Hello and welcome to another episode of Evolving Prisons with me. Kagan Carrie. If you want to listen to monthly bonus episodes, you can subscribe for only £3 per month by hitting the link in the show notes. Before we jump into today's episode, I'd be really grateful if you'd please rate the podcast on whichever platform you listen, as more ratings mean more people will discover the show. My guest today is Justin Jones.
Justin has worked in corrections in America for 47 years and was director of the Oklahoma Department of corrections for eight years. During his time as director, he oversaw 28 executions of people on death row. I had lots of questions for him, like, who is there when the execution takes place? How did watching these impact him, particularly since he doesn't believe in the death penalty? How did he get access to the drug required when pharmaceutical companies weren't providing it?
And if it isn't a medical professional or prison staff member who administers the lethal injection, then who is it? This is such an important conversation that raises awareness around the many different people impacted by the death penalty. I hope you find it informative. So, Justin, tell me, what took you into the world of corrections? Why did you decide to go down that path? Well, you know, getting into the world of corrections is like living life.
It just kind of happens when you least expect it. I really did not aspire when I was going to college to work in corrections. They happened to be on campus recruiting and it was a real bad economy and jobs that matched your degree in sociology were almost non existent. And so I listened to them and I filled out an application. And about eight months later I get this call to see if I wanted to interview for a probation parole officer.
I had another call the same day to be a social worker for another government agency. And I kind of thought, well, one of them required me to move and that was the correctional job. And I really wanted to get out of the environment that I was in. So I took it and I thought, this will be a good job for three or four years. And I stayed 37 years. So, wow. What would you say was the most memorable job for you working in corrections? I held a lot of jobs. You know, I was parole officer.
I was the director of our reception center where all newly sentenced people go through the correctional system. I was over a statewide probation parole. I was a warden. I did a lot of other jobs that I won't mention because I'm not sure the audience would understand what those are. I think probably the most satisfying job was my first one being a probation Parole officer, because you had a caseload and you worked with people.
And on any given day, when you were finished and went home, you knew if you did good or bad. You know, there was instant feedback. The people that you're working with, the clients, the pro leaves, the probationers. Just that social interaction, trying to help people was really probably the best of all those jobs. Even though being corrections director had its moments, it's good and bad.
And the political world was something that you're never really prepared for when you get into that top position. Okay, what would you say were some of the most challenging things of being the director of corrections? Well, I think politics, number one, trying to do a paradigm shift with the culture of corrections, you know, to show more respect for those that are in our custody. I think breaking up the level of professionalism.
And then you have the really concrete issues like your budget and running a correctional agency in Oklahoma, like most Southern states, you're the state's largest farmer, the industry that makes furniture for all the government agencies. We had our own meat packing plant. So, you know, those are things that you just have to learn once you get the job.
You have all this correctional background, but you're running an agency that farms 40,000 acres and produces millions of dollars of furniture every year. And so, to get back to your question, it's one of those jobs that can be really schizophrenic. One moment you're at the state capitol pleading your case for funding and services.
The next moment you're walking through a prison, and maybe that night you have an execution, and then the next day, you got to start all over like nothing ever happened, you know, and it's really difficult to package all of that in. Am I right in saying that you were a director for eight years? Yeah, eight years from 2005 through 2013. Okay. And as you say about executions there. So Oklahoma. Am I right in saying that it executes the most people per capita throughout the United States?
Yes. Texas being one of the larger states in the United States, per volume, they do more. But being a small state of roughly 4 million people per capita, we were number one and probably still are. I believe we have a pretty aggressive schedule in our state coming up over the next couple years. And why is that? Is it because of the crimes that are punishable by capital punishment? Or why do you think it is so high? You know, that sounds like a really easy question, so bear with me on this.
It's very complicated. First of all, we were one of the last states to join the union so we had territorial government. We were no man's land. We were going to be a Native American state until the government changed their mind and decided to give the land to immigrants, et cetera. And so you have that historical perspective of being a territorial government with a lot of outlaws, et cetera. And then if you fast forward, we are not a high crime state.
We are one of those states that's in what's called, in the United States, the Bible Belt. And so maybe it's an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth, but research would tell you the states that have the death penalty have the highest crime rates compared to states that don't have the death penalty. And research will also tell you that the death penalty is not a deterrent. And even though my heart goes out to victims, they're never whole again.
Because that becomes part of a chapter of your life, your grieving process. And having the person that victimized your loved ones die doesn't necessarily make you feel any better. After it's over with, there's this expectation that you're going to feel better, but it really doesn't happen.
So really, the only logical reason if you want to do some critical thinking to have the death penalty is revenge, where the government comes in and says, we're going to revenge this death by executing this other person. But in the states that have the death penalty, if you're the offender, it's kind of the luck of the draw. We have 77 counties in our state in Oklahoma, and it depends on who the prosecutor is. Are they going to try to prosecute you and get the death penalty?
