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400 Years of Capital Punishment in America | The History of the Death Penalty

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  1. Peering out from the dark shadows of America's death >> [music] >> row are the faces of evil,
  2. the faces of murderers, men [music] and women who commit the most heinous of crimes. men and women who often evade capture
  3. for years, [music] decades. But eventually, these lowest forms of humanity find themselves on death row,
  4. awaiting their final fate, execution. This is the story of the ultimate punishment, death, and the portraits of
  5. [music] the worst of the worst, who were put to death by the feds and the states in America.
  6. In this program, we will look at the history of capital punishment [music] and how it became America's harshest penalty.
  7. Since the founding of the colonies, [music] almost 16,000 Americans have departed this life. Not at the mercy of chance or natural
  8. causes, but subject to the will of the state. These are men and women who found themselves on America's [music]
  9. death row. Men and women condemned to pay the ultimate [music] price for their crimes, death.
  10. The history of capital punishment in America is a long and bizarre story. It started when the first colonist [music] arrived in Virginia in6007.
  11. Captain George Kendall was accused of being a spy for the Spanish. Fearful that if set free, Kendall would reveal the weak defenses of the English
  12. [music] colony, the council executed him by firing squad. The first person executed by capital
  13. punishment in America. Dr. Daniel Leance has studied in-depth America's history of capital punishment.
  14. The history of capital punishment dates back from the founding of the first colonies. So Jamestown in6007 and the Plymouth and Mass Bay colonies shortly
  15. thereafter. Um and uh in in most of our historical knowledge about the death penalty comes from uh colonial New England where you had better
  16. recordkeeping. And uh what what we found is is that in in some ways uh capital punishment was similar to that as it was practiced in England. Uh in that uh you
  17. had public executions that drew large crowds. Um, you had execution for offenses that today we would be surprised to see anyone uh even get a
  18. small jail sentence for. You know, everything from fornication uh to pickpocketing um was a capital offense uh in the 18th and and early 19th
  19. centuries. [music] >> But what's most surprising is that during America's founding, the crowds
  20. witnessing executions were not judging the condemned, but identifying with them. with the struggle between good and evil
  21. in all of us. >> Today we think about people who are put to death as [music] monsters. That's how the media constructs them. But in
  22. colonial New England, [music] they were seen quite differently. They were seen as almost representatives of a sinful [music] humanity that everyone in the
  23. community parttook in. And so a lot of what you find in accounts of executions from colonial New England [music] um is is not what we would expect uh today, a
  24. kind of horror at the crime that was committed um but but a kind of identification with a condemned hopefulness for their redemption.
  25. Of course, the most notorious cases of colonial capital punishment gone arry were the Salem witch trials [music] from 1692 to 93.
  26. During more than a year of terror and bloodshed, [music] 19 women were hanged, accused of being witches.
  27. But the community was not identifying with the condemned in these executions, but participating in a kind of mass hysteria,
  28. an early stain on [music] the history of capital punishment in America. When the United States of America was born out of the Revolutionary War, a
  29. debate arose over the use of the death penalty. There's a real sort of division [music] amongst um amongst the so-called
  30. founding fathers about the death penalty. Some saw the death penalty as um a relic of a monarchical past. So that the death penalty was tainted
  31. because it was used by kings um to execute people unfairly. um it was a sign of their capricious power uh that the republic was the opposite of. Um
  32. others however saw the death penalty as being warranted even more so in a democracy than in a monarchy because when one committed a crime in a
  33. democracy, one was not offending the sovereign, right? Uh or a king. One was one was offending the people, right? Because the people rule in a democracy.
  34. And so the gravity of the crime in some revolutionary era minds uh expanded. It grew uh because one was was now uh uh disobeying laws that had been
  35. democratically enacted. And so the punishment was thought to to be um to need to be more severe. >> Dr. Paul Littton knows that this great
  36. ambiguity among the founding fathers made its way into the United States Constitution. We do know that the framers contemplated
  37. the death [music] penalty when writing the constitution um because the fifth amendment of the uh constitution says that uh no one shall be deprived of uh
  38. their life or liberty without due process of law. So by stating in the fifth amendment that no one can be deprived of life without due process of
  39. law, we know that the framers uh obviously contemplated the death penalty. Some folks argue the answer is easy. It's fair to assume that the
  40. framers thought it was okay uh for someone to be put to death as long as they were provided as long as that person was provided due process.
