Hey there, folks.
It is Monday, October twenty seventh, and tomorrow night, Florida is going to execute a man and it will be their fifteenth execution of the year. But this man is the first one to not even fight his execution date. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. And he is going to Robes die by lethal injection. And that is where we got some more disturbing news
about lethal injection out of Tennessee. All the stuff ties together, but there's a case in Tennessee of an inmate who died this year and what they call a botched execution by lethal injection in Robes this idea that possibly just how alive could he possibly have been after he was declared dead.
Yeah, there has been four years now so much focus and controversy surrounding lethal injection house states. Do it the chemicals or the drugs they use, the order in which they use them, And the question remains. It feels like still we're asking is it humane? Is it cruel and unusual? The way we're killing inmates on death row?
How can we ever know?
We right, we go buy what doctors tell us, We go buy research and a lot of people go by reactions, and that's the reaction to the person being killed, the reactions to the body. And in this case we're going to discuss at least in this episode, Robes, the one out of Tennessee, we actually heard from the inmate say out loud that he was in pain, so we will get into that. But in Florida, I mean, you can't make this stuff up. But the inmate there the execution this week. His last name is grim.
Yeah, Norman Merle Grimm, sixty five years old, again scheduled to die by lethal injection. It would be the fifteenth execution this year for Florida, which is a they call it a modern record at least the death penalty has been reinstated.
In nineteen seventy six since it came back, and then they had eight was there high before this, So they're up to fifteen they will be this week, and I think two more on the books for this year, so they will get up to seventeen if all goes as.
Schedules, So they will more than double their previous record of executions in one year.
Yes, far ahead of what we're used to seeing. In Texas. Texas has five this year. I believe executions, but Florida is that they just scheduled them all this year when drugs became available, and they just start putting them back on the books and they're seeing them through.
And this will be the forty first execution this year in this country. Grim will be or would be if it does in fact happen tomorrow, and it looks like by all accounts it will because, as you pointed out, he is not appealing this conviction. He's not proclaiming his innocence. He just said, let's do this basically.
Yeah, I mean it's not what you're used to seeing. I mean they're trying everything at this late hour, anything that sticks. And he just saved a whole lot of time and energy and money on a lot of people's parts by just saying, don't even give it an attempt. Now, Grim's And again we mentioned we've done several of these stories and sometimes details are in question and people question some of the witnesses and some of the evidence. This
is not one of these cases. And this was a really horrific crime that he was convicted.
Yes, it was described as brutal and merciless. I mean most murders are, but this one is actually puzzling too. And this is a guy who had a very long violent criminal history, but he murdered his next door neighbor who was an attorney, and it's a bizarre setup.
I'm sure you read all the details, babe, that she had.
Called police earlier in the morning because someone had broken her window, and he was over there with her with police looking at this broken window. And the police officer who came to the scene around five o'clock in the morning heard him invite her over to his home for coffee afterwards, and then she goes missing.
I didn't see how long was she missing.
Not very long at all.
So she basically they had she had an intern at her law office drop off something and her front door was open, he noted, and the car was in there, and he called out her name. She didn't answer. No one thought anything of it. A few hours later, when she didn't show up for work, they went by again and again her car was there, her keys were there, and she wasn't and so they called police and police went to question grim immediately, who said he didn't know
what was going on. But then he went out and police followed him because he said he had to go pick up his dogs. But they believe now what he was doing. Her body was in his trunk at that point, and he was able to lose the police officer like he knew he was being followed.
It's bizarre and dum.
The body over a bridge, which was then fished out of this body of water within hours by a fisherman.
And the condition of the body, it's pretty horrific stuff. They describe here. Had at least eleven stab wounds, and seven of those penetrated this lady's heart. And she also had wounds that were consistent with being struck repeatedly with a hammer. So this was some really really nasty stuff. But he was convicted of this crime and he had a chance. Earlier this month, he was asked the question
do you want to appeal? He said no, because if he had done so, it immediately triggers all of this court action that sometimes can slow things down, and it makes its way up and then you have to hear from the Supreme Court or where they take that whole thing. He skipped all that stuff and just said.
