The Alabama Murders - Part 5: Cruel and Unusual

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Pushkin.

previously on revisionist history.

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

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.

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.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for being here.

I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday.

If I haven't seen you since then, I'm calling this press conference today because I believe the people of Alabama deserve an explanation on where things stand and where I stand with regard to capital punishment in our state.

It's early December 2022, Montgomery, Alabama.

Steve Marshall, the state's Attorney General, is holding a press conference standing at the podium, flanked by the Alabama and American flags.

What occurred on November 17th was a travesty,

but not for the reasons that many death penalty opponents and death row sympathizers would have the public to believe.

My name is Malcolm Globwell.

You're listening to the Alabama Murders, our series on the Elizabeth Senek case.

This is episode five, Cruel and Unusual.

It's about the second of her assailants, Kenny Smith, and what was done to him in the name of justice.

The travesty of November 17th.

Kenny Smith was 22 at the time of Elizabeth Sennett's murder.

He had a girlfriend and two young children.

He was working in a factory.

He was slight, skinny, dark hair, thick, moon-shaped eyebrows.

He was drunk a lot and high, but always smiling.

They would come over to my house a lot and Kenny would just be grinning because Michael would be sitting in the back seat, in his car seat and

but Kenny would be high and you know he would be drinking

this is Linda Smith Kenny's mom talking with a local reporter named Lee Hedgepeth Lee has covered the Kenny Smith case and knows his family well what kind of drunk was Kenny

he was a happy drunk yeah It's hard to

think of Kenny as anything happy.

He's unlucky all the time.

Yeah.

I mean, what you've seen is what you get with him.

On the evening after the attack on Elizabeth Sennet, Smith's best friend came over to his house.

They went out to get beer.

Kenny's hand was swollen.

He had it wrapped in a bandage.

On the way to the store, Kenny kept saying, I messed up, I messed up.

He wouldn't say why.

Then, back at home, he started crying.

His mother lived close by.

In the days that followed, before the police caught up to him, he went to see her.

And Kenny, you know, like I said, he would come over

during that time.

I mean, I look back on the times that he would come over and

he would be kind of distant, you know.

And he would just,

I mean, it's just like it was something he wanted to tell me, but,

you know, he never did.

So when do you find out that he's implicated in some way?

Well, I found out one afternoon when he calls me.

I think he just got home from work and

he called me and he said

mom can you come pick up Michael and I said well I'm washing my hair right now I said I can't ride this minute

and he said

well mom can you come he said the police are here

And I just thought it was, you know, for pot or drugs or something like that.

And I said, well, you know, I'll be over there, you know, in just a minute.

Of course, it didn't take me long to get to their house.

And when I drove up over there in that driveway, I bet you there was 10 cars out in front.

Kenny Smith met the same fate as his friend John Parker, who you heard about in the last episode.

Smith was charged with murder, convicted.

sentenced by the jury to life without parole by a vote of 11 to 1.

And then his judge did the same thing John Parker's judge did, overrode the jury's decision and sentenced him to death.

He got sent to Holman prison and stayed there for decades, appealing his sentence, delaying the inevitable until November 17th, 2022, when the event that the Attorney General of the state of Alabama called a travesty happened.

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.

And on what basis exactly?

Because a cold-blooded convicted killer complains about the prodding and poking of a small IV line.

Really?

Podding and poking with a needle?

Prodding and poking with a needle.

Let's start there.

The state of Alabama has a detailed set of instructions for how executions are to be carried out in their prisons.

A protocol.

The protocol was not supposed to be a public document, but Alabama was forced to disclose it during a death penalty court case.

It's 41 pages of dry, precise language, stipulating every step of the process.

When a condemned prisoner is supposed to be moved to a special holding cell, when he gets his last meal, what he gets to have in his cell, the people who are allowed to attend the execution, where the victim's family goes, where the offender's group goes, things like that.

The execution team is made up of about a dozen people.

It has a captain.

The team is supposed to do a walkthrough in the week leading up to the execution, batting practice, if you will, to make sure they have the killing procedure down pat.

As you may remember from the last episode, the seed of the idea behind lethal injection came from Ronald Reagan, who said, Why don't we just execute people the same way we put down horses?

To use the veterinarian's euphemism, put them to sleep.

Clean, quick, professional.

Something that appears painless instead of all the messiness of the electric chair.

That's very much the spirit of the Alabama Protocol.

What was so, I think,

effective about lethal injection and sinister is the fact that when you observe an execution with lethal injection generally, it's a pretty bloodless event.

