The Alabama Murders - Part 4: The Protocol

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Pushkin

Previously on revisionist history.

People had an idea of what had happened.

When a person gets something in their mind,

you know,

it's kind of hard to change.

Can't remember how soon they figured out that,

you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that, but it was, you know, it was pretty obvious, pretty quick.

Senate does it.

The timing makes a lot more sense.

He shows up after they've left.

Stabs, calls.

Stabs and calls.

I mean, there's no sense in even having a jury

if you're going to be able to overturn the jury, if a judge can overturn the jury.

I don't know how much Tom Heflin explained to you, but

he just told me you were okay to talk to.

Oh, that's very kind.

And we're just, we're very,

John Parker is very, very dear to me and I'm just very protective.

I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt he or his family.

Yeah.

But other than that, I'm willing to talk.

This is Tom Perry Jr., big guy, beard, from Demopolis, Alabama, who on the third Saturday of every month, for years and years, would spend a day on death row in Donaldson Prison just outside Birmingham.

I called him up because John Forrest, Parker's lawyer, told me, if you want to understand something more about Parker, talk to Tom Perry.

I want to tell you something, Malcolm.

Then I don't mean to take over your interview now, but I'm no really do-gooder.

I'm just an old guy that's falling short every day.

I just happened, the Lord uses me in the penitentiary setting because of my

shortcomings, if that makes sense.

Now, you're, I can't resist.

Almost everyone I've been talking to for this story so far is Church of Christ.

I am not.

And you're Methodist.

I don't understand why you're not Church of Christ.

What's going on?

I don't know.

I'm just,

maybe

I like the cocktail too much for the Church of Christ.

I don't like that.

In this episode, I'm going to tell you about what happened to John Forrest Parker after he was sentenced to death.

and give you a meditation on a phrase from the Jesuit priest James Keenan that I have come back to many times.

Sin is the failure to bother to care.

This is the story of someone who bothered to care and someone else who couldn't be bothered at all.

My name is Malcolm Globwell.

This is the Alabama Murders, Episode 4, The Protocol.

In the time that you were doing ministry at Donaldson, how many men that you were working with got executed?

I believe

I've been with 13,

maybe, maybe 12.

Yeah.

Perry got involved working with people on death row through a mentor of his, Ben Sherrot.

Like when I first went back, big Ben Sherritt says, now look.

If you come back here and you start coming and these guys ask you to go all the way with them, you got to be willing to go.

And if you're not, I understand, but don't come back here.

And I said, what's all the way?

And he said, well, you know, be at their executions, if they have living family, they don't necessarily want their family to watch them die or to be their only member, but we need somebody there that loves them.

And if they ask you to be with them, you need, you can't, you need to be willing to go.

And if you're not, just don't come.

And at the time, we hadn't had an execution in Alabama in a very long time.

And I said, sure, well, you know, I didn't know what I was getting into, but I mean,

and like

when I say at 12 or 13, Malcolm, 10 or 11 of them, I was praying with their families at the time they died.

What?

That's a hard thing to go through.

Lose

13 men?

You.

Like,

I want to tell you the honest goodness truth.

I don't want to, we jokingly call it, you know, stupid Christians, but

my one little witness I'll give you is he gives you the power.

Now, when it's over,

I usually have need somebody to drive me home.

But up until then,

you just have the strength to do it.

But it's so hard you wouldn't believe, and it affects you.

John Forrest Parker was one of those 13, and maybe the one closest to his heart.

And,

man, I love John Parker.

I sure do miss him.

That's the only reservations I have about doing this is, you know, 15 years, it kind of makes me miss him a little more.

The jury in John Parker's trial voted 10 to 2 for life without parole.

But under Alabama law at the time, A judge was allowed to override a jury's recommendation, and this is what the judge, Inga Johnson, did.

Johnson sentenced Parker to death in 1989.

He was remanded to Donaldson Prison and placed on death row, 24 cells in two blocks of 12.

And there, Perry began to visit him, making the two-hour drive from Demopolis to Donaldson.

Perry would go with his friend Ben Sherrod.

A handful of others would join them.

