The Alabama Murders - Part 3: A Peculiar Institution

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Speaker 28 Hello, hello, Malcolm here.

Speaker 22 Before we get to the episode, I want to let you know you can get this entire season now, ad-free, by subscribing to Revisionist History on Pushkin Plus.

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Speaker 54 Previously on revisionist history.

Speaker 55 35 years.

Speaker 56 That's how long Elizabeth Sennett's family waited for justice to occur.

Speaker 57 He backhanded his child. I don't know what the child had done.
You just don't do that to a child across its face.

Speaker 56 35 long

Speaker 58 years.

Speaker 50 And I answered the call and I got all the information on who done it, who was all involved, and all the particulars.

Speaker 57 The viciousness was there that he could do something like that. I don't know.

Speaker 45 When Elizabeth Sennett was murdered, Patterson Hood, one of the lead singers of the legendary southern rock band The Drive By Truckers, was living in the Shoals.

Speaker 61 Obviously, it was the big front page story for, you know, weeks because it was such a horrific, grisly murder.

Speaker 61 And all of the different, as more details started coming out about it, you know, it just kept getting worse and worse.

Speaker 3 He was 24, working at a pharmacy in Florence, looking for a way out.

Speaker 61 They closed the Ford plant. in 1982, which was the year I graduated from high school.

Speaker 61 And when it was gone, not only was it gone, but then all these other businesses that depended on people who made the money working at the Ford plant, that stuff started going.

Speaker 61 It's really bounced back in the last

Speaker 61 15, 20 years. The town's almost unrecognizable because of all the really positive things that have happened.
But in 88, it was pretty fucking grim.

Speaker 66 Years went by, and the story of what happened to Elizabeth Sennett stayed with him.

Speaker 61 I don't know why it resonated with me, but I first started writing it, thinking in terms of writing it more as like a

Speaker 61 short story or a book or something like that. And I kind of wrote it in that form and then at some point started turning it into a song.

Speaker 5 The song was called The Fireplace Poker.

Speaker 11 He released it on the album Go-Go Boots, which came out in 2011.

Speaker 65 Maybe you've heard it before.

Speaker 11 Patterson Hood got his inspiration from what one of the regulars in that Florence drugstore, a local police officer, told him back in 1988.

Speaker 61 He was the chief of police in Florence, and so he was all up in

Speaker 61 any police business anywhere in the area, whether it was in his jurisdiction or or not. So he would come in and just talk about stuff.
And it was interesting to hear, for sure.

Speaker 61 He theorized really early on that it wasn't like

Speaker 61 it was supposed to be looking like it was.

Speaker 10 What everyone first thought was that Elizabeth Sennett had been murdered by two local kids, Kenny Smith and John Forrest Parker.

Speaker 21 They were the ones who drove out to Coondog Cemetery Road on that March morning.

Speaker 16 It was Parker's knife found in a pond behind the house.

Speaker 69 They confessed.

Speaker 5 They were charged with capital murder.

Speaker 21 Everything that would happen in the Senate case over the course of the next 35 years, the controversies, the outrage, the moral calamity that would ultimately take place in Holman prison, was based on the assumption that the justice system in Alabama had correctly determined who was responsible for what happened that morning.

Speaker 8 Namely, Charles Sennett was the mastermind who ordered the hit on his wife, and Parker and Smith were the killers.

Speaker 12 But that's not what the Florence police chief told Patterson Hood.

Speaker 12 Life was falling from her grasp, but still

Speaker 12 she lay there trying.

Speaker 12 No one will ever know what she told him.

Speaker 12 Or know what he told her.

Speaker 12 Cause the river ended his wife in

Speaker 12 15 blacks with fireplace poker.

Speaker 72 The Reverend came home from work and found the missus dying.

Speaker 71 Life was falling from her grasp, but still she lay there trying.

Speaker 38 No one will ever know what she told told him or know what he told her because the Reverend did his wife in.

Speaker 12 15 wax, fireplace poker.

Speaker 37 Wait,

Speaker 41 the reverend did his wife in?

Speaker 73 My name is Malcolm Globwell.

Speaker 75 You're listening to my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

Speaker 66 This episode of the Alabama Murders is about the trial of John Forrest Parker, one of the three young men charged in the killing of Elizabeth Sennett, and all of the ways that the catastrophe that unfolded in the Shoals, the failure cascades set in motion by the murder, could have been averted.

Speaker 5 The counterfactual version of events, the what-ifs.

Speaker 77 Episode 3: A Peculiar Institution.

Speaker 78 I've had, you know, other cases that

Speaker 78 technically were probably factually more

Speaker 79 complex, but

Speaker 78 this is, you know, this is the one that I will

Speaker 78 is still on my mind, even without child coming.