  41. However, others argue that uh it's an open question whether the death penalty is constitutional precisely because right the eth
  42. amendment says there shall be no cruel and unusual punishment. Um is the death penalty cruel and unusual? Right. Some argue it should be
  43. an open question. [music] Judges should decide is it cruel and unusual and not simply ask did the framers think it was cruel and unusual. And so some people
  44. argue there that um it's an open question whether it's [music] constitutional. We should decide for ourselves whether or not the death
  45. penalty is cruel and unusual. >> Needless to say the death [music] penalty remained the ultimate punishment in the US.
  46. So as the years progressed, so too did the idea of execution as a public spectacle.
  47. In the 1800s, executions [music] were an excuse for spectators to get drunk, rowdy, and ironically, commit crimes. In response, the states began to change
  48. their venues of execution. Michael Rattle is a professor of sociology at [music] the University of
  49. Colorado. He has studied the spectacle aspect of execution. People thought that the death penalty was a deterrent [music] and therefore
  50. they wanted public executions. Uh in many states, public executions occurred on Fridays, the same day that Jesus was said to have died on the cross. Schools
  51. were closed. Parents brought their children. Teachers brought their kids. And they would go down uh downtown uh in a in a given city to a public square.
  52. And there they'd have a long long spectacle of public hanging. This thing this could go on for 2 or 3 hours. Uh sometimes there was a choir. Sometimes
  53. there was a band. Uh the man on the gallows, these were usually by hanging. uh usually would give a what was called an execution sermon where the person
  54. would stand up on the gallows and denounce alcohol and women and whatever contributed to his crime. There's this feeling that [music] these executions
  55. have become carnivals. Um, so you start to see elites worried [music] that these crowds are potentially taking the wrong messages away, but also that these
  56. crowds could become [music] in some instances sympathetic to the condemned and interrupt the ceremony or if they were highly uh [music] um upset by the
  57. crime, could uh try to to to administer their own kind of punishment against the condemned. Um [music] and so there's this fear of chaos and disorder um that
  58. is that slowly emerges over the course of the early to mid-9th century [music] that a that that in essence makes the elite say we can no longer trust uh this
  59. crowd and in fact rather than maintaining order these executions could actually be sewing disorder [music] and so we've got to do something about them.
  60. And the solution was to put them inside the jailyard at first but crowds would find a way. People would gather in droves around the gates of the jails.
  61. Children would climb up in trees and look over the walls to see the [music] hanging. Uh people would go up onto rooftops to try to get a glimpse of the
  62. um of of of the event. Um and so it's this cat and mouse game until finally these executions are put into the bowels of prisons. And the last uh state to do
  63. that was Kentucky. Their last public execution in 1937. Uh there were about a thousand people who attended that execution.
  64. >> Indeed, executions moved from public places near where the crimes occurred to private interiors of state prisons.
  65. The officials administering the punishment were no longer local sheriffs, but nameless state agents carrying out the deed on behalf of the
  66. agrieved. And thus, the modern American death row was born. A bleak, isolated place where
  67. criminals convicted of the worst crimes imaginable await their demise. However, the manner in which the condemned would die would change as
  68. America progressed into the 20th century. The Iron Maiden. Stoning.
  69. Crucifixion. Quartering. Hanging. Buried alive.
  70. Burned at the stake. the guillotine. These early and violent methods of execution still haunt the imagination.
  71. Though some were adopted by the new colonies, one prevailed as the most popular, hanging.
  72. In fact, well over 9,000 American criminals have been executed this way. A rope is tied to a gallows or a tree. Then a noose is placed around the guilty
  73. person's [music] neck. The support is removed, leaving the criminal dangling [music] from the end of the rope, strangling to death. For most of
  74. American history, the primary method of execution has been by hanging. Cheap. You needed no skills. Uh you would put the guy on a horse under a tree branch
  75. uh and uh swat the horse and the horse would take off leaving the guy behind. It turns out it's very difficult to hang people. If the drop is is too short, the
  76. person strangles to death and that really grosses out the crowd. The guy is [music] dangling for a half hour and because they were public, often times
  77. the person's family and friends were witnessing it. And we've got all sorts of examples where people from the crowd would rush up to the gallows, [music]
  78. grab the guy on the ankles, and pull him down uh to put him out of his misery more quickly. uh or if the drop was too long, the person's head would fall off,
  79. which of course grossed everybody out, too. >> So, from the late 19th century till today, we have this um really
  80. interesting pattern. [music] Um I call it dark optimism. Um there's this there's this adamant feeling amongst elites [music] in the United
  81. States that we can perfect the technologies that we [music] use to put people to death so that they won't feel any pain and so that their death will
  82. not appear to witnesses to be gruesome, to be violent. [music] um to be similar to the crimes uh for which these people were being punished.