When Perry first met Parker, Parker wouldn't come out of his cell.

Sometimes we would take food.

And if we took food, John John would come out to eat.

You know, we had really good food.

But then his first chance, he'd go back to his cell.

But if we didn't have food, John didn't come out.

Well, of course, we learned as I developed my relationship with him.

You know, Reverend Sennett is who hired them.

So he just, when you said religion and preachers, and

he wanted nothing to do with it.

Because, you know, he still equated that with Reverend Sennett.

Then Perry met Parker's mother.

He told her that her son wouldn't wouldn't leave his cell.

She said, he doesn't come out.

I said, no, ma'am.

She said, next month, we went every month.

She said, you tell him his mama said he better come out.

So I went and told him, and he said, I'll be there.

And he never missed.

The next month, he never missed.

And he and I became very, very good friends.

And he confided a lot in me.

So.

What was he like?

Now, you understand, Malcolm, I do believe that the good Lord changes people.

John was very intelligent,

very well-read,

heck of a nice guy,

just a wonderful person.

He's just the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with.

He told me, he said, you know, since I've come in here, I've learned to read better and write better and do things better.

In prison, he was sober and off drugs for the first time since he was 12.

Spoke very

openly with me about his crime.

And I mean, I remember one thing he said.

And

he was adamant

with me.

This was very difficult for John because he knew they were going to give him last words at his execution.

And he said,

you know, I didn't kill Ms.

Dennett.

I said, yeah, I know that.

He said, but I was involved.

And that's a horrible thing I was involved in.

And he said, I've been in prison probably not long enough.

But he said, but I didn't kill her.

And he said, we snapped out of it.

You know, they told us that, you know, Reverend Sennett came home and killed her.

I don't know.

Are you aware of that?

And he

and he said,

well, I mean, he said, I remember hitting her.

And it was like a light bulb went off.

Like, what in the hell are you doing?

And he he said, but that was horrible.

And

I'm not sure I've been in prison long enough.

Yeah.

And you said,

was your, were you,

was the, was the ministry part of your visiting explicit?

Or

how much of this, were you trying to bring the message of Jesus to these men?

Or

it was, that was, that was absolutely central.

But you got to understand, I realized quickly

that our ministry,

more important than any words,

was a ministry of presence.

The fact that you showed up every time that prison would let you, on the third Saturday, we'd go and they'd let us stay two or three hours.

But on twice a year, we would stay for three.

We'd go in on a Thursday evening.

Well, go in on Friday morning.

stay all day

and then go in Saturday, stay all day, and go on sundays that's called a three-day weekend

and we would do that twice a year tom you

this is a commitment it was a tremendous commitment but i talked to my wife about it i had young children at the time

and my wife says you know look i have to say it makes you a better person a better dad a better husband so go for it

Their visits went on for 23 years as Parker's appeals wound their way through the legal system.

Finally, his execution date was set.

6 p.m., June 10th, 2010.

Parker was moved to Holman Prison in Atmore in the far south of the state near Mobile.

That's where the state's execution chamber is.

He was put in a special holding cell in the days leading up to his execution.

He filed two last appeals in his final week.

to the Alabama Supreme Court and then the U.S.

Supreme Court.

Both failed.

On his last day, he skipped breakfast but chose a dinner of fried fish, French fries, and iced tea.

He gave his mother his gold watch, a mirror, seven stamps, and a box of pictures.

He gave his two nephews his belt and his wallet.

He died by lethal injection at 6.41 p.m.

Tom Perry.

was there with him.

And then, you know, he was finally gone.

But then

after that, I have to get back on that van and I go back to the hotel where the other people

had been in there praying with his family.

And I have to go in and tell them, you know, John's gone.

It was peaceful.

He didn't appear to suffer.

He didn't appear to suffer.

We'll be right back.

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To understand the particulars of John Parker's execution, you have to go back to 1977 in Oklahoma City.

In the mid-70s, the Supreme Court had just lifted a long moratorium on capital punishment.

The court had been concerned that existing methods, like the electric chair, violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Watching someone die on the electric chair was like watching a horror movie.

Public scrutiny was high.