Speaker 72 Tom Heflin was John Forrest Parker's attorney.

Speaker 66 He remembers exactly where he was the day Elizabeth Sennett was murdered.

Speaker 78 I had been to Red Bay, Alabama, which is on the Mississippi border, down the same highway where this happened. I may well have seen

Speaker 78 John Forrest Parker and Kenny Smith in their car.

Speaker 79 I don't know that for a fact, but I may well have.

Speaker 78 Then I got the call.

Speaker 79 that the court was going to appoint me and Gene Hanby to represent him.

Speaker 31 Heflin is the son of the former U.S.

Speaker 3 Senator from Alabama, Alabama, Howell Heflin.

Speaker 65 In his living room, Heflin has a portrait of his famous father, and father and son look very much alike.

Speaker 63 The Heflins have large leonine heads and a kind of rumbling southern gravitas.

Speaker 8 So you were court-appointed attorneys.

Speaker 59 Court-appointed attorneys.

Speaker 52 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 50 How much of your practice would have been that kind of work in those days?

Speaker 52 Zero.

Speaker 10 This is unusual.

Speaker 48 So why,

Speaker 28 how did it come about then?

Speaker 78 I think we'd had a string of capital murder cases, and,

Speaker 78 you know, everybody kind of is expected to serve.

Speaker 38 Parker's trial took place in May of 1989 at the Colbert County Courthouse, a graceful white neoclassical building on the town square in the center of Tuscumbia.

Speaker 80 All right, we're at the Colbert County Courthouse. If we look across,

Speaker 78 you see a three-story

Speaker 80 building with a razor wire around it and a fence. That's the county jail.

Speaker 64 Heflin gave my colleague Ben Dadaf Hafrey a tour of the courthouse.

Speaker 59 Well we don't have full lights.

Speaker 37 The courtroom was small, gray and white.

Speaker 64 On the wall, there's a portrait of the judge in the Parker case, Inga Johnson.

Speaker 28 Long blonde hair, blue eyes.

Speaker 59 So where did you guys sit? There.

Speaker 81 And so the jury box, that's interesting. It sort of faces the judge.

Speaker 59 Jury box is there.

Speaker 80 Witness would be there.

Speaker 80 Court clerk over there.

Speaker 78 Obviously, judge, court reporter here.

Speaker 81 Like, some of the jurors would have had, like, a direct view of John, like from feet away.

Speaker 80 Yeah, he would have been probably, we probably would have sat him there.

Speaker 59 I think we did.

Speaker 78 Well, because inside where we block him off to a certain extent.

Speaker 81 Why do you want to block him off?

Speaker 28 Well, he is shackled. Yeah.

Speaker 80 You know,

Speaker 78 that's basically, I just don't want to emphasize that he is a prisoner at that point. Even everybody knows he is.

Speaker 82 Most criminal trials, particularly older ones, don't have an audio or video record.

Speaker 71 There's just a transcript created by the court reporter. The transcripts can run for thousands of pages, and they're their own unique literary form.

Speaker 32 Because there's no description or elaboration or context, they read as flat, banal.

Speaker 21 It takes a little bit of time to learn how to use your imagination to fill in the empty spaces.

Speaker 66 And in the case of John Parker, what becomes clear when you learn how to fill in those empty spaces is that the prosecution's case was really, really

Speaker 37 weak.

Speaker 32 The state's problem started with Parker sitting there in the docket a few feet from the jurors.

Speaker 72 This was a case about a murder for hire, a contract killer, and he just didn't look the part of a contract killer.

Speaker 50 Tell us about Parker.

Speaker 28 Parker was like 18,

Speaker 78 actually a good family,

Speaker 78 solid people.

Speaker 79 He had had

Speaker 78 some prior childhood trauma that I think probably created a little mental... He had some drug problems.

Speaker 50 Tell me more about your impressions of him.

Speaker 78 A kid who had been drugged out and didn't know what they were doing?

Speaker 63 John Forrest Parker had been arrested on multiple occasions for minor crimes, breaking into cars, stealing gas.

Speaker 10 He'd failed ninth grade three times.

Speaker 37 In one of his psychiatric evaluations done after one of his previous arrests, there's this, quote, John's childhood history includes a brain concussion at the age of two.

Speaker 11 He reportedly was unconscious for 36 hours following his concussion.

Speaker 67 His parents reported that due to his brain concussion, they had not expected very much of John.

Speaker 67 On the drive to Koondark Cemetery Road on the morning of Elizabeth Sennett's murder, Parker and Smith had a bottle of whiskey between them on the front seat.

Speaker 39 Parker injected himself with a healthy dose of opioids on the way over.

Speaker 45 Charles Sennett gave them some money to buy a gun.

Speaker 83 They used it to buy drugs instead.