  83. That's always the challenge for people carrying out an execution is that the violence that the state is is is administering against a person who's
  84. been sentenced to death cannot look like the violence of the criminal wrong or the crime that the person had done to put that in that position of being
  85. sentenced to death. You don't want to confuse the righteous violence of the state with the lawless violence of the criminal.
  86. A new technology showcased in the 1893 Chicago World's Fair would give the powers that be a new humane form of execution, electricity.
  87. In [music] 1889, William Francis Kemler grabbed his trusty hatchet and chopped his wife Tilly Ziggler to death.
  88. After a little more than a year on death row on August 6th, 1890, Kemler became [music] the first man in the world to be executed by electric chair.
  89. Sitting on the chair, head covered, Kemler muttered, "Take it easy and do it properly. I'm in no hurry." But the event was far from flawless.
  90. After the first jolt, doctors mistakenly declared Kemler dead, only to realize he was still alive and gave him another 2,000 volts, twice what he [music] had
  91. before. The smell of cooked flesh and singed hair filled the execution room. Not exactly a stellar way to usher in the
  92. age of the electric chair. 56 years later, a young black man, [music] Willie Francis, took part in the
  93. biggest botch electric chair execution [music] the country would see. In 1945, Francis confessed to shooting a cinjun
  94. pharmacist, Andrew Thomas, an old employer. A speedy trial ensued and Francis was sentenced [music] to death by the state
  95. of Louisiana despite the fact that he was underage, only 15 at the time of the murder. On May 3rd, 1946,
  96. Francis walked what he thought [music] was his last mile to the Louisiana State Penitentiary's electric chair, Gruesome Gertie. But Gertie had been improperly
  97. set up by a drunk security guard and his inmate assistant. Francis screamed while the vaults shot through his body. The switch was flipped
  98. off and very much alive Willie Francis went to the infirmary. [music] Though Francis appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, a 5 to4 decision
  99. sent Francis back to the chair. On May 9th, 1947, after only a year and a half and one
  100. earlier failed execution, Willie Francis was successfully executed. But most inmates are electrocuted without a hitch. Of the over 4,000
  101. electrocutions carried out in the US, less than 2% were botched. But the gruesome accounts of the [music] few botched electrocutions were still
  102. enough to steer elites toward a new more humane method of execution. >> If there's too much electricity or it's not done right, you have to give several
  103. jolts. Uh there's worry that if the person was not dead after the first round of electricity, somebody would have to order a second or even a third
  104. round. >> The electric chair people who who who are burnt or where it takes 20 to 25 minutes in repeated shocks to put them
  105. to death. smoke rising from their body, filling the execution chamber with a putrid smell. Um, you see a in response to that, not a kind of um, we can't get
  106. this right, we need to abandon the effort to make executions humane and not have them all together, but a kind of dark optimistic feeling that we can
  107. develop something different that will have fewer problems. That something turned out to be the gas chamber.
  108. The use of a poisonous gas that causes the victim to suffocate [music] to death. The first such execution took place in
  109. the 1920s. Born in China around 1895, Gi John was a roaring 20s gangster,
  110. part of a violent Chinese gang. In August 1921 in Minina, Nevada, Gi murdered Tom Chong Key, [music] a member of a rival gang.
  111. Gi was quickly apprehended and sentenced to die by Nevada's newly approved method of dispensing death, lethal gas.
  112. Officials originally tried to pump gas straight into his cell, but it didn't work due to leakage. So on February 8th, 1924,
  113. in this room at the Nevada State Prison, G. John became the first person in the United States to be executed by lethal gas in a chamber.
  114. But the crude chamber was poorly sealed, and witnesses reported smelling the deadly gas. Nonetheless, after 9 minutes, G. John,
  115. the cold-blooded gangster, was dead. But improvements had to be made to perfect the gas chamber. >> And between 1923
  116. uh and 1956, 13 states adopted the gas chamber. Uh and uh when they when they invented it, um
  117. they were not things that you could go down to the Home Depot and buy. So there was a manufacturer in Denver that made boilers. Today we call them furnaces,
  118. but big industrial boilers to heat up buildings. And with a little revamping, they made these boilers uh into an into a gas chamber. Lethal gas has been used
  119. to dispense justice to [music] some 600 death row inmates. But being gassed is a horrific experience.
  120. First, the accused is strapped into an austere metal chair. Then a [music] pellet of potassium cyanide is dropped into a bucket of
  121. sulfuric acid. This reaction [music] creates deadly hydrogen cyanide gas. The condemned can stay alive as long as they
  122. can hold their breath, but once they suck in that first taste, the gas eats away at their lungs until suffocation. A hideous way to lose one's life.