Not much happens.

It appears that a person kind of closes their eyes.

Maybe you could imagine that they fall asleep and then they're dead.

Joel Zivitt, the intensive care specialist from Emory University in Atlanta, who fell into death penalty work a few years ago.

So this was a breakthrough in terms of the witness experience, because every other kind of execution method that had ever occurred before then, you know, was quite a lot more graphic.

But lethal injection seemed to, you know, solve the problem of being outwardly peaceful.

And that's why I think lethal injection took hold.

And on top of that, of course, there was this kind of impersonation of a medical act.

There was the use of terminology of medicine and even the use of physicians and other medical people, which gave this kind of extra impression, you know, that this was legitimate and endorsed kind of activity.

Which brings us to the portion of the protocol at issue on the evening of November 17th, 2022.

It's in Section B, Part 1.

Clause A.

Quote, the IV team will be escorted into the execution chamber to start the IV.

The heart monitor leads will be applied to the condemned inmate.

If the condemned inmate's veins make obtaining venous access difficult or problematic, qualified medical personnel may perform a central line procedure as set forth in Section 2 of Appendix B.

ADOC Lethal Injection Execution Procedure.

A central line procedure involves inserting a long, thin, flexible tube into a large vein, like the jugular vein in the neck, or the subclavian vein in the chest, or the femoral vein in the thigh.

So you try for the arm the normal way, and if you fail, you go for a big vein.

That's the plan.

Only in real life, things aren't always so straightforward as outlined in Section B, Part 1, Clause A.

In the case of Kenny Smith and in other cases, there have been these initial problems in finding a vein.

Yeah, I want to talk about this with you.

Can you talk about this?

Because

as a, a non-medical person, I'm, I'm puzzled.

I don't understand this.

Sure.

Yeah.

So yeah, walk me through why, why is that hard?

Alabama, you know, was the poster child of failure for this in a, in an odd kind of cluster of cases.

And, and to answer your question directly, why is it hard?

Well, it's hard because in order to put an intravenous into a vein, you know, it requires a certain, you know, level of skill and it also requires some cooperation.

It hurts to stick someone with a needle.

So in someone who is sort of young and fit and well

and well hydrated and relaxed,

that the chance of getting a vein in a person like that is quite high.

In someone who's who's dehydrated, terrified, had been sick, had been in prison for two decades,

it becomes a lot harder.

Plus, you're also giving it over to people who are not expert.

Okay.

You know, an anesthesiologist in good standing is not going to spend their Wednesdays over at the state corrections sticking IVs in people for execution.

It's not something that we do.

And people who, you know, to learn to do an intravenous is a technical skill.

It can be learned.

But I think also the people who are doing it themselves are nervous.

Alabama won't reveal exactly who is on the execution team, what their training is, how much experience they have.

But it's safe to say this isn't a team full of doctors, since doctors have to take an oath to do no harm.

And hooking someone up to an IV that will transport lethal drugs is definitely doing harm.

That's Zivet's point.

These are prison employees or outside contractors.

It's not the anesthesiologist from the nearest teaching hospital.

You know, there are some ways of making it more likely than not to succeed.

But, you know, 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.

In some states with the death penalty, putting in the IV is done in full view of the witnesses to the execution.

But in Alabama, it's done before the witnesses are invited into the execution chamber, which means that any outsider who is there to see the execution, the families and friends and reporters, are forced to guess how the IV process is going.

The executions are supposed to start at 6.

The witnesses are all sequestered in a holding room away from the execution site.

And if it gets to be 7 p.m.

or 7.30 or 9 p.m.

and the witnesses haven't yet been picked up by the bus to go take them to the execution chamber, then everyone starts to wonder, is there a problem?

This is exactly what happened in the summer of 2022 while Kenny Smith was still appealing his sentence.

A condemned inmate at Holman named Jonathan James was set to be executed.

Everything with James ran late.

Afterwards, the state insisted the procedure had gone according to plan, but Zivitt was suspicious.

He asked to perform a second autopsy, And what he found was, in a word, gruesome.

Consider yourself warned.

I was able to get his body.

And I worked with a pathologist in Alabama and went there.

And with him, we performed this second autopsy.

And I saw in his body

evidence of multiple attempts at intravenousness.

And some of these things, you know, you could see bruising, which meant that they were, you know, kind of getting in and getting out of a vein.

And there was some bleeding under the skin.

And there was, these were both on, you know, on multiple spots on his arms, up and down both arms.