Speaker 67 In every description of the crime, they come across as completely clueless.

Speaker 62 Parker is 19, Smith 22.

Speaker 60 They're so lackadaisical that after beating and stabbing Elizabeth Sennett, they threw the knife and the walking stick they used into the pond behind her house, when there are literally thousands of acres of wooded wilderness on the drive back home where something could be thrown away and it would never, ever be found.

Speaker 41 Yes, Parker and Smith hurt Elizabeth Sennett badly and took money to commit acts of violence.

Speaker 39 But when we hear the phrase contract killers, we think of assassins.

Speaker 73 Mafia hitman, stone-cold, hard-bitten, lethal.

Speaker 27 These were screwed-up kids.

Speaker 32 One of the biggest points of weakness for the prosecution emerged in the testimony of the surgeon who was on duty at Helen Keller Hospital when Elizabeth Sennett was brought into the ER, David Parks McKinley.

Speaker 14 He was the one who first saw her injuries, who tried to save her life, who pronounced her dead.

Speaker 3 The direct examination by the prosecutor is brief and to the point.

Speaker 16 The police had found a knife, a hunting knife, in the pond behind the Senate House.

Speaker 19 This was a knife that both Smith and Parker admitted to bringing with them to Koondog Cemetery Road.

Speaker 39 The prosecution just wanted to establish the connection between that knife and Elizabeth Sennett's death.

Speaker 67 Question.

Speaker 5 Doctor, can you tell us what you recall about her physical appearance?

Speaker 78 Answer.

Speaker 14 The most striking thing was multiple stab wounds, particularly over the right side of the chest and at the base of the neck.

Speaker 49 There were also some wounds of the forehead and scalp.

Speaker 76 McKinley testified that the cuts on the forehead and scalp looked like they were from a blunt object.

Speaker 75 The wounds to the chest and neck were caused by a knife.

Speaker 15 He went on to say, it is is likely that the chest wounds were by and large the cause of her death.

Speaker 37 Prosecutor, thank you, doctor.

Speaker 42 That's all.

Speaker 35 Haflin knew the prosecution was calling McKinley, so he did a little homework beforehand.

Speaker 78 We're starting trial on the Tuesday following Memorial Day.

Speaker 78 I know they're calling

Speaker 78 The state medical examiner was coming up to testify what the fatal wounds were, describing them. Then they were bringing the doctor who treated her at the emergency room there.

Speaker 78 And I called up the doctor and said, what are you going to say tomorrow?

Speaker 78 And we talked about it and visited, kind of knew each other.

Speaker 20 What the doctor told him made Heflin realize he could lay a trap.

Speaker 3 So in court, Heflin gets up and in cross-examination asks McKinley about the knife.

Speaker 3 Question, have you ever been shown the knife that the state removed from the pond in this case?

Speaker 77 Answer.

Speaker 8 I have not seen it, no, sir.

Speaker 71 Heflin turns to the prosecutors.

Speaker 38 Do y'all have the knife?

Speaker 45 This is one of those moments when the transcript is of little help.

Speaker 3 You have to fill in the empty space.

Speaker 14 The prosecutors are anxious.

Speaker 38 They thought the identity of the murder weapon was a settled fact.

Speaker 8 So why does Heflin want McKinley to see it?

Speaker 4 They hesitate.

Speaker 77 The judge immediately intervenes.

Speaker 8 Can I see y'all at the bench?

Speaker 5 Both sides huddle with the judge.

Speaker 39 The judge says to Heflin, do you just want to show him the knife?

Speaker 77 Heflin says, uh-huh.

Speaker 43 The judge turns to the prosecutor.

Speaker 77 Why don't you get it?

Speaker 11 More hesitation from the prosecutors.

Speaker 4 The judge repeats herself.

Speaker 38 Y'all go get it.

Speaker 45 The prosecutors rummage in their evidence box, take it out.

Speaker 44 Heflin hands it to the doctor.

Speaker 64 I asked Heflin to read aloud from the trial transcripts from the crucial moment of his exchange with McKinley.

Speaker 78 You saw the wounds inflicted on Miss Spennett Fresh when she came into the hospital, didn't you? Yes, sir, I said.

Speaker 78 Examining that knife, do you have any opinion whether or not that was the instrument that could have inflicted those wounds?

Speaker 67 And McKinley answers simply.

Speaker 78 I would frankly be surprised this was the knife based on what I saw or the sharp project based on what I saw on the patient.

Speaker 78 I don't have any further questions.

Speaker 65 The government's own witness testifies that the alleged murder weapon isn't actually the murder weapon.

Speaker 84 The chest wounds are of a much smaller knife. Yes.

Speaker 50 The neck wounds

Speaker 50 are consistent with the large knife that Kenny and John have. The chest wounds, which are the fatal wounds, seem to be made by a smaller knife, and we can't find the smaller knife.