  123. Then at the state [music] penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas on December 7th, 1982, Charles Brooks Jr. became the first man
  124. in the US to be executed by lethal injection. 6 years earlier, Brooks took a used car on a test drive with the lot's mechanic,
  125. David Gregory. Brooks then picked up his accomplice, Woody Ludre. The two callous criminals threw Gregory in the trunk and drove him
  126. to a nearby motel where they bound him to a chair with coat hangers and gagged him with tape.
  127. History will never know which killer pulled the trigger, but Gregory was shot once in the face and died instantly. [music]
  128. Police found the used car parked outside the motel and arrested Brooks and Ludre. Though both had been targeted for the death penalty, only Brooks received
  129. [music] the ultimate punishment. On death row, Brooks converted to Islam and even fell in love. But nothing could keep him from being
  130. strapped on a gurnie and rolled into the death chamber. Robert Keller has written over 70 true crime books. He describes what happened
  131. next. >> The execution team will be preparing behind the curtain. The prisoner will be brought in and strapped to the gurnie by
  132. wrists and ankle restraints. A heart monitor will be attached to his chest and he'll then be wheeled into the actual chamber on the gurnie and
  133. positioned in front of the viewing window. The execution team then inserts two intravenous tubes, one into each arm. The tubes actually run from there
  134. through an opening in the wall into another room where the execution awaits. So the neither the spectators nor the prisoner will see the executioner.
  135. Once the tubes are inserted, the executioner flicks a switch and a sale line solution begins to flow into the tubes.
  136. The curtains are then drawn back to allow the witnesses to view the execution. At this time, the condemned is allowed to make a final statement
  137. which is usually recorded and will later normally be released to the media. The warden then gives a signal and the executioner releases the cocktail of
  138. lethal drugs into the IV tubes [snorts] and within 2 minutes after that the prisoner is normally dead.
  139. But lethal injection, like every form of capital punishment, can go horribly wrong. On December 13th, 2006, it took Anhel
  140. Diaz more than 40 minutes to succumb to his injection and two doses to bring him down. It was later discovered that the needle
  141. had passed through his vein and into his arm's soft tissue. On September 15th, 2009, Raml Broom had his own terrifying experience.
  142. Executions via [music] lethal injection can go terribly wrong. So several years ago in Ohio, a man was brought into the execution chamber and they could not
  143. find a vein to start the IV line that was that's necessary to administer the the cocktail of drugs that puts someone to death. Um, and they tried uh for two
  144. hours poking and proddding him in different parts of his body trying to establish uh access to his vein. um and and and they eventually gave up and he
  145. was taken away from the execution chamber, brought back to his cell and is still on death row with new appeals uh as a result of his experience in the
  146. execution chamber. So the the the the historical trajectory of of of execution technology has been to continuously strive to develop a pain-free civilized
  147. form of putting someone to death. Um but we have never been successful at doing that. Right? So 3% of all executions have been botched since 1890 when the
  148. electric chair was developed. Uh but in the last 40 years as uh lethal injection has become the dominant mode of execution in the United States, we we
  149. have an 8% rate of botched execution. So Americans have gotten worse over time at putting people to death even though we've become incre we we we [music] we
  150. continuously insist that we can do it in a way that's painless and humane. In all, lethal injection has been used on more than 1,200 condemned Americans.
  151. Like the so-called evolution of execution technology, so too, there is a progression of the types of crimes punishable by death.
  152. >> [music] >> Today, there is really one crime that sends criminals to death row. Firstderee murder.
  153. But in the early days of the nation's history, murder wasn't the only crime that could send you to your death. In the 1600s, capital punishment could
  154. be dealt for such crimes as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians.
  155. Trivial reasons to meet your fate. In the United States, we've had not only death sentences, but also executions for all sorts of crimes and really all sorts
  156. of crimes up through uh the 20th century. up until about uh 1970. Uh people were sentenced to death and executed not only for murder, but for
  157. rape, for robbery, burglary, uh train uh train robbery, horse theft, uh was a capital crime, perjury in a capital trial, kidnapping, uh which especially
  158. uh a number of laws were passed in the wake of the kidnapped murder of the of the baby of aviator Charles Lindberg in 1931. uh but um just really scores of
  159. capital crimes in the whole history in the United States and really worldwide has been a history of limiting the death penalty.