And then there was also evidence of something called a cut down.

And a cutdown is where you take a knife to the skin and you open the skin to reveal, you know, a vein.

beneath that that you couldn't otherwise see or feel.

It's kind of an old style technique and it's been replaced by ultrasound.

And the protocol at the time does not provide for the possibility of a cutdown.

And also the cutdown along the edges of it had blood, which again meant that he had to have been alive and bleeding for this to have taken place.

So somehow they got some IV in him, but it took them hours to do it.

Picture, you know, Joe Nathan James lying there, strapped down, you know, not cooperative, as they poke and poke and poke him and finally just take a knife to his forearm to open up his forearm to try to get a vein there.

And that, that, so that was Joe.

Then came Alan Miller two months later.

Under Alabama law, once a defendant has been convicted of a capital crime, he or she is given a death warrant.

A warrant is a writ issued by the court which lays out the facts of the conviction, the specific offense, the judgment of the court, and the time and place of execution, which in Alabama is a purpose-built facility on the campus of Holman Prison in Atmore.

At the time, once a date had been set, the execution had to take place by midnight.

So they start at 6 p.m.

and give themselves six hours.

With Alan Miller, they ran out of time, gave up.

The state had to come back and kill him on another day.

Then came Kenny Smith.

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Tell me your impressions of Kenny.

What was he like?

Kenny, I obviously didn't know him when

he was a 22-year-old person at the time of the events for which he was convicted, but

he truly was an example.

And I know this is going to sound trite and a cliché,

but he

really

got religion figuratively and literally.

You know, in prison, he was a force for good.

This is Robert Grass, one of Kenny Smith's lawyers, the one who had been with him the longest.

He's a litigator for a prestigious corporate law firm in New York City.

He represents pharmaceutical companies, but he does pro bono death penalty work on the side.

He started representing Kenny Smith in 2005.

How many times over the course of 20 years did you go to Alabama?

I don't have an exact number, but

many.

Holman Prison where Smith was held is in the southern part of the state.

Grass was in New York.

So that's New York to Atlanta, Atlanta to Mobile, rent a car in Mobile, drive an hour to Atmore.

He made that journey for close to two decades.

I really felt as if we developed a friendship.

You know, I really would have

liked to have had the opportunity to interact with him under different circumstances.

Grass is older, lean, dark suit, gray hair, hair, Ivy League degree, cum laude law school graduate.

He probably bills out at some astronomical number.

Whenever I read about some complicated legal negotiation that goes on into the wee hours of the morning, I imagine it's because someone like Robert Grass is involved.

As measured and dispassionate and implacable at 3 a.m.

as they were at 3 in the afternoon.

You have to listen very closely when he talks.

He doesn't broadcast his feelings.

He sends out Morse code signals.

Talk a little bit more about your friendship.

It's an unlikely friendship.

Yeah.

We obviously

grew up in

different circumstances.

Different circumstances.

Morse code.

I've had other experiences with some folks on death row where I

didn't feel the same bond.

But Kenny, as I said, by the time I knew him,

was

just a decent man, incredibly gracious, and really seemed to have

the best he could, given the environment he was in, to have been leading a productive life in that environment.

In the fall of 2022, Smith and his legal team suffered a serious setback.

Smith was finally given a death warrant, and the warrant set the date of the execution, November 17th, 2022.

But those two botched execution cases, Alan Miller and Joe Nathan James, gave Grass one more chance.

The Supreme Court has long supported the idea that states can execute prisoners if they wish, but they have insisted that executions have to be done the right way.

And what happened to Joe Nathan James and Alan Miller didn't seem like it fit any definition of the right way.

So Smith's lawyers sued.

The way Alabama is practicing lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

The case was dismissed.

Grass appealed to the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

Arguments were heard on November 16th, the day before Smith's death warrant.

Grass went directly from the hearing to the prison.

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.

And that day became a real roller coaster of emotions.

Grass was in a hotel room a mile or two from the prison.

At 8 p.m., Grass heard that the prison guards at Holman had taken Kenny out of his cell.

and were preparing him for execution.

But that wasn't right.

His appeal was still up in the air.

Then Graus got another call.

The 11th Circuit had ruled in Kenny's favor.

The execution was off.

At which point, the state of Alabama appealed to the U.S.

Supreme Court.

It was now after 8 p.m.

And in the meantime, I'm kind of watching the clock tick because the death warrant expired at midnight.

So

I'm

hoping to reach that point without this going forward.

