Hey there, folks. It is Tuesday, October fourteenth. Tonight, two inmates have been executed, making the thirty sixth and thirty seventh to be executed in the United States this year, and one of them maintained his innocence till the end. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ where we rogues. We've been covering this for several weeks, you could say months now, where the United States seems to be on a bit of a tear, you could argue, but an
uptick in the number of executions. Six were scheduled over an eight day stretch, two of them tonight.
That's pretty remarkable. And this has been a record setting year for Florida. I believe previously the largest number of executions in one year was eight. We're already up to number fourteen with more scheduled.
That is remarkable.
We're used to Texas, I guess, leading the way. You don't even have to look at statistics, and folks just understand that Texas usually leads the way, but Florida is way out ahead this year. Now, what happened tonight There was one execution in Missouri, another one was in Florida. I'll start just the latest on Lance Shockley. He is the one convicted killer out of Missouri, convicted of murdering a state trooper. He was denied clemency by the governor
on Monday. Courts have turned down all of his pleas to have new evidence. We'll get into that in a second. But he was turned down at every turn, and then finally the execution was at six o'clock local time at a correctional facility in Bonetaire, Missouri.
That's right, And it was on Monday that the Missouri governor announced his decision to reject Shockley's plea to stay the execution because he was trying to buy some time or his lawyers were saying that they wanted DNA testing to take place on I believe six key pieces of evidence. It wasn't available at the time of his trial, and so they wanted to be able to wait and see. They had a plea in a lower coat court or a file and a lower coat court that they were
waiting a ruling on. They wanted to stay the execution to be able to see if they could do some DNA testing to potentially exonerate their client. That, of course was denied, and so the execution went forward as planned.
Well. The other one that took Blake tonight was down in Florida. Samuel L excuse me, Samuel Lee Smithers. Samuel Lee Smithers is the name seventy two year old man convicted of killing two young women. Although his appeals rejected as well as attorneys had tried to make an argument that this was cruel and unusual even to be executing a seventy two year old man. But all those appeals failed. He was executed six o'clock eastern tonight at a correctional
facility near Stark, Florida. So these two cases we did get some details. I should mention at least about Smithers of what his day looked like. Said he got up at six thirty this morning. The correctional facility reported that he was He remained a compliant inmate throughout the day, but he had no visitors today, no family, no nothing. Also no spiritual advisor. They came by, but we got
word at least what his final meal. This is a I don't know if there's some just morbid curiosity here, but it's always fascinating to hear with folks order for their last metal.
I was just going to say the same thing.
I don't know why we always care, but we always report on it, and for whatever reason, I'm always interested in hearing what it was. But Smither's last meal was fried chicken, fried fish, along with apple pie and ice cream, and so he kept it simple. But yeah, spent the day alone by himself on what.
Was turned out to be his final day here on October fourteenth. Now, these two executions tonight, there's actually another one scheduled tomorrow, I believe in Mississippi, and then there's one on Friday in Arizona. So two more to go this week. Want to go back to SHACKLEI Shockley is the one who rose maintained his innocence throughout the details though this two thousand and five crime he's not just accused of, but he's been convicted of. Some of these details are pretty heinous, that's right.
So a jury, by the way, did unanimously convict Shockley for the death of Missouri State Highway Patrol Sergeant Carl Graham. And the jury convicted Shockley of actually stalking this sergeant, actually waiting for him at his home for hours for him to show up. And they say the motive behind his decision to murder this state trooper was that he was investigating he was investigating a case of manslaughter.
So he was investigating.
Shockli for manslaughter and in order, according to the evidence presented at trial, he was he killed the state trooper to try and basically stop the investigation into manslaughter.
Yeah, but the way they say he went about this, at least these details. He was at the house waiting for hours at this man's house. This wasn't some spur of the moment thing as far as these details that came out or a fit of rage. They say he stalked, He sat there for hours waiting on him to come home, and when he got out of his vehicle, shot him in the back. The guy's down, he goes and shoots him in the head. Now, these are the details that came out, and this is the guy who claims he's innocent.
And you could see given the details really of this crime, and when it's involving a state trooper, who's involving a law enforcement officer, a governor is not going to you better be damn sure with your evidence or there's not going to be a lot of tolerance for that.
His attorneys say, however, that the prosecution's timeline didn't work out, that there was no actual forensic evidence tying Shockly to the case. There was no eye witness accounts tying him to the case. However, some of the details in court were the vehicle he driving, I believe he had borrowed his grandmother's vehicle.
Some of the shell casings, they say, matched at his.
Uncle's house, So there was some actual physical evidence tying him to the crime. But his attorneys again were asking for some DNA testing to take place, just trying to at least have some sort of time or some window of time to try and get that evidence or at least that evidence looked at.
And they yes, you could argue, of course you should. You want to be sure. They were throwing everything at the wall, see if anything would stick here at this kind of late hour. Look, we covered another case recently where there was a lot of doubt and a lot of people were pleading to spare a man's life for different reasons. And the other cases even down in Texas. Robertson right, there's a stay of execution there because of evidence,
and there's right people making an argument for innocence. This isn't one of.