Speaker 84 That's right.

Speaker 42 From there, you would think, the reasonable reasonable doubts grow.

Speaker 44 Were Kenny, Smith, and John Parker actually the ones who stabbed Elizabeth Sennett to death?

Speaker 64 The pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Elizabeth Sennett's body testifies.

Speaker 44 She described Sennett's chest wounds as rapidly fatal.

Speaker 7 When asked about this by prosecutors, she said bluntly, I don't think she lived very long after those wounds were inflicted.

Speaker 51 Once again, one of the government's own witnesses undermines their case.

Speaker 16 Think about the timing.

Speaker 38 At 11.44 in the morning, Charles Sennett calls Ronnie Mae in hysterics to report that his wife has been attacked.

Speaker 5 At 12.15, the paramedics discover that Elizabeth Sennett has a pulse.

Speaker 64 At 1 p.m., she arrives at Helen Keller Hospital, and she's still alive.

Speaker 39 McKinley, in fact, doesn't pronounce her as dead until 2.05.

Speaker 37 a full hour later.

Speaker 75 But according to the prosecution's own witness, John John Parker and Kenny Smith were back home in Florence by 11:30 that morning.

Speaker 62 It's a 30 to 40-minute drive from Koondag Cemetery Road to Florence, and it's pouring rain outside.

Speaker 73 The timing doesn't work.

Speaker 3 They must have left the sentence house by at least 11.

Speaker 44 There's no way Parker and Smith could have inflicted rapidly fatal wounds at mid-morning if she was still alive at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 21 Meaning, Smith and Parker must have been long gone by the time the fatal wounds were inflicted.

Speaker 21 Later in the trial, another pathologist who had examined the Sennett autopsy made the same point.

Speaker 21 Here is Heflin questioning him.

Speaker 67 Question.

Speaker 69 If the evidence in this case shows that the Cherokee Rescue Squad detected a heartbeat on Mrs.

Speaker 10 Sennett at approximately 12.15 p.m.

Speaker 82 on March the 18, 1988, Based upon your years of experience as a pathologist and your review of the exhibits that you just named, do you have an opinion as to what time prior to 12.15 p.m.

Speaker 13 the fatal wounds were delivered?

Speaker 64 Answer, within a very few minutes.

Speaker 3 The judge, the jury, the lawyers on both sides, the journalists covering the trial are all listening to this testimony with its unmistakable implication.

Speaker 66 Someone else must have stabbed Elizabeth Sennett in the chest with a smaller knife.

Speaker 18 And who was the only person at the house at the time of the 911 call?

Speaker 20 Charles Sennett.

Speaker 84 If Sennett does it, the timing makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 48 He shows up after they've left.

Speaker 78 Stabs, calls.

Speaker 50 Stabs and calls.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 59 Poor even had called and then stabbed.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 69 A knife that doesn't fit, a timeline that makes no sense.

Speaker 29 And if the jury still had any lingering doubts about Charles Sennett's culpability, there was also what they heard from Elizabeth Sennett's friend, who had a front row seat to the inner life of her marriage.

Speaker 37 That's after the break.

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Speaker 88 Susan Mosley was a nurse at a weight loss clinic in Muscle Schoals.

Speaker 21 Elizabeth Sennett was one of her patients.

Speaker 91 And I noticed

Speaker 91 she was extremely quiet, introverted,

Speaker 91 no self-esteem,

Speaker 62 but was a brilliant brilliant woman mosley sat down with a local reporter named lee hedgebeth who has written about the senate case and did some interviews for us she shared with him what she remembered about elizabeth in the months leading up to the murder so she would come once a week to the clinic and i would go over

Speaker 91 i would weigh her to her blood pressure talk to her about, okay, how's your weight doing?

Speaker 62 Mosley said that Elizabeth Sennett didn't seem happy.

Speaker 67 She would sit in the waiting room with a napkin crushed in her fist.

Speaker 65 One day, Mosey decided to confront her.

Speaker 91 And I said, Liz, now listen to me.

Speaker 91 You've been going up and down your weight. So

Speaker 91 I'm going to close this chart.

Speaker 91 And I'm just going to turn around. I'm going to shut my eyes.

Speaker 91 Like a new way I can. How about you? You can close your eyes

Speaker 91 and just tell me

Speaker 91 what you think

Speaker 91 is the biggest problem if you eat potato chips like I do every night we'll get baked ones and we will do something so just let me know and I heard I nearly opened my eyes and I heard the chair rustle and I still kept it shut

Speaker 91 and she said

Speaker 91 I need a dog

Speaker 91 open your eyes She said, turn around here.