  160. >> This limiting can be traced back to one man, an Italian criminologist and philosopher Caesar Beria. When the constitution was written in the United
  161. States in the late 1700s, there was an Italian philosopher named Caesar Bicaria who had written a very influential manuscript uh called on crimes and
  162. punishments and it really is the birth of the anti-death penalty movement. Uh Beria argued for restrictions of the most severe types of punishment, not
  163. only the death penalty but also forms of torture. And he also argued that the only time that the punishment should be used is was if uh the person was so
  164. uncontrollable that if the person continued to live that she or he would be a danger to uh to other people. So uh that manuscript influenced the founders
  165. of the constitution and the declaration of independence. It's probably most most visible in the eth amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
  166. Beccaria's humanitarian text got the attention of Dr. Benjamin Rush, an original signer of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the
  167. Pennsylvania Prison Society. >> At the time, most states had mandatory death sentence for all homicides, but Pennsylvania restricted it by
  168. differentiating murder into firstdegree, seconddegree, and manslaughter. And the death penalty was only available for first-degree murder. But there have been
  169. further restrictions uh throughout the century. So that today for homicide at least, which is the only capital [music] offense, it's still less than 1% of all
  170. homicides result in a death sentence. The abolitionist movement gained momentum, and in 1846, Michigan was the first state to do away
  171. with the death penalty. Wisconsin and Rhode Island soon followed suit. However, with the Civil War in full swing, the abolition of slavery took
  172. center stage and interest in repealing the death penalty waned. Today, the death sentence is still legal in 31 states. And the worst capital
  173. offense, state or federal, is still first-degree murder. The most heinous crime imaginable.
  174. Gradually over the years, only the worst of the worst would be sitting in their dark, solitary death row cell.
  175. But though the powers that be had the best of intentions, when it came to the death penalty, disastrous problems lay just beneath the surface. problems with
  176. who was really being sentenced to die. >> During the 20th century in the United States, we saw increasing restriction of executions. Uh the most the year with
  177. the most executions was 1937, 1939. In both those years, we had 199 executions in the United States. Uh however uh there were concerns about how
  178. systematically it was applied. Are we really getting the worst of the worst? Um one example is rape. Between 1930 and 1967 there were 455 people executed for
  179. rape. And 90% of those people, 405 were black men with white victims. So an obvious racial disparity. And overall between 1930 and 1967 there were 3,857
  180. people executed and 54% were black. So there were a number of uh appeals in the 1960s brought because of the obvious racial disparity. Uh black people were
  181. getting executed for uh what would be today would be like a a manslaughter. Uh homicides that like a barroom brawl. uh white people before they were executed
  182. had I killed two or three people. >> Death row inmates and humanitarian organizations alike continued to push for equality in death penalty
  183. sentencing. Finally, in 1972, a landmark case, Ferman v. Georgia, made it all the way to the US Supreme Court. [music]
  184. In the case Ferman versus Georgia, the claim before the court was that the death penalty was being [music] applied in an arbitrary and capriccious manner.
  185. Meaning juries [music] were not given criteria to use to decide who should get death and who should not get death. Rather,
  186. when someone was convicted of a capital crime, for example, murder, [music] it was up to basically the jury to decide life or death. and the jury
  187. wasn't given any legal standards [music] to use to decide life or death. And the death penalty wasn't being used all that much.
  188. And so what the uh death row inmates argued in the case was [music] that the death penalty was being applied arbitrarily and capricciously. We didn't
  189. know why some folks were getting the death penalty and some weren't [music] because there were no legal standards. And to bolster that claim, they show
  190. look very, very few people, even among the pool of murderers and very few are getting the death penalty. [music] There's no explanation why some
  191. of us got it and most of us did not. And [music] in 1971, the Supreme Court actually rejected that claim um rejected that claim under the due
  192. process clause and said, "No, uh the arbitrary and imposition of the death penalty does not violate the constitution." But a year
  193. later, the court changes its mind and held that the eth amendment does ban the arbitrary and capriccious use of the death penalty. [music] And so the court
  194. therefore struck down all death penalty statutes at the time [music] even though it was not taking the death penalty off the table for the states.
  195. >> So it was up [music] to the states to decide if they wanted to keep the death penalty. They had to come up with a way to level the playing field.
  196. Well, if the problem that the court [music] uh found in 1972 was that juries [music]
  197. were given were were unguided discretion. Well, how could [music] states respond?
  198. Well, if the problem was unguided discretion, either states could provide juries guidance, give them standards [music] to use, or
  199. they could take away discretion and make the death penalty mandatory. And both of those avenues were taken by some of [music] the states. So many states like
  200. Georgia decided to let juries decide [music] life or death. But they gave juries standards. Say they uh gave juries
  201. here reasons to give the death penalty. If say for example [music] there was torture involved or the person had killed before or the victim was a child
  202. or a police officer and they gave juries [music] uh reasons to give life uh mitigating circumstances.