But at about

a quarter after 10 or so,

I got a call from the emergency clerk at the United States Supreme Court, sometimes referred to as the death clerk, because a lot of the emergencies involve capital cases, but

who said

there's no easy way to say this.

And so I knew from that prefaratory remark what was coming.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Alabama.

One of the reporters, who was at home in prison covering the story, emailed Grass to say they were moving the witnesses to the death chamber.

Grass sat in his hotel room, waiting to hear what happened.

Nothing.

Silence.

The next morning, he learned why.

So

he was taken out of his cell

thinking that his execution was imminent, strapped to a gurney, and nothing is happening.

And he's asking the corrections officers who are with him, what's going on?

And they

tell him they don't know.

And then when they finally got going, you know, they've got three members of an IV team,

none of whom are identified to him.

There are other people in the execution chamber with him that were not identified to him.

They're jabbing him with a needle, trying to find a vein, which

they weren't able to do.

Then they tried something called a central line procedure to kind of

stick a needle under his collarbone and reach one of his central veins.

But again, they didn't tell him what they were doing, what was going on.

They just kind of put a surgical gown over him.

You know, one of the IV team members came back into the room in surgical garb.

And, you know, Kenny is

asking these people

what they're doing.

No one is telling them.

I'm going to read from a report on that evening commissioned by Grass and his team.

It includes a very detailed description of what Kenny said happened to him in the execution chamber.

He recalled seeing a clear plastic sheet over his chest with an open center.

He saw that the man had a syringe in his hand, and he unbuttoned Mr.

Smith's shirt and injected a yellow liquid into his chest.

The man said, you will feel something cool.

And the man slid a long needle into his chest.

He inserted the needle and as Kenny perceived it, moved the needle around while it was inserted in his chest.

Mr.

Smith noted that he, quote, lost all composure, unquote, at this point, describing, everything became surreal, everything went out the window.

Mr.

Smith became terrified that he was being injected with a substance that would render him unable to communicate, something that he knew would violate an existing court order.

He was again panicked that he would not be able to say his final words to his family, and the victim's family, given what he heard had happened in a previous execution.

The man who had been injecting him in the chest and the IV team all stepped back.

Mr.

Smith tried to gather himself and then said that they stepped back up and the man from behind his shoulder had a large gauge needle with a large cylinder.

Mr.

Smith said he, quote, freaked out, unquote, demanding that someone call his lawyer.

Next, Deputy Warden Woods put his hands on Mr.

Smith on both sides of his head and said, quote, this is for your own good, unquote, pulling his head to the side.

Mr.

Smith then recalled searing pain as he was injected under his collarbone.

He said,

it took my breath away.

And he recalled that he was gasping and trying to get away by bucking up off the table.

Mr.

Smith recounted that he believed the man tried approximately five times to get this large needle into a vein under his collarbone.

By the time

this was was done, that after three and a half or four hours being strapped to a gurney,

you know, he was unable to

stand, walk,

unbutton his shirt, you know, change his clothes, do any of that without assistance.

It was now almost midnight.

Kenny couldn't stand.

He asked for a wheelchair.

They refused.

He sat outside the chamber until the guards picked him up by the arms and carried him to the infirmary.

I can't help but think about the execution team in this moment, assuming they'd be able to carry out the most overwhelming of tasks on the pretense that it's a clean, professional, humane exercise, only to suddenly realize they can't do it.

They're over their heads, and they can't hide.

They're stuck in the execution chamber until midnight.

For reasons I can't fully explain.

Every time I think of the night of November 17th, I think of the lines from an old Graham Parker song:

The doctor gets nervous completing the service.

He's all rubber gloves and no head.

He fumbles the light switch, it's just another minor hitch.

Wishes to God he was dead.

After a night like that,

how could you not wish to God you were dead?

The Olympic Games have come a long way since the first one in 776 BC.

In fact, those Olympic Games weren't even games.

It was the Olympic game, as there was only one race, a straight 630-foot sprint.

By 67 AD, chariot racing had become a big event, so big that the Emperor Nero competed.

And even though he was thrown from his chariot and couldn't finish, he was nonetheless declared the winner.

It's good to be king.

One thing that hasn't changed is the importance of quality sleep to an athlete's performance, which is why Satva is so proud to have been named the official mattress and restorative sleep provider for the U.S.

Olympic and Para-Olympic teams.

No one knows more about restorative sleep than Satva.

Each one of their mattresses is designed to provide the kind kind of sleep elite athletes need to perform at their peak.