Some counties are real aggressive and others aren't. We're also one of the states that you don't have to be the person, to use a phrase that pulls the trigger. You're not the one that actually killed the person. But you were there and you knew maybe it was going to happen, or you knew afterwards you can still get the death penalty. And so traditionally, the death penalty was reserved for the most horrific of the horrific. Your serial killers, your people that are sociopaths.
And I found that not to be true. You know, once I got to that level where I had to oversee 28 executions, and then, you know, the other prison population, and there's people that didn't get the death penalty, that if you're wanting to make things equal, you're going like, well, this person got 50 years because he got prosecuted in this county, or maybe turned evidence on someone else. This person didn't kill anyone, but he was with other people that did, and he got the death penalty.
And so you can see pure evil in any prison yard. But I really never saw pure evil on death row. Nobody that I thought I was afraid of or anything of that sort. That doesn't mean they weren't there. Of course, I've been out of that business for 11 years now. I remember the first time you said that to me. And I found that so powerful that you've seen evil, but it wasn't on death row. And I think that just highlights one of the major problems that we have with it.
And a lot of people are for the death penalty, and I think they must think that it is processed and done in a way where it is the worst offenders that are getting it. But if you're telling us that it isn't always, it can depend. Are you able to share. You might not be able to, but are you able to share an example of where you've seen somebody get the death penalty for a lesser crime than somebody who didn't? Yeah, absolutely. I guess the first one was the first execution that I had to oversee.
It was a young man that lived in a rural area of our state, a very rural area of our state. And him and some of his friends, they were like 21, 22 years old. They were out fishing and hunting and getting high, you know, drinking alcohol, methamphetamines and a lot of other things. And they came across a gentleman that had a really nice boat, and they were a little jealous of that, and they kept drinking that day. And they decided they would rob this guy and take his boat.
Well, once they robbed him and tied him up, one of the people that was with the person that was getting ready to be executed decided, well, he saw all of us, so now I'm going to kill him. So he shot him. So the person we were executing, you know, it's 17 years later, right? And his last words, I'll never forget those, was, I know I'm going to die, and I probably deserve to die. I beg forgiveness from the family. I hope it makes you better, but I'm not sure that it will.
But I want everybody to understand that I am not the same person that I was at 20 years of age, and I am going to die here in a few minutes. A better person than what I came in. I just don't have a chance to prove it to anyone other than the people that I work with. And what he was talking about was the staff. And then he turned to the staff and thanked them for being so respectful of him, etc. And then the execution took place.
It had such an impact on me that, you know, as we've talked before, I'm a novelist. I made. I took that incident as the beginning of my latest novel. Wow. And how many years ago was that that you. That happened and you witnessed that? Probably 2006 or seven. Yeah. Then we had 27 after that. And how frequently would those executions take place that you had to witness? Well, you know, I thought about that in preparation for being interviewed by you.
And if you just divide eight years into 28, there's roughly three and a half a year. So maybe every four or five months, some years more than others. You try not to focus on that because as I said earlier, you go down. We were doing executions at 6pm they're now doing them like at 10am in the morning. And there's a history. We used to do them at midnight. And there was a history behind that. And the history was, if you do it late at night, it'll get less attention, you'll have fewer protesters.
But what I found out is that people are so. I don't know if callous is the right word, but, you know, people are so immune to what's occurring in today's world that you could have it at any time of day. You really don't have protesters, you know, you don't have big crowds and things of that sort. And I also remember there would have been more executions, but we had three, I think. I think three during my tenure as corrections director that were exonerated.
And so, matter of fact, not when I was director, but there was a young man that when I was a parole officer, I was his parole officer. And he got convicted of a crime that he kept saying he was innocent of, and I believed him. But, you know, I'm just the entry level parole officer. And so if you fast forward about 12 years, you know, I'm still not corrections director yet. But he got a new trial, and the jury found him not guilty within less than an hour.
And he was one of those people that said, I was there. I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug addict. I was passed out in the backseat. I didn't know that the people with me had killed anybody until they came and arrested me. And he still got the death penalty. So the other three that I'm thinking of, they were exonerated simply because they weren't even at the crime scenes. So if you look across the United States and you look at the number of people that have been exonerated.
The odds are that we have executed innocent people in the past, and even people that. And some politicians that are in favor of the death penalty are currently in favor of a moratorium until we can figure out how not to execute anybody that's possibly innocent.
And also take the subjectivity and the racism, et cetera, out of it, because one of the things I failed to mention earlier when I talked, when you asked me about people that get the death penalty, it also depends on if you have a private attorney or a public defender or if you can make bail. It's just a matter of to get on death row just means that you struck out in every area that could possibly divert you from death row.
