briefs in support of Flores. His lawyers, meanwhile, requested that the case be tried federally before the Supreme Court. And that request, as of January 2021, was denied as well. So, from a purely legal perspective, this is where the story of Charles Flores stops. But for us, of course, it's where our story begins.

[Dave Fleming]

He was into some bad stuff, and he admits that. What we're saying is it's very clear that, at the very least, he doesn't deserve to be on death row or in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for a quarter century.

[Pablo Torre]

All of which is to say that the case of Charles Flores is this case. That is a larger window onto capital punishment as an institution in the United States still today. But I also recognize that it wasn't exactly the easiest assignment for a reporter to receive.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah, I had to go to the Polunsky unit in Livingston, Texas, which is a notorious prison, always ranked as one of the most dangerous, worst prisons in the world. There are all kinds of hoops that you have to go through, right? You have to submit to a background check. You have to agree to all these restrictions. You are allowed exactly one hour of rolling cameras. You have to submit a list of every piece of equipment down to pen and paper. So I was kind of freaking the out and wondering why I couldn't go to the Family feud or smoke celebrity weed. Like, how did I get this assignment?

[Pablo Torre]

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[Dave Fleming]

Where this really got real for me was when right before we arrived, they reminded us nobody can wear white. And that's because that's what the death row inmates wear. They're required to wear white. And so you step in, and the first thing that happens in this guard shack, you get a big boy search.

[Pablo Torre]

Not a tsa.

[Dave Fleming]

No, this is a. This is a thorough search. I look to my right and I just happened to see the open closet where they keep all the guns. Hundreds of guns and shotguns in case something happens at the prison. You make it through that, you're still not in the prison yet. You come out and you are now between the fences. And it's perfectly aligned with the gun towers because they need to have a clean shot. If someone makes it through that fence.

[Pablo Torre]

What is the noise that you're hearing?

[Dave Fleming]

It's the people inside screaming at each other, yelling everything under the sun. That's really when you're like, man, is it too late to turn back? And then the strangest thing happened. The room that they took us to to interview Charles.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Dave Fleming]

Is where families go. And so you turn after this giant steel door closes, and you're like, what am I doing? You turn. You go into the room, and the walls are painted with cartoon characters. And I'm staring at Cookie Monster, My Little Pony, spongebob squarepants. And I'm like, wow, we really are down a rabbit hole.

[Pablo Torre]

And so as you're waiting there where Charles Flores's family would have waited, what are you expecting?

[Dave Fleming]

I'm starting to get into my thoughts, right? And it's starting to spiral. And then Charles comes in.

[Charles Flores]

Hello?

[Pablo Torre]

Hello?

[Charles Flores]

Can you hear me? Testing, test in 1, 2, 3. Can you hear me? Sound good? Okay. Okay.

[Dave Fleming]

And we sort of make eye contact. We kind of say hello through the glass.

[Charles Flores]

I've taken pictures in the past, and it's usually better to put the phone down like this so you don't see that phone, like, next to your ear. So if you want, you can just let them both hang down.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay. You guys want me to let the phones hang or leave them here? And Charles kind of saves me because it's clear that he wants to talk football. I looked at the Cowboys schedule before we came over here, and I noticed, okay, they played the Texans. Is it, like, week.

[Charles Flores]

I think it's 11. Okay, week 11.

[Dave Fleming]

Week 11.

[Charles Flores]

Yes.

[Dave Fleming]

Charles grew up big. You can tell that from the clips that we're watching. Was an offensive and defensive lineman in middle school, and the first thing he wants to talk about is the Cowboys. Texans game on Monday night.

[Pablo Torre]

Of course.

[Charles Flores]

So the way death row is, the population is, it's. There's more guys from the big cities, the big counties, so there are more guys from Dallas and Houston and. Than anywhere else. So that makes for a lot more fans of both teams. Right. So on that day, football is the sport. We wake up thinking about it, you know, when. When the. When the weekend starts. That's what we're talking about. And especially, like, a big game like that, a big rivalry, because. I don't know, man. It just. It seems like that because the Texans have been up and down a lot of times. They. They seem to play the role of the little brother, you know what I'm saying? And so. So they want to get. They want to beat the Cowboys. You know, they don't beat nobody else. They want to beat the Cowboys. And I've been telling the guys, the Tixon fans, I'm like, you know, on that day, we're not going to be friends. We're going to be rivals, you know?