Speaker 91 And I'll never forget, I turned to my left. I phoned around

Speaker 91 like this and she was standing there and I'm gonna tell you before we go any further I'm gonna

Speaker 91 she got buttoned her blouse

Speaker 91 at 40 pounds

Speaker 91 by about an inch

Speaker 91 with a short sleeve would come

Speaker 91 all in her chest

Speaker 91 in her back

Speaker 91 her butts and legs to a certain area where a skirt would come

Speaker 91 was black

Speaker 37 black

Speaker 48 this senate was covered in bruises

Speaker 91 i got up and had this hole but i didn't ask no questions i didn't ask anything

Speaker 91 i had to button her little thing back up and now going like that and she sat down

Speaker 91 Do you want to talk about this?

Speaker 91 And she began to tell me this story

Speaker 91 about her relationship

Speaker 91 with Mr. Simmon.

Speaker 91 She began to tell me

Speaker 91 that

Speaker 91 she

Speaker 91 didn't know how, but that he was going to kill her.

Speaker 91 And that she knew this. And she had been saving her money.

Speaker 91 for the balls

Speaker 91 and the raid of the attorney she was going to is going to charge her $400.

Speaker 91 She said, I've worried about this. You worried about this response.
I'll do this.

Speaker 91 He was going to say shit.

Speaker 91 She said, I know.

Speaker 91 I don't think I'll ever be clear with me before he kills me.

Speaker 22 She didn't know how, but he was going to kill her.

Speaker 70 And she didn't think she could break free.

Speaker 45 Mosie said she tried to help Elizabeth to find a way to leave Charles, leave the marriage.

Speaker 68 She told Elizabeth, you can come and live with me if you want.

Speaker 3 She tried to help her find the words to communicate to her husband it had to end.

Speaker 91 We would sit there and I would lit me right off off the jailplay and say, okay, now,

Speaker 91 say this.

Speaker 91 Charles, we need to talk.

Speaker 91 I cannot continue to be

Speaker 91 working with all these beatons and then go to church on Sunday and England and try to kill girlfriends, wear a long-sleeve shirt

Speaker 91 and 100 degrees out.

Speaker 91 Somebody is going to figure this out. I can't continue to do this.

Speaker 44 Mosley gave a deposition to investigators, and her testimony was recounted to the jury by by Ronnie May from the Colbert County Sheriff's Office in the flat, effectless tone of Official Speak.

Speaker 48 But even then, it's impossible to miss the power of what she saw.

Speaker 66 Listen, this is what May said.

Speaker 82 Mrs. Mosley said that she had been told by Mrs.

Speaker 45 Sennett that around Christmas of that year, Charles' family came to visit and they had come up from Florida.

Speaker 83 Mrs. Sennett stated that some of the family went hunting.

Speaker 39 She stated that Charles became extremely upset over some conversation between he and members of the family and Mrs.

Speaker 3 Sennett stated that during that outburst at Christmas with his family members, he laid down on the floor and screamed and cried and seemed to be paralyzed at different times.

Speaker 13 Mrs.

Speaker 84 Sennett stated that this went on for some time at the house and as a result, Charles's family left and returned to Florida.

Speaker 76 Mrs. Mosley stated that Mrs.

Speaker 38 Sennett told her during this argument that Charles at one point had pulled pulled and waved a gun in the direction of his father.

Speaker 71 On one of my visits to the Shoals, I sat in Tom Heflin's living room and tried to make sense of all the things the jury learned about Charles Sennett, who had taken his own life so quickly after his wife's murder.

Speaker 52 I mean, of all of these three potential murderers, Parker, Smith, and Sennett, Sennett is the only one with a documented history of

Speaker 52 violent, highly aggressive behavior.

Speaker 50 He's the one who beat his wife. To me, this is all about Charles Sennett, the whole thing.
He sets the whole thing in motion.

Speaker 29 He's the charismatic, persuasive adult.

Speaker 50 He's a predator. He really should be the one on trial.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 without having gone back, maybe we didn't try him hard enough.

Speaker 4 This, I think, is is what was on the police chief's mind when he gossiped about the case with Patterson Hood, lead singer at the Drive-By Truckers, at that drugstore in Florence.

Speaker 92 I can't remember how soon they figured out that he, that, you know, the preacher had finished the job and all that, but it was, you know, it was pretty obvious, pretty quick, you know, that those guys,

Speaker 79 they were fuck-ups.

Speaker 92 They took what was going to be a simple go-in,

Speaker 92 you know, killer, make it look like a robbery, and turned it into this gruesome thing,

Speaker 92 and she was still alive.

Speaker 92 And so the preacher did what, you know, he then did.

Speaker 58 And

Speaker 92 I mean, it's, God, it's just such an awful story on every imaginable level.

Speaker 3 Which is why Patterson Hood wrote the crucial verse.