Mm. Do you think it's possible to live in a society where we never execute innocent people? I feel like that seems impossible. You know, I'm going to have to agree with you. You know, we could spend a lot of time just on that subject, but I would say it would almost be impossible. Absolutely. Now, there's a lot of appeal processes, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And some people have been exonerated, had exhausted all their appeals.
And then the Innocence Project, which is a nonprofit in the United States, somebody got a hold of the case, found some old evidence or evidence that was withheld from a jury and the prosecuting attorney. Many times it's not the same attorney that prosecuted the person that's on death row, but the current prosecuting attorney, which is an elected position, would look at it and say, well, we're going to dismiss everything.
And some of these cases had gone all the way through the Supreme Court and were upheld, saying, yes, this person can be executed. And then you find out later, sometimes within weeks of the execution, that they're innocent. So even the appeal and the appellate courts, they're just looking at what's presented to them. They don't go any further and look at additional evidence that nobody else has looked at.
That's why I think the Innocence Project and these nonprofits that really look at these cases are making a big difference. Absolutely. I completely agree. And the three that were exonerated while you were director, was it quite late in the game that they were exonerated? You know, it's kind of interesting. It usually gets quite a bit of attention because the attorneys are wanting as much publicity as possible.
And worst state, like a couple of others, that when people get exonerated, they've spent a majority of their youthful life or their adult life incarcerated, sometimes 25, 30 years or even People that are exonerated, that aren't on death row, like, got a life sentence to serve 50 years, and all of a sudden they're, you know, oh, oh, we're sorry, they're innocent. You find out that the states have passed laws to put a cap on how much reimbursement they can give that person.
I can't quote those caps to you, but that's a fairly new phenomenon. Like, oh, we're getting so many people, not necessarily on death row, but we're getting so many people doing a huge amount of years. And then we find out they're innocent, but we've taken 40 years of their life. And we can't just keep fighting these lawsuits and paying out hundreds of millions of dollars. So they legislatively cap it.
Wow. I don't know much about it, but there's a similar incident in the UK where people are not getting the money they're entitled to. There's an Innocence Project who managed to get a man out of prison who was innocent but spent 17 years in prison. And I don't know about his situation now, but I know that even a few years after being released, he was on benefits and struggling to get by because he hadn't received any compensation yet.
Yeah. In addition to that, when you think about, you know, say I'm an offender and I've got a 20 year sentence and I do my time as I prepare to leave prison, I get services, I get reentry services, I'll get guidance on where to get my driver's license renewed. And, you know, I might have nonprofits coming in that or even government agencies coming in with housing. And we try to do everything we can to reduce the possibility of reoffending and recidivism. But if I'm exonerated, I just walk out.
The court documents come and they release me. I don't get any benefit. So hopefully I've got a family that still cares about me. You find a lot of times that the family members that really cared about the individual that put resources on their canteen and things of that sort are now deceased, you know, and they walk out and become homeless sometimes. Wow. And why is it different? Why do they not get the same support as somebody who actually was guilty?
I think maybe because it happens so quickly. When they're exonerated and the court says you're free, sometimes they don't even report back to prison. They're taken to court from prison in handcuffs and then they're released. So that happens. And the other way happens too, where I'M in prison. And they come to me and say, hey, you won your appeals or you've been exonerated. The prosecutors are not going to retry you. We're just waiting on the court documents.
And maybe that's two or three or four days. But, you know, reentry starts if they know I'm going to discharge in six months or a year. People start working with me if I'm, if I'm a prisoner. And is that across the United States or is that just in Oklahoma? I think it's fairly consistent. You know, the quality can be debated, but I think it's a major trend across the country and has been for a couple of decades now. Okay, so as director, obviously you, you had to witness executions.
Was that part of your duty, or did you just choose to do that because you felt a sense of duty? It's interesting. That's another good question. In statute, I'm responsible, period. I could have delegated my attendance. But what kind of leader would you be if you're asking people to do the ultimate sacrifice of a public servant and you're asking your correctional officers and many of your staff, who are the lowest paid in government, to take a person's life and you not be there?
So I guess I could have delegated it, but then I might also have to get that cleared through my governor or I've worked for several governors, so I would attend each one of them because I'm responsible. And we would practice all the time. And the mechanics of the governor's office being online. And then I don't think people understand how many staff are involved. It's not just the staff that are in the execution chamber.
It's the staff working with the victim's family, it's the staff working with the soon to be executed family and the staff that work on death row. So there's a lot of, lot of people involved, a lot of staff involved. And if you care about your staff, you need to be there with them. Yeah, so that's the thing. I know so little about the workings of the death penalty, and so will my listeners. So tell us a little bit about that.