The court said that states could only bring back the death penalty if they found a more socially acceptable and legally rigorous way of applying it.

So at that point,

There were several things going on.

First of all, there were journalists who were threatening to litigate so that they could see the next execution.

And Oklahoma and other states such as Texas were very concerned about that.

They thought these executions would be videotaped and displayed to the world.

This is Deborah Denno, who teaches law at Fordham University in New York City and is one of the country's leading legal experts on capital punishment.

Number two, Ronald Reagan, then Governor Ronald Reagan a few years earlier, had sort of made a pronouncement of why don't we just execute inmates the way we put horses down.

In case you're wondering, this is what Reagan said.

Being a former farmer and horse raiser, I know what it's like to try to eliminate an injured horse by shooting him.

Now you call the veterinarian and the vet gives it a shot and the horse goes to sleep.

That's it.

You know, I think there was a pressure to have a method that looked more humane than electrocution and lethal gas.

Those were the pressures

that was on the state.

So from the beginning, you know,

these are states terrified of journalists being able to videotape what's happening.

So their concern is really with what this looks like to the world.

That's right.

The perception.

The perception of it.

Yes, absolutely.

So, Oklahoma City, 1977.

A state senator named Bill Wiseman takes up the court's challenge.

He wants to find a way to make make capital punishment more humane.

And one day he gets a call from the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner, A.J.

Chapman, who has heard about Wiseman's crusade and has an idea.

He gives Wiseman a rough outline for what would come to be known as lethal injection.

Two drugs in sequence.

First a sedative, like a barbituate, to put the prisoner to sleep.

then a paralytic, something to immobilize them.

Later, Chapman added a third drug, potassium chloride, which is the main ingredient in chemical fertilizer and which in elevated doses causes hyperkalemia, which is like flipping the power switch on your heart.

Wiseman took Chapman's idea and put it before the Oklahoma State Legislature.

It passed by an overwhelming margin.

I am reading now from an editorial in the Vista, the student newspaper at Central State University in Oklahoma.

Lethal injection is not only less traumatic on the prisoner, but it would also be easier on witnesses, for they would not have to endure the grisly sight of roasting flesh, bulging eyeballs, or squirting blood.

But Chapman's protocol was never tested.

I mean, how could you test it?

You're trying to kill someone.

Everyone you would experiment on would die.

As a result, no one really knew how it worked.

In his memoirs published years years later, Chapman argued that knowing the precise method of action didn't matter since, quote, the properties of the drugs were extremely well known.

The three-drug combination was just a variation on a protocol that was being used for anesthesia every day in hospitals all around the world.

But of course, that isn't quite true, is it?

It's not the same procedure that's used for medical anesthesia.

Because the intention of medical anesthesia is to keep the patient alive, and the intention of lethal injection is to give those same drugs in doses so large that the patient dies.

That's actually totally different.

Did Chapman, how much thought did he put into this

three-drug protocol?

You know, I mean, that's a question for him.

I do know that they came up with this in the course of an afternoon.

We reached out to Chapman for an interview, but he declined to talk to us.

The Oklahoma Protocol would become the method of choice in 30 other American states.

It's even, with a minor variation, what countries like Canada use today for euthanasia.

But how exactly does it work?

I know this seems like a pedantic point, but it is the settled position of the United States, in fact, of most of the world, that a mark of a civilized society is that its punishment is humane.

You can't torture people.

Even if you've decided to kill a prisoner, you have to do it the right way.

So, once again, how does lethal injection kill people?

So I was given a stack of autopsies of prisoners executed here in the state of Georgia.

Joel Zivet, an anesthesiologist at Emory University.

In Georgia, there's an automatic autopsy that's performed on these prisoners.

Interestingly, by the way, the cause of death that's written on the death certificate is homicide.

Because he's an anesthesiologist and lethal injection is basically the homicidal version of anesthesiology, Zivet was approached by a group of lawyers who had a client on death row.

They had a technical question.

Could he tell from looking at the blood work of executed prisoners whether they were conscious at the point of death?

The operating assumption behind lethal injection was that they were unconscious, that they would be fully anesthetized when the potassium chloride hit their heart.