Speaker 3 Life was falling from her grasp, but still she lay there trying.

Speaker 3 No one will ever know what she told,

Speaker 3 or know what he told her.

Speaker 3 Cause forever

Speaker 3 ended his wife and

Speaker 3 15 wax

Speaker 3 fireplace poker.

Speaker 66 To read the John Parker trial transcript with the full knowledge of what would happen over the following decades is to get angry, especially after what happened next.

Speaker 67 The sentencing.

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Speaker 50 What was it like when you were sequestered?

Speaker 94 We spent eight days over here in the Ramada Inn.

Speaker 82 Gary Highfield, foreman of the jury in the Parker trial, talking to my colleague Ben Nadaf Hafrey.

Speaker 94 It was good. I mean, you know, they fed us.
And I mean, we got to go home and get clothes and all that kind of stuff and then, you know,

Speaker 94 go down there. But

Speaker 94 they told us to prepare for clothes for a week. And we got them and, you know, went to the hotel.
I mean, it was all good.

Speaker 81 Did you guys hang out when you were segregated?

Speaker 94 We really, they told us not to, you know, we just kind of, we did get to go to the pool. We did go to the pool one day.

Speaker 41 Highfield was 30 years old at the time, married, one kid, another on the way, sold insurance.

Speaker 71 He says, looking back, that the news coverage of the killing made the job of the defense very difficult.

Speaker 94 I think it kind of handcuffed them

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 94 people had

Speaker 94 an idea of what had happened.

Speaker 94 There was so much put out there

Speaker 52 beforehand.

Speaker 94 And

Speaker 94 when a person gets something in their mind,

Speaker 94 you know,

Speaker 94 it's kind of hard to change.

Speaker 5 So when they heard all of the discrepancies about the timing and the weapon and the character of Charles Sennett, it was hard for them to square that with their understanding of John Parker.

Speaker 12 He had agreed to go out to Koondog Cemetery Road.

Speaker 4 He had admitted he brutally assaulted Elizabeth Sennett.

Speaker 71 A dispassionate reading of the trial transcripts today,

Speaker 49 years later, supports the idea that Parker should have been acquitted of the murder charge, just gotten something like conspiracy to commit murder or assault in the first degree.

Speaker 70 But this was a year after the crime, and it was very hard to be dispassionate.

Speaker 94 But, I mean,

Speaker 52 look

Speaker 94 in that kind of situation,

Speaker 79 if you have,

Speaker 94 he meant to kill her with that pipe.

Speaker 94 I mean, if you mean to do something, you may not actually be the one that committed the death, the actual death, but torturing somebody that bad was, man,

Speaker 52 it was awful, dude.

Speaker 94 Even if you're not the one that talked, that was the one that fatally killed her,

Speaker 94 you did.

Speaker 94 I mean, it was proven that you did every bit of that stuff to this lady.

Speaker 94 I mean, she might as well have been dead, but anyway,

Speaker 94 I don't know. It's just,

Speaker 76 I mean,

Speaker 94 I don't even like to think about it too much. I don't know which one of them killed her.

Speaker 52 I really don't.

Speaker 94 But I think both of them got what they probably deserved

Speaker 94 legally

Speaker 52 and morally.

Speaker 41 They found Parker guilty of murder.

Speaker 73 So Parker's attorney, Tom Heflin, lost that round.

Speaker 32 But the prosecution was asking for the death penalty, and here the jury hesitated.

Speaker 74 The picture that Heflin had painted of his client as a mixed-up kid in over his head had left an impression.

Speaker 44 So the jury voted overwhelmingly 10 to 2 for life without parole.

Speaker 41 The jury didn't think Parker deserved to die.

Speaker 94 I just don't think some of these people that were on the jury, they didn't want that to be on their conscience

Speaker 94 the rest of their life, putting somebody into the death penalty.

Speaker 43 At this point, the cascade could have stopped, right?

Speaker 48 A cascade is unique as a category of catastrophe because it requires multiple stages in sequence.

Speaker 49 Remember our proverb from episode one, you need the nail, the shoe, the horse, the rider, the message, and the battle for the kingdom to be imperiled.

Speaker 60 And if any of those stages fall out along the way, if the rider loses his horse but quickly finds another, the kingdom is fine.

Speaker 3 A life sentence for Parker brings the whole saga to a close because it means that Kenny Smith would almost certainly get a life sentence as well when his time came.

Speaker 4 And for all intents and purposes, the case would be closed.

Speaker 15 Justice would be served, the rider found another horse, the kingdom is just fine.

Speaker 12 Except, that's not what happens.

Speaker 37 Why?

Speaker 67 Because this is Alabama.

Speaker 20 To understand what happens next requires a brief digression.

Speaker 23 into an obscure legal doctrine known as judicial override.