So you have staff working with the victim's family, the offender's family. How does that work and what kind of work are they doing and how many of them might there be? Well, I'm going to go from memory now. You have to understand now, I've been gone from that business for 11 years, and I'm sure protocols probably have been tweaked and changed and things of that sort.
But we have a victim witness coordinator that starts working with the family and the attorney general's office once a execution date is set and it looks like it's going to happen. And then you have the staff on the units that start practicing and training and talking to the offender and allowing the offender's clergy to come in. You got staff that are contacting the soon to be executed family, rehearsing protocols with them, where they're going to sit, what they can and cannot do.
When can they have their last visit, When's he gonna. When's he gonna have his last meal? And then you've got the people that coordinate all the guests that are coming. Because in most states, you know, the prosecutor can witness the execution. You'll have. We used to have lotteries for the media because so many media wanted to attend, but that's not the case. Before I left, we weren't doing media lotteries. If the media wanted to come, we would let them come.
And then you've got the chief law enforcement, the geographical area where the person was prosecuted. The victim's family can bring a counselor, they can bring their clergy, et cetera. And then as director, I could allow guests at my discretion. Those might include a legislator that's over the corrections committee. You know, it could include. We had media requests from other countries and I could allow that if we had room. And then there's practice about what goes wrong.
What if a victim's family stands up and decides to show some emotions or vice versa? What if the soon to be deceased family, you know what happens if the execution goes wrong because we were using intravenous drug execution. So what happens if the vein collapses and we have to have a contract doctor who doesn't do anything but pronounce death? And then we have executioners because a lot of people don't understand. The staff don't actually inject the drugs into the IV lines.
And you have people volunteering to do that. They have to be vetted. And then you have to have either a phlebotomist or what we call emergency tech, EMT that comes in to place the lines in the person's veins. You gotta have a backup vein. And you could even practice, you know, making sure the electronic blinds open for the viewing area when it's timely, make sure the microphones are working.
Security is a big deal for us because the entrance to death row is part of the compound structure, which means that you don't have to enter the prison to get into death row. It has Its own separate entrance and it's in a rural area. So we would have to put people out in the rural area to make sure there's not a sniper 400 yards away and those kind of things. And search everybody that comes in, search cars that come in that night.
And then afterwards there's the media, the politicians that are there that won't want to do interviews. They're separating the victim's family from the executed person's family and getting them all out safely. And dealing with all the emotions that come from everybody that's involved is pretty challenging sometimes. Yeah. I have so many questions based on what you've said, but let's start with that one. So the emotions, I can't imagine what that must be like.
Do you find that the person who has been executed, their family's emotions are a lot more pronounced than the victim's family? I don't know if the emotions are more pronounced. They're certainly different emotions. I recall a grandmother of the soon to be deceased standing up very frail and touching the glass of the chamber. And my staff were so good that evening about how gently they talked to her and put an arm around her and convinced her she needed to sit down and all the crying there.
And I think on the victim side, and this is not every case, I mean, I can't dissect every emotion in every case, but I think in general you have some of them feel relief, but they will also tell you it wasn't as much relief as they were anticipating. Some of the victims families are angry because maybe their loved one died a very painful death. They suffered.
And when you watch an execution, if it goes correctly, person is falls asleep and then stops breathing within four or five minutes and you don't notice that there's any pain or not. And so they didn't like that. There's a lot of emotion and there's anger. There's those stages of grief we've all heard about and read, educated ourselves about. I think both sides rapidly go through all the stages of grief in about an hour.
And there was one execution where the victim's family and the soon to be executed families were all the same family and they were split. And so the family, you had those that were angry at the other side of the family, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And there was a large commotion toward the end that we had to get involved in, especially when the soon to be executed gave his last two minutes of words. So because we always tell them, you got two minutes.
If you get vulgar or say something inappropriate. We're just going to start the execution. If you're talking at the end of two minutes, we will tell you it's time and you'll need to stop or we'll go ahead and start. There must be so many emotions, as you say, about the one where it was the same family.
So obviously the crime was committed within the family, and it must be very difficult for the family to kind of process that and move on when presumably some of them were in favor of the death penalty and some of them weren't. You see that sometimes, because the average stay on death row from being received from the courts with a death certificate to the actual death penalty is an average of about 17 years. And if you ask, why does it take that long?
Well, you have all these automatic appeals and appeals on top of appeals, and offenders can waive some of those appeals if they're ready to die, but they can't waive them all. So you can have somebody executed within five, six, or seven years. But what happens is a lot of times some of the victim's family are children. They're in their adolescent stage. And then you fast forward 17 years and sometimes longer, you know, 20 years.