[Dave Fleming]

His cell smaller than the studio. Nine by 12.

[Charles Flores]

It's probably three of these booths wide.

[Dave Fleming]

Right? Right.

[Charles Flores]

One on this side and one on this side. So it's about nine foot across.

[Dave Fleming]

Some of the death row cells are actually as small as 60 square feet. And they are in there 23 hours a day without exception.

[Charles Flores]

And the doors, they have this mesh where windows are supposed to be.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

We have 2, 3 foot, I think it's 4 inches openings in the door. And so we can stand at the door and we can talk. You know, it's not like normal conversational tones, but when we talk loud, we can hear each other. And of course, everybody's hollering and when, you know, the kickoff starts and they make a big play or, you know, big tackle or something like that, people. People are hollering and. Yeah, interacting. So, yeah, it's really great.

[Dave Fleming]

He described the two vertical windows, thin windows with the mesh screen on there.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, those grates, those vertical grates right.

[Dave Fleming]

At the front of his cell. And basically they have to go there and sort of put an eye between the. Great. To see the community television that, by the way, just showed up a couple of years ago.

[Charles Flores]

There are seven cells on the ground floor in a section. And then there's seven cells on. On two row. Right on the second story, we call it one row and two row.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

And in that area there's a TV. It's a 35 inch TV. And it's from my cell. It's probably from here to that back wall. And 1, 2, 3, 4. Four cells, for the most part, are able to watch it on one roll by standing at the door. So you stand at the door and you look through the great. Yes, the great. The great. And so, yeah, you know, when it's 4th and 3 or 4th and 10, 3rd and 10. You know, believe me, you're up at the grave and you're looking through that little diamond to make sure you can see you know who.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay, but that's four hours. You're standing. Yes.

[Charles Flores]

So some people stand, other people will make a makeshift chair.

[Dave Fleming]

How.

[Charles Flores]

Okay, so like, for me, I have quite a bit of legal documentation, legal paperwork, and I just have it in mesh, nylon mesh bags. And I've made a chair that's about this big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I strategically put it at the door and I sit on it. I'll sit on it. But like I told you, when it's. When the kickoff is going to happen or something, you know, you get up and you get close to the grid so you can see what's going on.

[Dave Fleming]

So, yeah, the fact that it's his legal papers that he's using to help him with his sports fandom. It's perfect.

[Pablo Torre]

It is quaint in a way.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

In a way that almost makes me wonder, so we're in a supermax prison. Where is the talking? Where is the conflict? Where is all that?

[Dave Fleming]

I don't want to overstep or anything like that, but I. Basically, my question was, trash talk could be dangerous. Can it, in a prison? I mean, it's like, I'm not going to trash talk anybody. And he had a really interesting explanation for that.

[Charles Flores]

I can remember last season in the playoffs, you know, we thought the Cowboys were going to do good, and then Green Bay showed up and they didn't do good. He's got him wide open down the right side. Musgrave comes out.

[Dave Fleming]

Touchdown. Touchdown. Luke Musgrave.

[Charles Flores]

And a dagger, a dagger right through.

[Dave Fleming]

The heart of the Cowboys.

[Charles Flores]

So believe, believe me, the Texan fans were letting us have it. All right? They were letting us have it and they were talking trash and they were laughing at us. And, you know, they kept showing Dak, and he was like a deer in the headlight. I'm just so mad I could cuss because it just is like the same thing keeps happening.

[Dave Fleming]

Jackson keeps Stanley in front of him. Touchdown, Lamar.

[Charles Flores]

And believe me, the next week when the Texans lost against the Ravens, I gave them the blues.

[Dave Fleming]

Is that scary? I mean, you're talking trash with. You could be talking trash with some pretty bad dudes, right?

[Charles Flores]

That's the thing about the death pen. It's so difficult, is that we're not the worst thing that we've ever done. Are you the worst thing that you've ever done? Because I know you've done something that, when you think about your cringe, we all have. Every human being that's alive has done something like that. So that's what they're here for. But that's not the person that I know. I'm not that person. Right. And so for the most part, you know, guys, guys, guys are pretty, pretty, pretty calm, you know, pretty, pretty low key. And so there's not a lot of friction. On death row now, general population, it's different. And when there's a bunch of guys together and then it gets personal because someone, somebody, you know, somebody starts talking trash and they put it out, but they can't take it in. And then they get angry. And then once you get angry, well, then you'll say something that you shouldn't say and they'll start fighting. So, yeah, there is that element, but I think that's. That's out there in the free world, too.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, the perspective that Charles is offering here about how Death Row is not exactly what you'd presume it to be. It is sort of juxtaposed against the way that he, as a Cowboys fan, is exactly what I presumed him to be. Guy who's still complaining about Dak Prescott.