  203. Other states [music] like Louisiana and North Carolina decided to take away all discretion uh from the jury [music] and just say if
  204. you were convicted of the highest degree of murder, you get the death penalty. The Supreme Court weighed [music] these two avenues in two important cases in
  205. 1976. Greg v. [music] Georgia and Woodson v. North Carolina. >> The Supreme Court approves
  206. uh systems in which juries are given guidance. So, in other words, uh the court said, "You know what? If juries are given
  207. standards to use, standards that are supposed to pick out the worst of the worst, we're confident that these new statutes will not lead to
  208. arbitrary sentences. Giving jury standards reduces the risk of arbitrary sentences, and therefore, we're going to uphold these schemes."
  209. At the very same day, the court decides Woodson versus North Carolina and holds mandatory death sentences do violate the constitution
  210. uh for a number of reasons. One, a mandatory death sentence doesn't permit the defendant to give reasons why his life should be
  211. spared. A mandatory scheme doesn't treat the defendant as an individual. Uh and there were some other reasons as well. The court was uh skeptical that
  212. mandatory death sentences would actually do away with arbitrariness because of even where there's an uh a mandatory scheme.
  213. We might not juries might decide not to convict somebody of the highest degree of murder knowing that death would be the punishment. they might decide on
  214. their own to maybe uh uh convict the person of a uh less serious crime and we won't know why because we won't know what standards the uh jury used to make
  215. that decision. So the court said mandatory schemes don't get rid of the [music] risk of arbitrary distribution of the death penalty
  216. >> and that begins what we call the modern era of death sentencing in the United States. So since 1976, there have been just over 1,400 people executed. Uh we
  217. no longer find a race of defendant effect in most uh jurisdictions. But it turns out that the race of victim makes a huge difference. Uh given a similar
  218. homicide, you're between three and four times more likely to be executed if you kill a white person than if you kill a black person. So that means that if you
  219. kill a white cop, you're more likely to be uh sentenced to death than if you kill a black cop. If it's a double murder, more likely if they're white
  220. victims and black victims. If it's a rape murder, more likely [music] if the victim is a white woman than a black woman.
  221. >> In the modern era, there are many other complaints about the death penalty. Poor representation can land a one-time killer on death row, while a more
  222. depraved murderer with a good lawyer can get life in prison. The average death row inmate spends 16 years on death row in near isolation
  223. before finally being put to death. Are they the same person when they reach the lethal injection chamber? Have they changed to the point where
  224. they are no longer a threat? In terms of money, trials seeking the death penalty can cost several million
  225. dollars in legal fees for both [music] sides, far more than the cost to keep an inmate alive for the remainder of his [music]
  226. or her life. Finally, for decades, people have thought that the death penalty would
  227. deter potential murderers from perpetrating their monstrous crimes. But researchers are finding that life [music] in prison can be far more of a
  228. deterrent. That killers are more afraid to spend several decades in prison than be put to death. No matter the issues surrounding the
  229. death penalty, America's fascination with death row has never been greater. Indeed, there is still a mystique surrounding the condemned waiting to die
  230. on that last mile. >> [music]
  231. >> The cold cell hidden in the dark, forgotten corners of the prison. A prisoner isolated from the rest of the world,
  232. doomed to a neverending solitary confinement. The ghosts of the damned still seem to haunt these lonely rooms.
  233. What is America's fascination with death row? [bell] Perhaps the need to know what happens in
  234. the life of a death row inmate goes back to the onlookers of executions in America's early years. Indeed, it is a voyeristic interest.
  235. Well, I think our curiosity about death row comes from the fact that uh we have um essentially disappeared uh inmates who are convicted of capital crimes into
  236. these prisons that are many many miles away from the community in which the crime occurred. Uh Americans in general have this fascination, a kind of
  237. voyeristic fascination with what happens in prisons. You can look at everything from [music] prison films to television shows to documentaries um that really
  238. sort of uh promise to take viewers into the prison to give them a real experience of what it's like behind bars. But of course, [music] you know,
  239. folks who study media, uh, have long said that the ways in which, right, documentary films are made, that television shows are shot, um, very much
  240. reflect a very particular viewpoint and are often delivering to viewers what the viewers are expecting to see. So, what we know about life on death row, what we
  241. know about life in supermax facilities is that it's profoundly boring. There's a kind of death row syndrome that a lot of of of scholars have documented where
  242. over time it becomes increasingly difficult for people who are in uh solitary confinement or who live in a a single cell and have very limited human
  243. contact to retain their sanity. Um there's a kind of institutionalization process, a numbing that happens to the self uh as one is is kept in in in
  244. isolation uh on death row. And of course, it's only gotten worse because the time between sentencing and um and and execution has grown in incredibly
  245. long. Gary Job was a prison guard [music] at the infamous Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri.