But did we know that for a fact?

So I just read the autopsy, read the first autopsy and kind of was going through it and saw this

finding that was surprising, which was that in this first one that I read, that the lungs were what's called heavy.

This had nothing to do with the question he'd been asked to answer.

It was completely unexpected.

As part of an autopsy, the lungs are removed from the body and just plopped on a scale.

And all these lungs were heavy.

Why were they heavy?

They were heavy because they were full of bloody, frothy fluid.

And this bloody, frothy fluid could not have gotten into the lungs after death.

If you're dead, your heart has stopped working, so there's no way for fluid to get pumped into your lungs.

It had to have happened while the prisoner was still alive.

And what was assumed, I think, by me and others, I hadn't really thought about it, was that the body would be essentially pristine.

You know, there wouldn't be this kind of destruction of organs within the body.

But when I went through the whole list, almost 80% of the time, so eight out of 10 times, there was this finding of this frothy, bloody fluid.

So you could cut into the windpipe and the fluid would be just frothing right in there without being, pardon me, too graphic.

So the question then was, how did it get in there?

I conferred with a pathologist colleague of mine.

We kind of puzzled over this for a while.

And it occurred to us that, you know, what we think, what I think, is that it's actually the way that pentabarbitol is prepared.

Pentabarbitol is the first of the drugs used in the fatal injection protocol.

It's the sedative, and it has a high pH.

This is sort of basic chemistry.

The pH scale goes from 1 to 14.

7 is neutral.

The other thing important to know about the pH scale is that it's a log scale.

So it means that every time you move one number, you're going up by a factor of 10.

You know, for reference, the Richter scale of earthquakes is also a log scale.

That's why an earthquake of 4.5, you know, you kind of, you know, will maybe shuffle the ground underneath you, but an earthquake of eight and a half will split the world in half.

So it's a huge, powerful difference.

The body's normal pH is between 7.35 and 7.45.

If you drop below 7 or rise above 8, you'll probably die.

The pH of pentabarbitol is between 9 and 11.

Now, when pentabarbitol is used in ordinary medicine, this fact doesn't matter that much.

The dose is pretty small, it burns a little, but the body compensates.

But now, imagine giving 10 times that quantity and pushing it into a small vein.

It travels rapidly to the heart, where the heart pumps it immediately into the lungs, and it tears the lungs apart, basically.

They get burned from the inside, and then the separation of air and blood, there's a very fine layer of tissue there that gets destroyed, and the blood just pours into the lungs.

And I'm sorry as I'm saying this.

It's awful.

And

this is how lethal injection actually kills you.

It kills you by burning your lungs up.

And

you're also paralyzed, so you can't complain that this is happening.

And then to finish you off, of course, you know, you're probably begging for the potassium at that point because that finally stops your

and stops this process.

But in the meantime, you know, this has been gone on for a few minutes.

So the last thing that, you know, you may know is that you're on fire from the inside and the blood is filling up your lungs as you die.

Is this too graphic?

Of course it is.

But that's the point.

Because the reason lethal injections started in the first place was that even the proponents of the death penalty were eager to find a method that was humane, that didn't involve fixing metal plates to someone's head and frying their brains with a jolt of electricity.

And Zivet's point is that this is not actually more humane.

It just looks that way.

Death penalty advocates were trying to satisfy the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, but their innovation only spared the suffering of the witnesses to an execution, not the subject of the execution.

The whole thing was an illusion.

But even that's not the issue.

The real issue is that the lethal injection protocol was dreamt up on the back of an envelope.

And until Joel Zivet came along, by accident, 50 years later, none of the people who championed lethal injection could get around to wondering just how their preferred method worked.

And it's not like the evidence wasn't available.

In many states, there's an autopsy on everyone who's executed.

The autopsies were just sitting there in a drawer somewhere, hundreds of them.

And in almost every case, they were characterized by the same inexplicable finding.

Here's what I don't understand.

Nobody noticed this till you?

Apparently not.

Isn't that astonishing?

Astonishing.

Well, I don't know.

I made a guess though.

You know, I guess it's astonishing, but

you have to be curious, I suppose, or care, or

I mean, what's astonishing to me is the fact that it was noticed every time by pathologists.