[Dave Fleming]

Right. It was kind of like. It was like he's. It's just classic Cowboys fan. Almost more so. Almost more pure.

[Pablo Torre]

It raises other questions to me about, like, okay, the rituals of Charles Flores and his fellow Cowboys and football fans on Death Row game day. What's that like?

[Dave Fleming]

It's kind of like what we were just talking about. It's like every other fan, right? There's a whole ritual.

[Charles Flores]

So we get up, you know, I'll get up about 8:00, and because it's a big day, we'll make a feast. And we make stuff out of. Out of the items that we can buy at the commissary. And so it might be nachos or it might be tacos or special, like, super bowl or something. We'll do enchiladas.

[Dave Fleming]

And is that something you guys are like, okay, what are we gonna eat?

[Charles Flores]

Like, yes.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

Yes. Because this has to be planned. We go to commissary two times a month.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

So you gotta buy the stuff a month before to make sure you have everything that you're gonna need on that day.

[Dave Fleming]

If it's enchiladas, are you cooking those in your cell?

[Charles Flores]

Everything that's made is precooked. So you buy items. Beef tips and gravy. Summer sausages are also used. Chicken chili. And all these things are precooked, so they come in little like plastics pouches. And it's an intricate process. We have to put all these things in cleaned out plastic chip bags and we heat them up. What we cook in is a hot pot, which essentially looks like an electric water kettle, which heats up the water, right?

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah.

[Charles Flores]

So everything is heated up in water in a plastic bag. And the trick is knowing how to mix everything and warm it up together to make the insulin as good.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

And so I've been here. I've been here for a while, and yeah, I can cook pretty good. That's why I'm fat.

[Dave Fleming]

He's as proud of the food and the tailgate. Right. As any Georgia Bulldog fan as any LSU tailgater.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, it's the pride of someone with a chili recipe that they are bragging about on a Sunday morning.

[Dave Fleming]

Right. That's an incredible thing to be on death Row. And it's like, oh my God, there's no difference.

[Pablo Torre]

It's right up there in the most predictable brags by any NFL fan. Along with, check out how my fantasy team is doing.

[Dave Fleming]

Oh, we went there. How did you guys even draft players though? Or how do you. Is it all through the window?

[Charles Flores]

Mostly it was week to week. So depending on the matchups, you would make a new lineup. You understand? Okay, you know, Tom Brady's playing whoever, so you're starting Tom Brady. And if it's a two quarterback league, you know, whoever else it might be, you know, Aaron Rodgers. Right, right. And then, and so Ezekiel Elliott has a good matchup, so you're going to start him and then, you know, you're mixing and matching. You're mixing and matching.

[Dave Fleming]

Okay.

[Charles Flores]

And so there wasn't no need to get together and have a draft. But what you would have to do is turn in your team because there's a, there's a commissioner that's running it and he's the one that's going to get the, get each team and then he's going to create what we call master sheet. So there's a deadline. You gotta turn them in by, you know, Friday at noon. We would slide the stuff out from the cells to the day rooms and then those guys would get the stuff and give it to another day room. And then that guy would tell the commissioner, hey man, I've got these teams out here. And then he would, he would, he would make his way out there with what we call a fishing line. And it's essentially like a long string that he'll, he'll slide to the day room. And he pulled him back in and then the same way he would pass out the master sheets, you know, and it's the same thing.

[Pablo Torre]

I have never felt worse about forgetting to check my lineup. That is what it takes to play fantasy football on death row.

[Dave Fleming]

I always thought that fishing thing was in movies.

[Pablo Torre]

That part. Right, right.

[Dave Fleming]

It's real. It's real. And they're not using it for anything nefarious. They're using it to submit their fantasy football lineup.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, the nefarious part is that they're playing apparently in a 2 quarterback. Just like, what are you guys doing?