  246. He knows well what a day in the life of a death row inmate is like. >> When you're on death row, u of course you know you're locked down uh at least
  247. 23 hours a day. They do have to let you out to take a shower, uh, clean up. They do have to let you exercise. So, there there was provisions made where they
  248. could exercise for an hour, uh, you know, of their 24-hour period when he's locked down. Now, another thing they did allow them to do was they would allow
  249. them to do uh work on, in fact, they even had some uh, which we'll see in just a minute when we walk up there, some sales where they would let you go
  250. in there to work on your case. Death row inmates were constantly working on their case. they was always trying to come up with something, some kind of appeal,
  251. something to change the outcome of their death penalty. So, they would give them an opportunity to uh and they'd also give them access to books uh law books,
  252. you know, uh that they could study the law. And in fact, some of these guys were actually almost lawyers when they before they died because they had
  253. studied so much law and wanted to know all their rights and what have you. And so they would actually [music] uh become very well-versed in law before they
  254. actually was executed. Next, Gary Job gave us a tour of the haunting Missouri State Penitentiary.
  255. The first glimpse is of the austere intake building where death row inmates are given their last look at the free world as the iron door slams shut.
  256. After intake, they continue to housing unit 3. As you walk in, a large labyrinth of corridors, staircases, and cells sprawl
  257. out. But prisoners on death row see little of this bright open expanse of the prison.
  258. They are sent straight to the basement. Gary Job explains, "When I come up to this door, of course, this is uh going down into the ADS
  259. segments and the death row units. And so I'd have to bang on the door and get the guard's attention, and I'd have to tell him my name and say what my business is
  260. down in in death row or in ADS seg." So [music] I he would pop this door here, and then I would walk down inside. You'll notice that there's a it's
  261. actually a double a hallway that's separated by by bars. Now, the actual the actual cells here on the left was the actual death row cells. And you can
  262. walk inside here. And of course, when they when they would bring their food to them or whatever the case might be, they would actually uh go on the inside. And
  263. if you'll notice, it's a double security here. Not only is this very secure here, but we also have another cage out here where if there was any way that they
  264. might overpower a guard when they uh if they open the door, then they was not out in the in the outside. They were still locked in this cage cuz that door
  265. would still be locked and they would be actually contained in this area here. as as a death row inmate, of course, uh you were locked nationally you was locked
  266. down uh for 23 hours a day and unless you was doing or unless you was working on your law case and then of course they didn't have to let them go out in
  267. population, take showers because they had the shower area right here. So all they'd have to do was take them out of their cell there. Then then they'd let
  268. them out of this cage. These doors would be closed as well. And so there's still another cage here. So all they would actually leave is from their cell into a
  269. big cage into a smaller cage into a shower area. So they actually could take their showers without ever leaving the area. They'd take their showers right in
  270. this area here. Uh I know uh at one time when we actually when we moved them to Ptosim, we had a total of 70 inmates on death row at that time. Now, there was
  271. times um back before we moved them that uh the the numbers approached uh uh 90 or 100 100 people on death row at one time. [music]
  272. >> The Missouri State Penitentiary, also known as the Walls, opened its cells in March of 1836, making it the oldest functioning
  273. penitentiary west of the Mississippi. [music] At one time, the Missouri State Pen was the largest prison in the country,
  274. housing 5,200 inmates. In 180 years, 40 inmates would walk [music] this lonesome, friendless
  275. corridor, walk their last mile to the gas chamber and death. [music] Next, Gary leads us through this ill- fated last mile. Of course, uh, all
  276. executions are at at 12:01 midnight. So, it's about 11:00 at night, and we're going to take this this inmate here who is on death row. Uh, tonight is the
  277. night that he'll be executed at 12:01 midnight. And so, we'll take him from his cell here, and we're going to take him out this door here.