And that decision was made for them by their parents, their grandparents, and maybe they're opposed to the death penalty now. And that has happened. Just because I'm a family member and I'm opposed, it's not going to change anything. So you have families that are somewhat divided by that. I have worked with prosecutors at the sentencing phase where they'll tell families, we can go for the death penalty. Is that what you want? And they'll say, yes.
And then they will explain to them, okay, let's fast forward 15, 16, 17, 20 years. The children are 5, 6 years old. Are you going to want them at 15 or 16? Are they going to go to the death chamber and watch this? You know, sometimes people will change their minds. Other times, prior to the sentencing stage, the family will be split. I've seen that where the husband, say, the person that was killed and the sister are opposed. One wants the death penalty.
And 1. I see that occasionally during my tenure, you do have families that differ. And you'll have families that refuse to attend for the sin to be executed. You'll have family members that refuse to attend for the victims because they don't believe in the death penalty. Yeah, this is a personal question, so feel free not to answer. But if you personally are opposed to the death penalty, how do you work in a job like that?
So either Feel free to answer yourself or colleagues that you can think of. How do people rationalize it with themselves to be part of a system that they might not agree with? It's a tough question. I remember you asked me my first job. So I'm preparing to be interviewed for my first job out of college with the Department of Correction as a probation parole officer. And the people that recruited me on campus came by and they said, look, Justin, you're going to go in this room.
There's going to be a lot of people in there, but there's one question you got to say yes to. They're going to ask you if you believe in capital punishment. And if you say no, you will not be hired. Now, this was 1977. So I sat out in the hallway waiting to be called in, and I thought, well, I never really gave it much thought. I've never known anybody on death row. You know, I'm 21 years old, soon to be 22, just got married. And I guess I was naive. Like most people.
You don't really pay attention to the death penalty and executions unless you're involved in it. So I just, like anyone else, I just assumed, oh, that's the worst of the worst. Every serial killer I've ever read about anything out of a Shakespearean play, these are evil people. And so I went in and said, sure, I believe in capital punishments. Plus, I wanted a job. And so maybe I prostituted myself, I don't know. But it became an evolution for me.
And I think the death penalty for somebody as young as I was at the time, if we'll go back and refer to that pro Lee, I had, who was convicted and got the death penalty, then got exonerated. That had an impact on me because I thought, I know this guy. I've been working with him for three or four years. I believe him. How could he get the death penalty? So I started paying attention.
The prosecutor in his case was famous for getting a lot of death penalty cases and also famous for getting a lot of death penalty cases overturned. And so, you know, you fast forward. I was warding at facilities that didn't have death row. So I still kind of, you know, I'd read, oh, we killed somebody last night. Just going about my business. And then, and this is 1995, we had the Oklahoma City bombing, which I guess most of your audience would know about that.
And my best friend was killed in that bombing. And of course, Timothy McVeigh was executed. He wanted to be executed. And that was the federal government executing him. That was an awakening for me because, you know, I love my friend dearly. I did a eulogy for him. I could care less if Timothy McVeigh was executed. As a matter of fact, I didn't want him executed because I knew what prison was like, and for him to get up every morning and be told what to do for the rest of his life.
And plus, he wanted to be a martyr. You know, he wanted to be executed for whatever cause he thought he believed in. But me, personally, in my emotions, I went from being numb to, it would be better if he didn't get executed. And then when I was being interviewed by the governor at the time for corrections Director, who was a Democrat, I worked for Democrat and Republican governors, he asked me, do you believe in the death penalty? And this time, you know, I'm older.
You know, I'm 50 now, at that time. And I said, I don't. And so I figured I just blew my job. And he says, well, I don't believe in it either. I said, okay. And then he explained to me, very intelligent person. He says, it's the law, and sometimes you have to follow the law that you don't necessarily believe in, so you can do good in other areas that you do believe in.
And for me, growing up in the 1960s, my interpretation was, if you want to change something, you can stand on the outside and protest and yell and join organizations to fight the system. But if you could get in on the inside, you could probably do a better job of changing the system from the inside out instead of from the outside in. So that's how I interpreted that conversation. So the governor and I both walked away with the understanding, we got to do this. Let's make no mistakes.
Let's do it with respect and dignity and treat everybody who's collateral to an execution, all the victims on both sides, take care of your staff. And if it looks like there's a chance that the execution could not go correctly, we had an agreement that I would stop the execution or not proceed or not even initiate it, because in our statute, I was allowed. That said, if you don't have the resources, the Director of Corrections could suspend an execution. And resources is a broad term.
An extra vein is a resource. The pharmaceuticals, they have a shelf life. You have to compound them. If we had any doubt, we could just stop it. And I had that freedom during his tenure, so. Wow. And what other responsibility did you have over the death penalty as director? Or was your sole responsibilities to be there and be able to suspend it if you didn't have the resources, certainly. Be there for those two reasons. Be there for support.