[Charles Flores]

I've been here literally 25 years. Before there was no TV, so it was all sports talk radio and it was mostly am. When you'd get the station, you would hope it stays in. And so that's where we would get our sports update. Because when you, when you play fantasy football, if you don't know what's going on. You're just donating. You're just. Don't you know what I'm saying? You just might as well just give your money away. You know, we would have to wait on the newspaper. You gotta wait on the newspaper to get the stats. Cause you know, you don't have the stats. You know, nowadays I know that as soon as the games are played, the stats are online.

[Dave Fleming]

Right? Right.

[Charles Flores]

But man, no, man, you know, people would be waiting for the newspaper and then the commissioner, he would add it up. Cause everything has to be official. Right. Everybody's agreed that.

[Pablo Torre]

I have so many more questions, but just like, what's the scoring system like? Waiver wire? Like, it's easy to get lost again in this familiar minutia of what it's like to just be a football fan, right.

[Dave Fleming]

And just enjoying this conversation, one Fantasy football player to another. And you sort of get lost in that. You forget where you are. And then there's this gut punch. But what, what happened to your league?

[Charles Flores]

Slowly but surely, the guys that have. The guys that played, they've just been pushed out of existence. They've been executed, they're gone. You know, and that's just a reality of being on death row. That's a reality of being sentenced to death.

[Pablo Torre]

It gets to the point where him saying the most obvious thing that we all knew heading in is now the thing that is most jarring.

[Dave Fleming]

The conversation kind of lured us into, oh, we're all the same. This is all the same. It's like, no, we're not. His has one very dreadful, awful difference.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

So give me the scouting report on Charles Flores, the football player.

[Dave Fleming]

You know, one of the things in our early emails that we exchanged was this memory he had of springing the game winning touchdown with a great block when he was in eighth grade. And he mentioned that writing about that little detail of his football career still gave him cheers chills 40 years later. The other detail that he added that I loved was he wore 79 in honor of Harvey Martin, the Cowboy great.

[Pablo Torre]

And so his family then. This is a football family we're describing.

[Charles Flores]

We were fans. We used to watch at home. Of course we watched. When I was little, it was a.

[Dave Fleming]

Ritual, go to church, come home, gather around the tv, root on the Cowboys.

[Charles Flores]

I was real close with my family. I might have lived separate, but you know, on the weekend I'm going to mom and dad's house, just being with them and we would watch football all the time.

[Dave Fleming]

That deep connection to the Cowboys, it sort of, it continued once Charles was put on death row, that was one.

[Charles Flores]

Of the main things that we would talk about, the Cowboys this, the Cowboys that. They continued to watch the football games at home. And so it was the same thing back then. I would wake up early and I would start a letter and a lot of times I would leave it. I would say half of what I wanted to say and then the game would be going. And then after the game I would have comments. And oftentimes I would be writing my mom and my dad and they would be writing me at the same time. And I remember that I was writing them, you know, at 4:00 and then I would see that mom started this letter at 4:00. And so that was like the synchronicity of it. All right? And yeah, man, you know, it was special. There's nothing like that. So, like I said, I think fandom is part of family, too, because it's part of that bond that we have.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, talking to your family about the Cowboys through letter writing is such a I. It's just a sad. It's a sad thing to do for a quarter century. And counting phlegm, it gets sadder because.

[Dave Fleming]

He'S been there so long now. Both his parents. That ritual is gone now because both of his parents have passed away. And as you listen to Charles, you understand that with his parents gone, that's just made sports all the more important to Charles and his survival on death row.

[Charles Flores]

So much of living under a death sentence is the unknown. You know, we're sent here. We were convicted and sentenced to death and sent to death row to have our lives taken from us, to be executed, you know, to be legally murdered. And that's pretty heavy, man. You hang your hopes on appeal courts and on things that might happen that will allow you to have a reversal in your conviction or your sentence and maybe get out of the situation. So, you know, that's. That's pretty stressful, and some guys can't take it. You know, some guys lose their mind. I had a friend of mine, his name, we called him Big G. He was from Oak Cliff in Dallas, and we called him Big G for a reason. He was like six, five, about 300 pounds. He looked like he could play offensive tackle for the Cowboys. Great guy. And one day he told me, he says, man, he says, what if we got it wrong? He says, what if the crazy dudes are normal because they can't cope and we're the crazy people because we are able to adapt and accept this insanity. And, you know, I've never forgot that.

[Dave Fleming]

Because that would be. That's a normal. A normal reaction would be to go.