Those cases that has not been anything. They just want an opportunity to try and look at some new possible evidence. But yet there was nothing that was significant in any way, shape or form.
Something that was interesting though about this case.
Even though the jury unanimously convicted Shockley in the murder in Graham's murder, they were not unanimous in their decision to sentence him to death, So they were actually split between life in prison or the death penalty. And this is when the judge stepped in and made the decision and sentenced him to death. And you asked, actually, wait, there aren't many states where that's actually legal, And you're right.
Just two states, the state of Missouri and the state of Indiana, are the only two states in this country where a judge can impose a death sentence when the jury is split on the decision.
I didn't know that was even possible at all.
And Shockley just happened to be in one of those states where a judge is allowed to do that, and a judge did in fact do so. Also, the back down to Florida smithers the crime down there. This is pretty horrific. A double murder or what were the ages of these young women? I came around, I'm I'm sorry where I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, but young women that this guy brutally murdered and dumped their bodies, almost discarded them like trash in a pond
down in Florida. Now, this is not a case where he's hooting and hollering about innocence necessarily in this one. But this was a case I guess goes back to nineteen ninety five ninety six.
So this was actually really disturbing when you start to read what reportedly took place in what he was convicted of, but that the property owner where he was staying actually found him cleaning up a bloodied axe, and he said that there had been some animals in the area, but she certainly was very suspicious. And when police came to investigate, that's when they found drag marks where he had dragged the bodies of these two young girls and left that.
He said that they said that they were beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die. So that is just a horrific, horrific scene, but a double homicide. And when you look and you hear just the details of this crime, it is fairly sickening, to say the very least.
And again they tried all options here as well. They tried as much as they could and tried every option they had, but exhausted all appeals. So again Smithers also executed for his crimes. Now, we said this is a thirty six and thirty seventh executions in the country so far this year. That is the most we've seen in this country since twenty fourteen, I believe. Now that sounds like a lot roam, But historically you go back to nineties and around that time we're regularly doing forty fifty
sixty one. You even had ninety eight resecutions I think in nineteen ninety nine. So it seems like this is an uptick here in recent years. But I guess historically speaking, we're not necessarily knocking on the door some of those bigger numbers.
We're going back to where we used to be. And maybe it seems like making up for lost time.
Oh wow, And there might be something to that, folks. Yes, this isn't just an accident or fluke thing that's happening right now. There are reasons why there has been an uptick in the number of executions this year. We will explain why when we come back, and yes, it has something to do with Trump putting his signature on a
proclamation or right, folks, welcome back. We continue now on this evening of October fourteenth, in which two more inmates Death row inmates were executed this evening, one in Missouri, one in Florida. The one in Florida a twice a double convicted murderer, the other convicted of killing law enforcement officer in the state of Missouri. Now Roles, it seemed like we have been doing an awful lot of stories lately about executions, and yes, there have been more this
year than in previous years. Six were scheduled in an eight day stretch here in the US, or kind of right in the middle of that six scheduled. One of them, at least we know there was a stay. The one in.
Texas, Texas Robert Robertson.
So he had been convicted all those years ago for the murder of his two year old daughter, Nikki with shaken baby syndrome science which is now considered junk science.
There have been dozens of exonerations now that we know more about how infants can die in ways other than and that could mimic abuse, and so yes, because of those factors, he has finally received after several efforts over the last ten years by his lawyers, he has received a stay of execution so that he can present new evidence in his.
Case and we'll see where it goes from there. But he was supposed to be executed.
It's on the sixteenth, in two days, yes, so that would have been wow. We would have had executions Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of this week in the United States. So yes, there's one scheduled four tomorrow on Wednesday night, right, and then another scheduled on Friday in Arizona. But the numbers we're talking about, you go back to twenty fourteen, there were thirty five executions in the country, but after that, leading up to this year twenty fifteen, there were twenty eight.
Then after that twenty twenty three, twenty five, twenty two, seventeen, eleven, eighteen, those were pandemic years, so those were down then, and then twenty four executions, then twenty five last year, and now here we are at thirty five. And what is the number. I think somewhere around ten are still scheduled, maybe eight or nine still scheduled for the rest correct of this year, so that number is going to go up.
So why is it happening? I mean, part of this is, I don't want to say a backlog, but there was a stretch in which there was a difficult time in some of these states and getting the drugs they needed correct to actually carry out execution, and there.
Were a lot of concerns about cruel and unusual punishment. There were reports of seeing people physically appear to be or sound as if they were in pain while they were being administered these lethal injections, so much so that a lot of prisoners, upon hearing reports of that on
death row switched. Many times they can choose how they want to die, they were choosing, and they have chosen things like a firing squad or nitrogen gas because they're so afraid of or concerned about the reports surrounding lethal injections.