You're sitting on the front row of the viewing chamber. You're not actually in the chamber. There's just a couple of. It's like a meter from the last seat to glass seat, and I'm right up against the glass. So you have the phone in the back to the governor's office on one side of you. You got the phone that goes into the death chamber. So when everybody's seated, the blinds are closed and you don't know what's going on in the death chamber at all.
And so you know, my role was to ask the governor's office any last minute appeals. Shall we proceed? Give that phone to a staff member. Take the other phone call into the death chamber. The warden is there and tell the warden that you can proceed. And as soon as I say that the blinds come up and you see the person on the gurney with the IVs in them. You see the IVs coming out of the closet. That's where the executioners are with the syringes. And there's a deputy warden in the closet.
You got a chief of security in the corner for security purposes. You got staff sporadically, you know, involved with the audience. And then you got a doctor who's a contract doctor. It doesn't work for me. And all their job is, is to pronounce death. And so you got to make sure all those people know what they're doing. Make sure you got the good contract.
Make sure that you're using executioners who are, who have been vetted and they're there for whatever the right reason is, that they're not going to do something stupid. And that's the process. And then you have staff out in the hallway available and waiting, and everything's synchronized. And then you have staff that are timing everything from the time you leave the warden's office to get in the vehicle to drive around to death row.
They count the steps, how long it takes to go through security, how many people are with you. Because the last thing you want is an execution not to start on time because the director is not there. So it's kind of interesting. They count the steps, they count the seconds. It's like Big Ben, you know, it's just going to start, it's never going to be off. I'm assuming Big Ben is never off time, but you know, it's always going to be right at 6:00 when the blinds come up.
And what is the reason for that? Just to do. They just need everything to run like clockwork for a specific reason. It really is, it's a mindset. You know, the synchronicity of it, the protocols, it makes everybody. I mean, there's high anxiety with everybody. No matter what they look like on the outside, they're churning on the inside, all the staff. And so they know exactly the synchronicity and they know if it's going right or wrong.
And if they see everything falling in place within seconds as we do these check off lists, they're more comfortable. It helps with the anxiety. You wouldn't want to do an execution and have staff think, oh, well, here comes the director. Oh, he stopped in the hallway to talk to somebody. You know, we're going to be five minutes late. Oh, he's chatting on the phone to the governor's office. They're talking about the football game or the soccer game.
You know, you don't want to do any of that because, you know, you got all these people waiting, all the victims and soon to be deceased victims of those up front. And then you have another glass and then you have the victims of the crime, the surviving victims behind you and you have the two separated. So you can imagine the anxiety in the room. If it's 6 o'clock and nothing's happening, can you just imagine the sweat pouring off of people? Because during my time it was not air conditioned.
So tell me about the executioners. When we first chatted, that was something that you really dispelled a myth for me where I thought it was prison staff and that they had been trained by a doctor in how to do it, but that's not right at all. So tell us how that process actually works. Who's doing that? You know, there may be some states that have professional medical people do it, you know, or staff that are trained to do it. The states I'm more familiar with, they use volunteers.
And there are a lot of people willing to volunteer to take that syringe and take the training to properly put the syringe in the iv. But you also have a medical tech in that closet where the IVs are running through holes in the closet door into the death chamber so people can see the IVs. And you'd be surprised. A lot of people would think after I said something like that, that the volunteers, or are people that kind of unsavory that just want to watch somebody die?
No, they're very well educated people and just people that firmly believe in the death penalty and they might believe in revenge. And they're doing their part for their government. So we never had any problems with volunteers. And then of course they're trained to do it right. And we have people that are there in case they forget or something goes wrong. And then I didn't mention this earlier, it gets into a lot of detail. But then you got to protect those people.
So there's this whole James Bond process of bringing them into the facilities so nobody can see who they are and then getting them back home again so nobody can follow them and find out, hey, who was that person? You know? And you can't see them, can you? While they're doing it, they're behind a curtain. Did you see? Right. And then when the execution over with and the curtain is closed, they stay there till there's a. Till we give them the clear light.
And then there's hoods put over their heads and they're marched out. So the staff don't even know who they are except for the staff that are in there with them. You and I talked about the secrecy behind the pharmaceuticals. We would use the petty cash fund and not invoicing. We never used the major pharmaceutical chain stores.
We would use small family owned who needed the business and we would pay them in cash because if people found out who was selling the pharmaceuticals to us to do the execution, there might be damage to them, they might get injured, they might get their store vandalized, etc. And so two things.
As director I told never tell me when you get your pharmaceuticals and never tell me who the executioners are because I'm the one that's going to have to testify if there's an appeal or something goes wrong. And I want to be honest about it, if I take the witness stand, I don't know who these people are. I can't identify. And this might be a silly question, but why, if there's a medic in there anyway, why isn't it the medic that does it? Why do they have a volunteer?