[Charles Flores]

Yeah, lose your damn mind, that they're gonna kill you, right? And that you're gonna sit around for 10 or 15 years until they do it. And so sports, for me, especially football, it takes me out of this place. When the game is on, I'm at the stadium. I'm not. I'm not in this place. I'm not here. I'm not under that death sentence. I'm not worried about, oh, man, are they going to set me an execution day? Or, oh, man, are they going to deny my appeal? You know, and because that's real. That's real there, being locked up and.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, this notion of sports as an escape, I don't know of a more vivid manifestation of that promise than what Charles is describing there.

[Dave Fleming]

The way I interpreted what he was saying was he lives in a way where 24 hours a day, seven days a week, someone's trying to kill him. That's the white noise of his life. He doesn't know when it's going to happen, but that's the stress that he lives under. And so the line about how maybe the crazy ones are the ones who continue to live on death row and the sane ones are the ones who check out by committing suicide. I mean, if there's a better way to explain the insanity and the pressure that they live under, I haven't read it.

[Pablo Torre]

No. And there is this one statistic that I do want to just read to you for the record, because at least eight death row prisoners, prisoners at Polanski, where Charles Flores is, where his fantasy football league is, at least eight of those inmates have committed suicide in the last 20 years.

[Dave Fleming]

It's just amazing that one day, two of these prisoners were talking and they were like, maybe we're the crazy ones because we've adapted to live like this.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. Because we can smile while talking about our favorite sports.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah. We can survive in this situation. It's. It's stunning.

[Pablo Torre]

All of this reminds me now of why we got into this story in the first place, right? This website, this database of last words said by people who are about to be executed.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah. That was the whole point of this exercise. Right. Is to find out why someone would love sports that much that they would include it in their last words. And before even leaving on this assignment, I shared this database with a anthropologist in Chicago. Her name is Dr. Shannon Lee Dottie. And she is an expert in death rituals. And I just wanted to get her opinion on it. And I really, at this point, asked her in almost a flippant way about, get a load of these death row inmates who are using their last words for sports shout outs. She immediately connected it to this concept called social death.

[Dr. Shannon Lee Dottie]

There was a historian of African American history called Orlando Patterson, and he came up with this fascinating, powerful idea called social death. And he argued that slaves and certain other kinds of people, inmates of concentration camps, they experience social death where their body is alive, but they're so cut off violently from meaningful social connections and relationships and meaningful groups that they experience social death. What's really interesting to me about this example is that they're trying to overcome the social death, and maybe they're successful by saying, no, I belong to a group. And they take that moment right before they're executed. To reassert themselves as socially alive. And I think that's fascinating and powerful. It's empowering to them to do that.

[Pablo Torre]

What did Charles have to say about that in specific?

[Dave Fleming]

I wanted to go get Charles opinion and his thoughts on his own last words.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Dave Fleming]

But it turns out he and his attorney, you know, they don't want him to be seen as somebody who is contemplating being executed.

[Pablo Torre]

They don't want to concede that he's going to have to give his last words at all. This is where you should know that Charles Flores has exhausted all of his known legal avenues for petitions and appeals. His attorney, Gretchen Sween, told us, quote, in order to bring new claims, we would need new evidence sufficient to convince a court to reopen the case. An exceedingly high burden. End quote. But there is another change that I think is worth you knowing about. Because on September 1, 2023, the Texas State legislature enacted a new bill, a bill that Governor Greg Abbott, by the way, had vetoed in 2021. But Texas Senate Bill Number 338, citing an alarming amount of unreliable eyewitness identification testimony, officially prohibits any future testimony gleaned from forensic hypnosis as admissible evidence in a criminal trial, which is a dramatic but not retroactive change. Meaning it does not help Charles Flores, who is waiting as we speak for a new execution date, a date that could be announced at any moment now. All of which is why I was also wondering how this unthinkable degree of uncertainty, of injustice, might logically impact the patience of a long suffering Cowboys fan when it comes to the thing he loves the most.

[Dave Fleming]

There's a saying, there's always next year.

[Charles Flores]

Yes.

[Dave Fleming]

But for you, the. The future is uncertain.

[Charles Flores]

Yes.

[Dave Fleming]

There isn't always next year.

[Charles Flores]

I guess I've thought. I've thought about that. I'm like, man, will I ever see the Cowboys winning of the Super Bowl? Because that's my thing.

[DraftKings Announcer]

Dallas the champions again.

[Dave Fleming]

Final score, Dallas 27.