Speaker 75 Judicial override arose in the mid-1970s in response to the Supreme Court's insistence that states be more rigorous in the way they use the death penalty.

Speaker 17 The court wanted standards, rules.

Speaker 24 So the court divided capital cases into two stages.

Speaker 44 First, a jury was required to rule on the defendant's guilt.

Speaker 68 Then, the Supreme Court said it wanted juries to do something they don't do in normal criminal cases.

Speaker 44 Decide on the appropriate sentence.

Speaker 3 Alabama's response was to pass a law giving the final word word to the judge.

Speaker 17 And if the judge wanted to override the jury's decision to turn, say, life without parole into the death penalty, they could.

Speaker 83 A handful of states did something similar, like Florida.

Speaker 14 But in Florida, the law said that the judge had to give, quote, great weight to the jury's decision.

Speaker 64 In Alabama, a judge could do whatever they wanted.

Speaker 15 And over the next 40 years, judges did just that.

Speaker 82 The override was used over a hundred times in Alabama, almost always to allow a judge to execute someone whose life the jury wanted to save, with judges saying all kinds of crazy things along the way, like the time an Alabama jury went easy on a murderer because he was mentally disabled, and the judge overrode them because, and I'm quoting, the sociological literature suggests gypsies intentionally test low on standard IQ tests.

Speaker 48 So, in the Parker trial, the jury rules in the first stage that he's guilty, and in the sentencing stage they say no death penalty, life without parole.

Speaker 44 And what happens next?

Speaker 37 The judge, Inga Johnson, the one with the portrait on the wall in the courtroom, overrides the jury recommendation and sentences Parker to death.

Speaker 3 Heflin was not exactly surprised.

Speaker 50 When you heard... her override decision, your reaction was

Speaker 12 you saw it coming.

Speaker 78 Saw it coming.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 50 Do you, um, did she?

Speaker 78 I think she, I think she, now, she's generally a good judge.

Speaker 59 I don't know. I think she listened.
I think she,

Speaker 78 again, I'm not saying she had totally prejudged it, but

Speaker 79 I think she,

Speaker 79 you know, it

Speaker 50 she doesn't give in her sentencing decision.

Speaker 50 She doesn't really give specific reasons as to why she's overriding the jury's recommendation.

Speaker 78 In Alabama, you're not required to.

Speaker 23 The whole thing makes no sense, of course.

Speaker 53 If the Supreme Court wanted the states to make the application of the death penalty less arbitrary, how does just handing over power to judges to do whatever they want for whatever random reason fix the problem?

Speaker 63 Gary Highfield, the jury foreman, is still angry about it.

Speaker 94 What reason did I have to to spend a week, over a week,

Speaker 94 in a jury listening to this when she has the right to overturn my decision? Our decision?

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 94 I mean, I felt like it was no reason for me to even be there. That's the problem I have with,

Speaker 94 that's the only problem I have with the whole thing. I don't, I mean, I just felt, I felt useless spending all that time on a jury and then

Speaker 94 she has the right to come back. I mean there's no sense in even having a jury if you if you're going to be able to overturn the jury, if a judge can overturn the jury.

Speaker 76 Parker gets sent to death row at Donaldson Prison in Bessemer, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham.

Speaker 70 This is 1989.

Speaker 45 His lawyers keep him alive, filing appeal after appeal.

Speaker 49 13 years pass.

Speaker 21 He's still alive, and he gets one final chance, by way of a new Supreme Court case.

Speaker 82 In Ring v.

Speaker 71 Arizona, the court throws out Arizona's practice of allowing judges to make sentencing decisions independently of the jury in death penalty cases.

Speaker 39 They said it violates the Sixth Amendment, which reads, in case you've forgotten, in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.

Speaker 64 If your life is at stake, then what happens to you shouldn't be left left up to the whims of whatever judge you were assigned.

Speaker 29 Only a jury should be allowed to make the call of life or death, and that protection is right there in the Constitution.

Speaker 83 In response, Indiana, which had an override statute on its books, shuts it down.

Speaker 53 Everyone on death row in Indiana who was there because of a judge's override gets their original life sentence back.

Speaker 68 All eyes turned to Alabama.

Speaker 12 Surely they have to follow suit, right?

Speaker 5 John Parker's going to live.

Speaker 78 When I heard that it was done,

Speaker 78 my feeling was John was off death row.

Speaker 60 This was 2002.

Speaker 74 For the next eight years, Parker got up every morning waiting for the state of Alabama to acknowledge the fact that the law that put him on death row was unconstitutional.

Speaker 42 He waits and waits.

Speaker 72 Do you know when Alabama finally got around to abolishing judicial override?

Speaker 82 2017, when it was too late to make any difference for Parker.