No one said anything.

It's not like a pathologist said, wow, look at this finding and brought it to the, that I'm aware of.

Like, when I first had the, in my job as an anesthesiologist intensivist, I look at autopsies, but I don't, you know, it's not, I don't make a living at autopsies.

So to be sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, I sent it to my colleague of mine, Mark Edgar, who's a pathologist.

And I said, Look, I've got this list.

I'm not telling you what this is.

Okay.

Just tell me what you see.

You know, what do you see?

And he came back and said, well, all these, you know, there's all these heavy lungs, like there's all this pulmonary edema.

Like, what is that?

Like, he saw it immediately without prompture.

Like, belief is evidence-free, right?

So the people who believe this,

you know, were immune to evidence or immune to, you know, I don't know, an impartial appraisal.

So, and I was surprised.

I was.

I just didn't think of it.

You know, it's like the failure of imagination where you just couldn't imagine it.

But now that it's been seen, of course, you can't unsee it.

Zivet wrote an academic article describing his findings, thinking he had to share what he'd found with the world.

I've had trouble getting this published.

So it's now available as something called a preprint.

So it's easy to find as a preprint.

And it goes over this.

I certainly...

Why have you had trouble getting it published?

Because people don't want to publish it.

It's like it's something that I can't place.

it's so, I don't know, grisly, unusual, that to put it in the medical journal, you know, it just can't seem to find the journal for it.

We are now at the second stage of the failure cascade.

Indifference.

We'll be right back.

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Let us tell the story of John Parker's execution a second time.

Tom Perry was there, remember?

He pledged that he was willing to go all the way.

Execution day,

you know, we started, we went in early that.

I think John was executed around six.

But we go in

and it's just a good day it john's family was close to us we tell the family anytime you need a minute and you don't want us here it's probably about five or six of us i think they limit the room to 15 people on the vistic we call it the visting yard but it's just a little room in fact my christian community air conditioned and put in new chairs because it was so uncomfortable.

It was these big metal

picnic tables with these little round metal benches that were just tortured.

We bought some chairs and tables and put air conditioning in, you know, so the inmates can have some comfort when they visit.

But we just visit.

We sing a little, but then they say we're getting too loud, so we have to quit singing.

But we just talk and visit and get to know some of John's family that we had not met before.

So

John and anybody else can have a soft drink, anything they want.

One thing I will tell you that I think goes unsaid,

the death squad, the officers that perform it

at Atmore, they do everything in their power to make it as dignified.

Anything they could do for John and any of the 12 or 13 I've been with within reason, they would do to make that last day as good as they could for the inmate.

They don't get enough credit for that.

I mean, there's certain rules they can't break, but anything they they can do within reason, they do it.

But anyway, so we go,

and then you can tell when the clock starts getting, and we'll have, you know,

usually they'll

do some serious praying, and then we call it circle up.

That's something we would do on our weekends before we leave.

We make a big circle and we pray out.

Are you familiar with the song, Surely the Presence?

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.

I can feel his mighty power and his grace.

You know, I can hear the brush of angels' wings.

I see glory on each face.

Surely the presence of the Lord.

They sang that a couple times.

They gathered for a prayer.

Then they made their way to the execution chamber.

We're over here.

And the Senate family's over there.

John's in the middle and there's glass.

And I can see them, but I can't hear them.

And they can see me.

And John's in the middle.

And,

you know, and then he looks up at me and, you know, and he says, you know, I love you, brother.

And

I thank you for everything you did for me.

And,

you know, take care of my mom and dad.

And I promised him I would continue to communicate and follow up with him.

And

then he says with the Senate family, I'm sorry I got involved in this situation.

A hundred times I wish I could have taken it back.

I was strung out, I was young, and I was stupid.

And I hope that, you know, what happens today can give you, you know, some peace.

And then

when they started, you know, it was a lethal injection and he rolled his hand.

That's sort of a symbol.

We get to hang with him, but when we split up, they won't let any more physical contact when we leave.

And as we go, you know, that was our, that was our deal.

It means I love you.