Nope, Well, I mean look, and he also not only was he convicted with a first degree murder and it was a unanimous decision to send him to death row.
But he also raped her sexual battery as well.
But when you start to look at Norman Grimm's history, it's appalling that he was even out just all of these other instants where he was accused of and convicted of accosting a fourteen year old girl, dragging her to a wooded area. She was managed to get free. He also like went after a woman who was living next door. She fought him off and he was But anyway, he had repeatedly gone after women violently and they just happened
to get away from him. But he was convicted of crimes and went to prison, but was just released and sadly it ended up in murder.
And so his I guess his his life of crime, and his I guess his story is going to end, and that book is going to be closed. We will see with lethal injection how this goes.
There have been.
Varying reports of how goes with this with lethal injection and how this is going to go. But lethal injection is being challenged in the state of Tennessee right now after there was what they are calling a botched a botched execution of Byron Black. Now, once you started listening to some of these details, it's pretty remarkable. But Byron Black was sixty nine years old with his execution was August fifth, and we call it an execution, but robes
at the time his attorney. His attorney flat out said he was tortured.
That's right.
So his electro cardiogram showed that there was sustained cardiac activity two minutes after he was pronounced dead, and the moment he was pronounced dead, according to his attorney, they the folks working behind the scenes, shut the curtain so they could no longer see if he was still in pain, if he was still suffering, if he had still any visible signs of life at that point. So they don't really know what happened once they shut the curtains pronounce
him dead. But we do know now he wasn't dead when they pronounced him dead.
There was a lot.
Now.
I tried to look this up to your point best I could, Like, what does the body do?
Right? Can you be pronounced dead and.
Have little flurries of electronic electric activity through the body. I don't know if they're a flutter or how sustained. Did they say this was? But this was entered as part of evidence as to why lethal injection should not be allowed and why it's cruel and unusual. Now, his crime at least will get this part out of the way. It's pretty horrific. So there's no question about this man's guilt or innocence, and that is not the question. The question is was it humane the way he was executed?
But he killed his girlfriend and her two daughters with the ages of nine and six. That's tough. So that is what he was convicted of. Now, over the years, now here he is. He's a sixty nine your old man and apparently in terrible physical condition.
That's right.
He had end stage kidney failure. He had congestive heart failure. So he actually had a defibrillator I can never say that right, defibrillator implanted in his chest. And he suffered from dementia, he was immobile, and his IQ was.
They say, extremely.
Low, an intellectual disability. So he had all of these issues, all of these ailments. And look, he did the crime. You do the time, and the time for him is punishment, and it's by execution. But a lot of people are arguing this was cruel and unusual. Now, you mentioned rome the defibrillator, and that is a big part of the cruel and unusual. Now, before his execution, his attorneys had been warning everybody that, hey, he has this heart implant that is supposed to monitor his heart in any time
there's irregularity. Was a dude, gives it a little shock, shocks you back, It wakes you back up and keeps the heart in rhythm. Hey, you're trying to kill him. This heart implant might try to keep trying to bring him back to life. It might try to keep shocking his heart, which could be extremely painful for him. So they went to court and asked for it to be
turned off. One judge said, yep, has to be cut off the state in an appeals and another court said, robes, yes, turn it off, but it's not a big deal that you do it, essentially saying we're not going to require that you do it, but knock yourself out if you can make it work. That was the instruction was, no, we're not requiring it, but if you can make it work with the schedule. So a hospital, according to the prosecutor, has agreed to come and turn off the defibrillator or
right before the execution within romes. Days ahead of time. That hospital puts out that statement that you see in front of you.
Wow, So here's what the hospital said. Earlier reports of Nashville General Hospital's involvement are inaccurate. The correctional healthcare provider contract contracted by the Tennessee Department of Correction did not contact appropriate Nashville General Hospital leadership with its request to deactivate the implanted defibrillator. Any assertion in the hospital would participate in the procedure was premature.
And with that, there was no one to turn off the defibrillator. So this man with all those issues we talked about, with the intellectual disability, with the physical ailments, with the heart condition, and yes, with this thing, it was not turned off, the suggestion being that maybe it could shock him back to life repeatedly. So the execution comes in romes. By many accounts of witnesses, this was awful, including the words I look, I've seen final words, and what are your last words?