[Charles Flores]

I think that we might have to wait till Patrick Mahomes goes to another team or something. Can't nobody beat him.

[Dave Fleming]

Do you have a prediction?

[Charles Flores]

Yeah. Yeah. This is their year. No matter what. Every year is a year. And one of these years they're going to get it done. Yeah.

[Dave Fleming]

If so, if you predict it every year, eventually you'll be right.

[Charles Flores]

Well, you gotta believe, bro. You gotta believe. Huh?

[Pablo Torre]

You gotta believe. And so, given that mix that you just heard of, totally sincere hope of longing cut with a resigned familiarity bordering on sarcasm, we did want to find out more about How Charles Flores viewed the opportunity more broadly to have his last words memorialized for all time on that database, even if he very understandably did not want to personally preview his own final communication on Earth.

[Dave Fleming]

One of the first things that you and I talked about was the trend of inmates shouting out their teams with their last words. And it seemed like that was something you could understand. Right. Because of the connection to sports, that situation.

[Charles Flores]

I don't think nobody ever understand it until you are there and experiencing that. But I've tried to think about it and I've tried to say, well, man, why would somebody say that? And I think it is that. I think it's. It might be a last grab at, hey, I'm still part of, if nothing else, I'm still part of this family. I'm still relevant in the fact that even with as I'm being ushered out of this life, this reality, I'm still a cowboy fan. And I'm gonna declare it at the very end with, you know, reminding the world of what tribe I was from. I'm still human. Even though you're taking my life like an animal, I'm still human. I have a soul, man. That's deep, man. That's profound.

[Dave Fleming]

I mean, Charles again gives just the most incredible answer.

[Pablo Torre]

It's the sort of thing you just want to sit with.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

For a while.

[Dave Fleming]

Yep. You know, unfortunately, we had reached the end of our hour and they were very strict about it. I got a ten minute warning.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Dave Fleming]

And so here we are just sort.

[Pablo Torre]

Of the clock again ticking on this.

[Dave Fleming]

Yes, exactly. And now we're packing up and he has to wait for a guard then to recuff him, hand back the wireless mic and take him back to his 23 hours of isolation. And so we can't talk anymore, but Charles is sitting there watching us pack up. And that was as close as we all came to getting emotional and even crying because the look on Charles face, and I know he was trying to hide this was just a look of like, you guys get to leave. He's imagining that we get to leave. The look on his face is easily one of the saddest things that I've ever experienced on this job in 30 years. And it got to the point where I couldn't look at him anymore because you just feel so helpless and you just feel so much empathy for this other human being and the situation that he's in in the strangest place under the worst conditions. Through sports, we've kind of bridge this disconnect and trying to face that moment again. I went back and listened to the tapes and I realized that as my mic is cut, Charles is still live and so you can hear him.

[Charles Flores]

Were you listening?

[Dave Fleming]

Oh, you weren't.

[Charles Flores]

You should have been listening.

[Dave Fleming]

Oh, I'm doing paperwork.

[Charles Flores]

I'll get ready for tomorrow.

[Dave Fleming]

He's talking to the guard that comes to escort him back and he's wondering how the interview went and talking about the Cowboys.

[Charles Flores]

They're actually from the east, so one of them is a, is a, is a Cleveland Brown fan. But I was telling them what it is. I'm like, man, look. Yeah, yeah. You know, you know, like, man, look, this is Texan territory.

[Dave Fleming]

Yeah. Oh, and you can hear him physically exchanging our microphone for the clinking and clacking of the handcuffs.

[Charles Flores]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Fleming]

All accessorized. Okay, good deal.

[Dr. Shannon Lee Dottie]

And then I will let famous Amy.

[Charles Flores]

Okay, yeah, let him know.

[Dave Fleming]

So come pick up the movie star. Here you go. And that is another really sort of profound moment of it's over. We all have to go back to our normal lives.

[Pablo Torre]

Dave Fleming, thank you for taking this trip, accepting this assignment, and reporting this story.

[Dave Fleming]

Pablo was my pleasure, and I'm glad we went.

[Pablo Torre]

Since we taped this episode, Dave Fleming, you should know, has continued to trade emails with Charles Flores, his new pen pal. And Charles, for his part, wants the PTFO audience to know that he has now made peace with the fact that this year is not the year officially for his Dallas Cowboys and that more information on his case can be found@freecharles flores.com this has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

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