And then then we get reports of one of the firing squad things not working exactly right, they missed the target correct, and then something with the nitrogen the gas that was I don't know what was the report, and so something about that one as well. There's always something.
There's always something, and there is human error. I mean, Florida now is putting out exactly how it's carrying out its lethal injection. They say they have a three drug injection protocol. They use a set, a paralytic, and then the drug that stops the heart.
That's according to the Department of Corrections.
But they're trying to be transparent about how they go about of the order in which they use the drugs. Certainly, I witnessed an execution. I was twenty three, so what was that almost thirty years ago in South Carolina? And the man I saw die certainly appeared to be extremely uncomfortable, to the point where it was very difficult to witness and watch. So that was right around the time of those reports. And so yeah, we saw some states put a moratorium, some states just try to figure out what
the correct drug protocol is. And then yet people couldn't get their hands actual states couldn't get their hands on the correct to drugs because certain drug companies were stopping disseminating them in protests.
You pointed out just now you brought up a fascinating contradiction in a country where we have the death penalty, but we want to kill you as comfortably as possible, like we constitutionally we can kill you, but it's we violated a constitute rights if you are uncomfortable when we do. So what a country. I mean, that's just fascinating to think. I didn't think about it the way you put it. We're fighting and fighting and fighting to make sure we kill people.
But we mainly yeah, yes, without pain. I don't know if it's possible though, I mean, that's the thing. I do believe there is an attempt to do that, Yeah, and to do so, but it still seems like it's an extremely difficult thing to accomplish.
So yes, So that has helped, I guess contribute to I guess a bit of an uptick the other thing. Yes, several states are kind of driving this, and I think everybody knows them pretty much. Four states of the thirty five executions. If people are listening right now, which four states do you think you could probably name them before we even answer the question.
I think that three of them are very obvious. The last one might be a little bit. You could go between a few different states. CA. So I would have known South Carolina just because I reported and lived there, and that's where I witness my execution. They were known to be very tough on the death penalty. So yes, I think everyone would say Texas and Florida, South Carolina.
I wouldn't have necessarily gone with Alabama.
I would have thought it could have been Georgia, Louisiana, another Southern state, but I wouldn't have known Alabama.
That map is fascinating. They have those maps of where the death penalty and it is happening. All the southern states are lit up in northeast, nothing like what is it in only twenty I'm not gonna get my numbers right, but it's twenty seven and twenty three.
Twenty seven states have the death penalty, twenty three states do not. Yes, so we're I mean, that's a pretty big divide.
And even in some of the states that do have the death penalty, some of the governors sometimes put a moratorium on it and it's not being used even though it's on the books. But yeah, the other thing that contributed, I'd be honest with you, I don't remember. He had so many executive orders it was hard to keep her the president, but this was one he signed, right after getting into office. And I guess the title explains it.
Yes, signed January twentieth, twenty twenty five, that would be the day he was born into office. It's called restoring the death penalty and protecting public safety.
So there's a lot in there, but he's essentially directing the Department of Justice to enforce, to go after and every chance they can the death Penalon also directed them to support states in whatever way they can, including making sure drugs are available for execution.
Well, and it's interesting when you see him in this executive order pushing the capital punishment. He said that he wants the Attorney General to pursue federal jurisdiction and seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime involving number one, the murder of a law enforcement officer. Number two, a capital crime committed by and these are their words, an illegal, an alien illegally present in this country.
Wow. I didn't realize that, did you see that? And then.
Just kept giving example after example with those two stood out as to when and how and where the Attorney General should seek the death penalty.
Yeah, so this was some people took this and ran with it. Some people got the message, and maybe the Justice Department is being more helpful in helping states get execution dates planned and make sure they have the drugs their knees. So there are things that are attributing to this. But here we are two more inmates execute it on this night, and the week is not out. There are a couple more still scheduled.
Yeah, there's an execution scheduled in Mississippi tomorrow and one in Arizona on Friday, And certainly we will continue to monitor this. I mean, it's a historic year, and not in the way that I think a lot of folks feel great about. Some people might say it's about time. Others might feel really sickened to buy where we are again, I think we've said this before, but we are the only Western civilized country that still has legal executions, and yet our crime rates are among the highest in those
same Western civilized countries. So the deterrent factor of it is really up for grabs. And there's the moral debate, obviously, and there is a financial debate as well. It is significantly more expensive to execute a prisoner than to maintain them for life in prison.
I don't know if it's getting more attention. I actually don't know if people are having more conversations about the death pilding so many more serious things or excuse me, pressing things I should say in people's lives. Maybe they are more of these conversations going on about who we are. Man, we are, we are something this year with these executions, seems bizarre that we are just routinely killing folks.
But that's the United States of America right now in twenty twenty five.
Well, folks, we appreciate you. Just want to hop on on this evening, so I hope you're having a good one. We always appreciate you listening to us. I'm TJ. Holmes, man of my dear Amy Robot. Will talk yo soon.