That's one thing.
Yes, I can't remember reports of one in which during the execution the inmate was talking or set was trying to communicate something wild.
Dying Well, the thought would be that if the drugs were put in his system in the correct order, in the correct way, in the correct amount, you would be incapacitated. You would be asleep, you wouldn't be able to speak.
And that's why I would presume we don't hear people saying anything intelligible when they're in the process of dying, because they've been the first drug should have gone in and paralyzed their body, or at least put them to sleep so that they don't feel pain and they can't communicate.
You hit it exactly, and they say, mister Black should have been unconscious in a matter of seconds. Instead he was still conscious five minutes into his execution. And to your point, Robes, you would think someone wouldn't be able to come up with something to say to be understood at that point. But stay with us, folks. We will tell you what this man's not just his last words were, but his final plea was as he was dying.
Stay here, all.
Right, folks, welcome back.
We continue now with Byron Black, who was executed earlier this year, and Norman Grimm, said to be executed tomorrow by the state of Florida. Grim going to receive the same fate death by lethal injection that Byron Black did. Byron Black's execution called botched by many, his attorney calling
him tortured as he went through the process. And in Tennessee they are challenging now some of the processes and the protocols for going through lethal injection, calling them cruel and unusual, including in Byron Black's case.
Robes was just revealed.
As we said, the EKG showed that he was still his heart showed sustained cardiac activity after two minutes. But during that execution of Byron Black, he spoke and he let people know that's part of it, like how much pain? And then some judges have ruled in the path like you, there's going to be a level of discomfort. Nobody's going to be one hundred percent comfortable while they're being killed. But still, what level of pain is cruel and unusual?
And this was this was a I don't know how to describe necessarily what went down here.
Well, especially when you have experts in this area say that if the drug is used correctly and injected correctly, that you should lose consciousness within twenty seconds is what they have said. And so yes, five minutes, it's into it. He's moaning, he's saying, oh, it's hurting so bad. Like he was actually able to say those words out loud so that folks who were witnessing the execution could hear him say it and document it.
And then he was moaning in pain for five minutes. They said, that's not how it's supposed to work.
I don't believe. So they are challenging this in Tennessee. But again, rogues, we're going through now another execution. Again, there are we talk about this. We go back and forth, and we always say if there's a there's no question, if there's any question about guilt innocence, you should we should take a beat. There isn't a question about guilt or innocence in the Florida case. But now there's there are big questions about the methods.
Correct using because some of the Death Penalty.
Information Center, we've talked about how we've used a lot of their information, but they talked about how specifically in reference to what happened to mister Black and his execution, they say that of the two hundred autopsies of death row prisoners that's been done over the last several years, that study found that eighty four percent of those death row inmates had pulmonary edemas, which is basically when your lungs fill with fluid and it creates a feeling of
suffocation or drowning, and experts say that it actually they liken it to waterboarding, and so they say there's extreme pain. And so this is what's been happening to a lot of these inmates with lethal injection to the point where we have seen and obviously these studies have been out and headlines have been out there, we have seen prisoners in some states choose other methods of execution that seem horrific, like either nitrogen gas or firing squad.
Some are pretty quickly if they say, really that if somebody's aim is good, that that's a quick stopping of the heart.
Correct.
So people, I mean, obviously they're looking for the quickest and least painful way to die, and most inmates, it seems, are concerned about this lethal injection and it's been the thing is, it's been an issue for years now, and.
So the next thing is going to be an issue is nitrogen gas, which is being used more and more in particularly what Alabama, Alabama, I think is very prone to use that, but just something else we're keeping an eye on this week. I mean, after we get through this month, there are another fighting five or six on the books in November and getting us through the end of the year. Just it's fascinating to see at the pace that we're on this year robes and where does
it lead next year as well. But folks, for now, just wanted to hop on, give you that update. We'll continue to hop on as we see things that are of interest to us, that we think is our interest to you that you should keep an eye on as well.
For now, I'm TJ. Holmes along with Amy Black, doctor Auson