You're a medic and you are trained and I don't think you take the oath as a doctor does, you know, first do no harm. But it would go against all their training. Their training is to help preserve life and all of a sudden you're going to take a life. And I don't think their employers would appreciate that. Just like the doctor in the room, if something goes wrong, they can choose to help to save the soon to be deceased if something went wrong but they're not participating.
All they do is get up and pronounce death. And that's interesting within itself, because there was one occasion, you know, the drug cocktail affects people differently. It's kind of like I've had some surgeries. I had woke up in all my surgeries at some point and looked around and said, what's going on? Right. I just. That kind of person. And we did have one person that was not obese. Nothing unique about them. And the person went into the coma. I couldn't see any breathing.
The doctor gets up, goes examine the person, and sits back down. Now think about that. It never happened with us before. The doctor always turned and pronounced death. He didn't pronounce death. So everybody just starts sweating. And you could hear a pin drop. And you can see the eyes of my staff. They're in the death chamber. Like they're just like frozen and freaking out. A few minutes later, Dr. Gets up, he takes his flashlight out, he looks at the pupils. He sits back down.
This happened three times over about five or six minutes before he pronounced death. And again, everything was synchronized according to protocols. The drugs, once you compound them, have a shelf life that's pretty short. Everything was within guidelines, the dosage. And it's just. There's no explanation on me waking up during surgeries, and there was no explanation for this, so. And both veins were good. I mean, there was no. Nothing wrong.
I mean, I wish there was an explanation, because I remember when you told me that you'd woken up during surgery. And that stayed with me since you told me that, because that is. That is terrifying. And in this situation, then, have you seen other people react badly to the drugs, or was this the only occasion where you witnessed that? It was really the only occasion. There was a huge mishap after I left, and I guess it got international attention.
And there was a moratorium put on by that governor that lasted three or four years. They just put a moratorium on it. So we're not going to do this again until we investigate what happened, et cetera. Now, we did have one occasion where we had a vein and a backup vein and everything was going well. And remember, I'm right up on the front row, so I can see certain things that maybe people behind me can't. And I saw the vein start getting larger and larger, the size of a. Bigger than a golf ball.
And I thought, oh, my God. I knew we had the other vein going. So I knew it. The person wasn't going to suffer, but just the grossness of if that vein exploded and blood got on the viewing room. And I'M not a praying person, but I did that night. But no, we never had any other mishaps. We never had to. Unlike what you see in old TV movies, everybody got on the gurney without any assistance. Nobody fought us. Some people had some interesting last words.
And there's a tradition on death row because the execution chamber for us is not unlike a lot of execution chambers in the United States. It's right on death row and it's separate, but you can still hear things on death row. So if the inmates on death row respected you at the time of your execution, they would start banging their feet on the floor and banging the door to say goodbye.
If there's dead silence, then they just don't care about you and you were not one of them and they don't have any respect for you. So there was a couple of times there was silence, but most of the time they gave their person a good send off. And how did you feel at the time? Did you feel any certain way when right before it was happening, you were hearing that noise from the other prisoners?
I think the first time, I was surprised how loud they could be because you know some pretty good acoustics. And you're on the unit, but you're not on the run where the cells are. So I was surprised how loud you could hear it. And, you know, once they reach a certain crescendo, they just stop. It's almost like we reach this octave, this decimal point of sound, and now we just stop. And it's interesting how they kind of coordinate that.
I think for me, the silence was kind of the interesting thing, you know, just dead silence. Nothing coming from death row on a couple of people. So. And I remember you saying that you remember the last words of every single person that was executed, which I think speaks volumes about the impact that it does have on people who have to be part of this. Was there any. You said that you heard some interesting ones.
Was there any others, apart from the one you shared earlier, that have stuck with you? They stick with me for different reasons. Right. One person, and we couldn't prove it or disprove it, allegedly was doing Viking chants, whatever that may or may not be. I guess he was a druid, you know, he studied and worshiped and he didn't get any send off by his fellow inmates. So for two minutes we had to listen to something that we didn't know what he was saying, you know, and that was different.
And one guy, you know, we said, you got two minutes, and he just turned and says, fuck everybody. I'M ready now. And then the guy I spoke about earlier that had been shot after the commission of his crime, you gotta understand, this was probably about 2010. And if you know anything about political history in Oklahoma, Richard Nixon. So he started talking like, Richard Nixon was still running for office back in the 60s against Kennedy. So the warden told him he had two minutes.