  278. Okay. We bring the inmate through here. Now, these doors would be unlocked by the they would be electrically unlocked by the the officer in the uh cubicle
  279. here in this cage here. And he would actually then these doors would be locked down. Now, we'd have about four or five officers escorting the the man
  280. on death row, the inmate on death row. And so, we'd be escorting to go up the steps. Now, the officer in the this cage area would actually have to pop this
  281. door here so we could open this door and take him up these steps. And we would walk up through here. Of course, this door would have to that
  282. door back there would be locked. This door would have to be popped. Would have to be unlocked by the officer by the officer in the in the cage. And then we
  283. could come out this door. Okay. This is the door we'd bring the inmate out of and we'd we'd escort him down the steps and we'd have a a vehicle
  284. waiting here with the warden in the in the car cuz he's the one that's going to be doing execution. We would actually place the inmate in the back seat and we
  285. would have he would have leg arms on. He'd have handcuffs and we would actually help him into the car [music] and we would secure him in the car and
  286. then we would shut the door and then we would drive down to the gas chamber. Next, the condemned would drive through the gate that leads to [music] the
  287. dreaded gas chamber. It sits in a small, unassuming building, a building you would never know was the site of countless executions. And then we would
  288. open the [music] gate up and he would actually walk right down this path here. He would start, we would escort him down this path right here. [music] And we
  289. would walk uh this was known as the final walk on [music] death row. And so he would walk right at be escorted down this walkway. [snorts]
  290. And then there was a symbolic cross [music] here that that would make uh make inmates think about what they had done and what [music] they were facing.
  291. And so they would have to actually step across or over the cross as we take them down to the to the actual chamber. We'd have to open the outside door up
  292. and then there's an inner door that's also locked [music] too. And then we bring them in here. And there's actually a holding cell here. And we would place
  293. the inmate in this [music] this holding cell for 1 hour prior to the actual execution. [music] And then the execution would occur at 12:01,
  294. 1 minute after midnight. And you might note that on the wall over here, of course, this is a phone that the inmates always wanted to hear ring because this
  295. is the actual phone that if they would get a a stay of execution, they would call on this phone. The governor would call them on this phone to say, [music]
  296. "Hold up. We've got new evidence." Whatever the case might be, do not perform the execution. So, uh, that phone ringing would be a a very pleasant
  297. sound to the inmate here in this cell, waiting to be executed in in less than an hour. Now, the hour of their death is at hand.
  298. [music] The inmate is escorted to the ominous chamber itself.
  299. A terrifying [music] tomb for all who entered, entered and never came out alive.
  300. Uh now you'll notice there's two chairs in here and the reason for that is because the very first execution it was a double execution and so they set it up
  301. for two inmates but in most cases it was just actually a single execution. The inmate would be escorted in here. He'd be placed in the chair and he would
  302. actually be uh he would actually be strapped in. They actually strapped the strapped him to the chair, strapped his legs, and they would blindfold him and
  303. and he would be sitting here waiting till they uh decided to pull the red lever on the outside of the of the gas chamber. This uh chamber we're sitting
  304. in, by the way, is out of a World War I submarine. They had to have something that was airtight so that they could keep contain the gases in here because
  305. there was a now that's it's no longer hooked up. But when it was hooked up, there was actually a mechanical mechanism that would drop the cyanide
  306. peel into one of these these big vats, a big heavy vat on the floor here and it would set underneath the chair and it would actually drop the cyanide peel.
  307. When he pulled the red lever on the outside of the gas chamber here, they would pull that lever. It would drop the cyanide peel down into the acid that
  308. would form a gas substance and then the the vent up above would be shut off and it would fill this chamber with gas. Now the they would knock on this this window
  309. right here when it was ready to drop the pill. And when the when the so the inmate would know they're ready to drop the pill cuz he'd be blindfolded so he
  310. couldn't see what was going on. And so he would sit there when they would knock on the window when they'd peck on that window and he could take a big deep
  311. breath of air. As long as he could as long as he could hold his breath, he could live. But as soon you can only hold your breath for so long and
  312. eventually you're going to have to take a big deep breath of air in. And when you do that, you're going to you're going to take all that into your lungs
  313. and it would be a uh it'll start eating your lungs up. So it it wasn't a very pleasant death. The death penalty in the gas chamber was not very pleasant. The
  314. other option was if he wanted to get this over faster, he could start breathing quickly and just get it over with. And so that was the kind of the
  315. inmate's choice what he wanted to do. A truly ghastly end for a ghastly crime. With any luck, their execution has brought some solace to the loved ones of
  316. the victim. But the long wait was finally [music] over. And in the end, the killer paid
  317. for their offense with the ultimate price, their life. In the US today, [music] on average, more than 3,000 inmates sit on death
  318. row, and around 30 each year will actually [music] be put to death.
  319. But ironically, most of the condemned will never walk into the execution chamber.
  320. Some inmates have inhabited these cells in a kind of solitary confinement for more than 20 years.
  321. Their existence defined by the four walls surrounding them. A punishment many would say is worse than death.

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