So that was our sign in Kairos, you know, I love you, brother.

And he rolled his hands up on there and did that.

And then, you know, I watched his

bottom jaw.

I remember just seeing it start quivering.

And, you know, it takes a lot longer than you think.

Yes, it does take a lot longer than you'd think.

First, 100 milliliters of a sedative.

After the sedative, Alabama's regulations require that, quote, the team member positioned at the condemned inmate's left side will assess the consciousness of the condemned inmate by applying graded stimulation as follows.

The team member will begin by saying the condemned inmate's name.

If there's no response, the team member will gently stroke the condemned inmate's eyelashes.

If there is again no response, the team member will then pinch the condemned inmate's arm.

John Parker, John Parker, stroke, stroke, pinch, pinch.

Then comes 60 milliliters of Rochoronium bromide.

That's the muscle relaxant.

Then 120 milliliters of potassium chloride.

That's supposed to stop the heart.

Remember what Tom Perry said?

It was peaceful.

He didn't appear to suffer.

Well, yes and no.

He didn't appear to suffer.

That's because he was strapped down to a gurney and sedated.

and given a paralytic, so he couldn't struggle or cry out even if he wanted to.

But of of course, he suffered.

His lungs were burning up from the inside, and he had a long, extended moment of absolutely excruciating pain.

Of course, his parents break down and they hug me, and then I walk out, and then I basically,

I have a very good friend.

He kind of takes me and takes care of me because I break down after I talk to the family.

But did that kind of describe it for you?

It's a hard, hard day

in many ways it's a joyous day up until

because you just you see it's goodness everywhere up until as far as john was concerned

you ever seen a picture of john no i haven't hold on i've got it it's funny i keep this in my office right by my license you keep that that that memorial

right here and and i've got next to your license yeah

actually in the frame I stick it in the frame and I keep it here so

well this is this is uh

you can see me a much younger version yeah I think it was June of 2010 this is John's father Petey Parker yeah his mother Joan Parker that's his brother Bert and John in the middle And that was the day of his execution.

The institution took the pictures for us.

That means a lot they don't give them three or four pictures and the entire family wanted me and their family photograph i mean that that's why i cherish this

now malcolm i'm trusting you because i don't want anything to degrade or insult john's memory so please don't do that i will not john um

uh Tom Heflin told me you were okay, or I wouldn't have spoken to you because I would be heartbroken if something defamatory about John.

No, no, no, no, don't.

Please don't do that.

Yeah, don't, don't be.

You should have no concern.

Yeah.

And I'm trusting you now, Malcolm, not to do that to John and his memory.

Tom Perry was the one who bothered to care.

If you're wondering why people get so upset about the death penalty, it's this.

It's that the people who are in favor of it like to believe that it represents some great symbolic manifestation of society's judgment.

But in fact, their method of choice is something that some guy dreamt up in an afternoon and no one ever got around to checking.

Symbolic manifestations of society's judgment should not be dreamt up on the back of an envelope.

And if you're wondering why we're spending so much time on this, it's because the story of the long denouement of of the elizabeth senate case is about to get worse

much worse

next time on revisionist history thank you just got home from work and

he came and he said well mom can you come he said the police are here

then i went to atmore which is where holman is visited with Kenny that morning.

We were still waiting for the 11th Circuit's decision.

What is taught either in nursing school or as an EMT or as a doctor cannot be lifted into the death chamber?

Like it's not the same place.

These people are not patients, you know, they're not collaborators to you.

There's been a great deal of media coverage, both local and national,

about what happened in Kenny Smith's execution chamber.

Much of that coverage has seemingly been openly sympathetic to Smith and his cause, even with some going so far as to advocate for the abolishment of the death penalty.

Revisionist History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Ben Nadaf Haffrey, and Nina Bird Lawrence.

Additional reporting by Ben Nadaf Haffrey and Lee Hedgepeth.

Our editor is Karen Shikurji.

Fact-checking by Kate Furby.

Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.

Production support from Luke Lamond.

Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence.

Original scoring by Luis Guerra with Paul Brainard and Jimmy Bott.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Korski.

I'm Malcolm Gladwin.

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