Speaker 64 In fact, it took Alabama 41 years to come to their senses.

Speaker 71 And even then, they couldn't help themselves.

Speaker 48 They say this reversal only applies to future cases.

Speaker 82 Anyone who's already on death row because of a judge's override in the previous 42 years stays on death row.

Speaker 48 In the years before the Civil War, There was a phrase southern slave owners would use to describe their practice of owning their workforce.

Speaker 70 They They called it their peculiar institution.

Speaker 59 A euphemism.

Speaker 85 A nice way of saying that things were done a little differently in their part of the world.

Speaker 64 Judicial override is, I think,

Speaker 64 a very good example of another Alabama peculiarity.

Speaker 75 And if you are at all curious about how this particular peculiarity works, I would direct you to the discussion that took place on April 17th, 2024, in a hearing room at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery.

Speaker 55 Hey, ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you to the House Judiciary Committee.

Speaker 55 We're glad to have each and every one of you here with us today. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.

Speaker 55 Mr. England, you want to talk about 27?

Speaker 55 Absolutely.

Speaker 53 Representative England is Chris England.

Speaker 44 That rarest of species in Alabama, a Democrat, represents Tuscaloosa.

Speaker 21 He was the co-sponsor of the legislation back in 2017 that ended judicial override.

Speaker 86 Now he wants to make an amendment to that law, House Bill 27.

Speaker 55 What this bill does or seeks to do is to

Speaker 55 make that application retroactive so that I believe 33 individuals that are currently sitting on death roll as a result of override

Speaker 55 could be re-sentenced.

Speaker 42 Representative England says, we've all finally agreed that judicial override violates the constitutional right to a jury trial in death penalty cases.

Speaker 37 So we should go back and restore the jury's decision in the case of all those people who are only on death row because it took us 40 years to realize that back in 1975 we made a big mistake.

Speaker 55 Mr. England, I hear what you're saying, and I understand that an individual tried today would be subject to a different set of laws.

Speaker 55 And I've got you, but the individuals that were tried prior to the time we changed the law were subject to those

Speaker 55 laws that were in effect at that time. And the law that was in effect at that time allowed judicial override and these judges in their discretion overrode.

Speaker 67 Then comes this priceless bit of nonsense.

Speaker 55 Consequently, it's very difficult for me to

Speaker 55 second guess or in effect override that which the judge overrode.

Speaker 3 At this, there are lots of nods up and down the committee.

Speaker 45 This is is the Alabama peculiarity.

Speaker 63 I have southern friends who get mad, correctly, at the way northerners always bring up slavery, or get all worked up because people drive around with Confederate flags.

Speaker 16 But come on.

Speaker 45 This isn't a random thing.

Speaker 53 This is a characteristic.

Speaker 72 There is something in the psyche of places like Alabama that really, really, really doesn't want to address the consequences of past moral failures.

Speaker 55 Aye.

Speaker 55 Is there a motion to give this bill a favorable report? report?

Speaker 55 Thank you. And a second.
Okay, I think we've had plenty of discussion. You asked for a roll call.
Go ahead, Brandy.

Speaker 66 Maybe you see where this is going.

Speaker 70 They vote it down.

Speaker 33 There will be no overriding of the override.

Speaker 3 It seems really clear to me that John Forrest Parker didn't kill Elizabeth Sennett.

Speaker 32 He was back home in Florence when she received the stab wounds that killed her.

Speaker 13 He should never have been convicted of murder, but he was.

Speaker 45 And if he was going to be convicted, he should have served out the sentence given to him by a jury of his peers: life without parole, but he didn't.

Speaker 45 And once he was on death row, Alabama should have ended the practice that robbed him of a just result.

Speaker 90 But they didn't get around to it for over 40 years, and even then, they couldn't bring themselves to override the override.

Speaker 15 John Forrest Parker never stood a chance.

Speaker 72 Next time on the Alabama murders.

Speaker 53 This is how lethal injection actually kills you. It kills you by burning your lungs up.

Speaker 53 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.

Speaker 78 Is this too graphic?

Speaker 58 Look,

Speaker 96 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 I said, What's all the way?

Speaker 96 He said, Well, you know, if they're executions, 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.

Speaker 64 Revisionist History is produced by Ben Nadaf Haffrey, Lucy Sullivan, and Nina Bird Lawrence. Additional reporting by Ben Nadaf Haffrey and Lee Hedgespeth.

Speaker 39 Our editor is Karen Shikurji.

Speaker 46 Fact-checking by Kate Ferby.

Speaker 74 Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.

Speaker 85 Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence.

Speaker 70 Production support from Lou Clemond.

Speaker 13 Original scoring by Luis Guerra with Paul Brainard and Jimmy Bodd.

Speaker 74 Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Speaker 38 I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

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