Of course, you don't have to be an elite athlete to benefit from sleeping well.

Being human is the only requirement.

Visit SATFA.com slash Gladwell to save up to $200 on a $1,000 or more purchase.

That's S-A-A-T-V-A.com slash Gladwell.

Military life isn't predictable, but earning your master's degree can be.

With American Military University's 40-plus flexible online master's programs, you can stay mission-ready while you get market-ready.

Learn anywhere, anytime, with an education built to keep pace, steady, reliable, and always accessible.

Plus, military service members, veterans, and their families can save up to 45% on master's tuition with AMU's special rates and grants.

Learn more at AMU.apus.edu.

AMU, AMU, steady through every mission.

You're thoughtful about where your money goes.

You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side.

The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and public gets that.

That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

On public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.

Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there.

Plus an industry-leading 3.8% APY high-yield cash account.

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.

Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

That's public.com.

Paid for by Public Investing.

All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal.

Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc., member Finrun SIPC.

Crypto trading provided by Backed Crypto Solutions LLC.

Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures.

Kenny Smith's failed execution was on a Thursday.

The following Monday, the governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, paused all pending executions in the state and ordered a top-to-bottom review of the state's capital punishment protocol.

And then, two and a half weeks after that, came Steve Marshall's press conference.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Call this press conference today because Attorney General's office, Montgomery, Alabama.

Flags on both sides of the podium.

Alabama's highest-ranking legal officer seeks to set the record straight.

And what was on his mind?

That six-hour window that Holman Prison had given itself to get someone ready to be executed.

Why were they starting so late in the day?

It was letting murderers and their lawyers gain the system.

So if you're a defense lawyer representing an inmate, you simply know that you have to push the clock back as far as possible.

I think we saw that occur with the last two executions at no fall.

Not to mention the prisoners themselves, they weren't helping matters.

But let's also acknowledge that inmates themselves have responsibility here, not just in the delay that's occurred, but I think you've seen in pleadings that we have where inmates are resisting the efforts to put that IV line in, which obviously makes it more difficult.

Can you believe it?

The condemned prisoners are not cooperating with their executioners.

A reporter raises his hand.

Is there anything the state legislature could do?

Like maybe adding another method of execution or increasing that window to 48 or 72 hours?

Yes, yes, Marshall says.

That is the issue here.

We just don't have long enough.

And although we have a 24-hour period right now, but really in actuality, have a six-hour window based upon policies the Department of Corrections having in place long before the current commissioner, long before Governor Abbey or myself.

And I'm sure sure that's one of the things that they will look at as part of their review.

I'm sure that's one of the things they will look at as part of their review.

And sure enough, it was.

The governor's top-to-bottom review turned out to be a new rule that said the guards at home in prison would have until the following morning to complete their service.

Six more hours to poke and prod and take a knife and peel back flesh.

and dig around the collarbone and manage the rising sense of shame and self-loathing and revulsion that comes from being asked to do a job without really knowing how to do a job.

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.

And on what basis exactly?

Because a cold-blooded convicted killer complains about the prodding and poking of a small IV line.

Really?

Potting and poking with a needle?

As the moral failure cascade gains momentum, indifference turns to cruelty.

And through all of this, Kenny Smith was back in his cell, still still alive.

What do you do after the state has tried to kill you and failed?

If the state botches the attempt the first time around, does that disqualify them from trying again?

Robert Grass and the rest of Kenny Smith's legal team realized they needed someone to do an assessment of Kenny's condition before they could do anything else.

They needed someone who knew what it might be like to be strapped to a gurney for three and a half hours, while a group of people in surgical garb stabbed them with needles.

So they called Kate Porterfield.

Coming up on Revisionist History.

One of the people on the team who he didn't know says to him, it's over and I'll be praying for you.

So these kinds of moments for Kenny were just unmanageable afterwards.

They were unmanageable moments with other humans.

I guess it started after Kenny was born.

What I think is he was doing stuff and

he

was thinking I was, you know.

Right.

And he was jealous.

Yeah.

But I wasn't, you know, I had a kid to raise.

He

really

kind of got me, he made me really pause and think a lot, Kenny Smith, because watching someone only start from a place of love after something so horrible was, I had never seen that before.

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.

Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence.

Production support from Luke Clemond.

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

Sound design and additional music by Jake Goiske.

I'm Malcolm Glaudo.

You can get this entire season now ad-free by subscribing to Revisionist History on Pushkin Plus.

Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.

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