So he starts talking about the election from like 1962 or something like that, you know, and he started rattling about that, and then he threw in Obama. And he's just talking. And so at the end of two minutes, the warden says, Mr. So and so. We always use Mr. Very respectful. Said the two minutes up, we got to let the execution begin. And the gentleman turned to the warden and says, execution? What the hell is that all about? He didn't even understand he was getting ready to be put to death.
And that was very sad. Very sad. And then the last one, because there's so many. There were a lot of people that quoted scripture and whether I'm right or wrong, after a while you get a sense for is it real or not? But how they do it and what they say. A lot of them ask forgiveness. A lot of them prayed. A lot of them would look at the surviving victims of their victim and say how sorry they were and that. And a lot of them said, I know I need to die. I was a bad person.
Kind of like that first young man. But they would say, you know, I'm not that person anymore. I just. I hope you can understand that. One guy, he said he was innocent and he had killed a child. And there was no doubt about his innocence. There's just no doubt at all. But he mentally wasn't very. Let's just say his chronological and biological ages didn't match up. And so you had other children of his in the audience for and against him.
And his last words was, he started talking to the victim, the deceased young boy, who was probably 9 or 10 years old, and saying, I'm going to come to heaven and we're going to be together forever. And let me tell you, that set off a firestorm. That was a difficult one right there, I bet. And did you. Do you. Did they all seem quite calm? Because when I think if you were about to be executed, I can't imagine how scary that must be. Did they seem worried at all?
No, not one of them seemed scared or worried. Put yourself in that situation, you don't know when you're going to die. So you probably worry about that as you get older. It's like, okay, the average woman lives to be 78. I'm 76. When's it going to happen? And you start thinking about death after you turn 60. I've been there. I know this. But if they tell you at 6:00 on a Friday evening, September 28th, you will die. And you're told that six months ago, you're ready.
You may not want to die, but I really can't say how many people accepted the medication. You can get a calming pill. Very few of them took it. They didn't need it. A lot of them, hardly anybody took the full two minutes. You know, they might say a prayer, ask for forgiveness, thank the staff for treating them so well, which happened a lot. And then they might thank their grandparents for being there or their wife for being there.
And then they'll turn to the warden, says, I'm ready now, because they don't want to wait any longer. Like if they got 30 seconds left and they're not talking, they don't want 30 seconds to quiet, which was interesting. But I want to reiterate. We never had to force anybody on the gurney, lay down, we strap you in and we go from there. Oh, what happens after? So when it's done, what's the atmosphere like and what's the next steps? Well, the blinds close immediately.
Once the doctor says, declares death, the warden looks at the clock and announces the times, because everything's recorded and it's, you know, it's logged. The blinds go down and then the staff in the hallway come in. I told you about all that staff in the hallway. And they start escorting people out to where there's probably one staff member for every two visitors.
Some visitors are taken out one way, you know, like the victim's family, the person that's executed, their family go out a different way. And then we might have a judge, a prosecutor, law enforcement. They come with me. We take them back to the staging area. At the warden's office, there's a conference room. If anybody wants to talk to the media, you know, the media is set up for that. You know, sometimes politicians want to get in front of the camera.
Other times, you know, the victims may want to say something. But a lot of times, other than the politicians or maybe the sheriff or something, nobody really wants to talk to the media. That was probably at least 50% of the time the victims didn't want to talk to anybody. Now, I used to talk to victims.
Months afterwards, they might call me and ask me questions and express anger, you know, that it, you know, the person didn't suffer or just to tell me, you know, I don't feel any better, I still miss my child. Then we have that conversation about everything good and bad that ever happens to you becomes a chapter in your book of life. And it's always, you're always. Got it. I've lost family members, and my grandfather used to say, if you live long enough, everybody's an orphan.
And we kind of have these conversations. And I would offer some of our counseling staff if they needed it, or things of that sort. So. And who would be responsible for putting the drug together? Because I remember you telling me that it comes to you or to the Department of Corrections, and it's not yet. Been put together, it's not compounded yet. We didn't store it. It has a certain shelf life. And the day of, we would start working with the pharmacist who has it in stock.
We've already paid for it. It's compounded by a pharmacist and the ones that require compounding, etc. And then it's brought to the facility within the timeframes recommended by the producers of the drugs. Now, you and I talked before. At first it wasn't difficult to get the pharmaceuticals, and then it became really difficult. And I was required as Corrections director to pick up the phone and call my peers in contiguous states or across the country to see if they had any that I could borrow.
And I guess internationally, there was news about some states in America going to India ordering it from foreign countries. I never did that, but I did borrow. Well, I guess you can never get it back. But I did accept drugs from other states so we could do some executions. And was that because I read. Is this right? It's because some pharmacies didn't want to be involved in killing people.
Yeah, not only pharmacies, the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs, that was not their intended use. And so if they thought of pharmacy, you couldn't buy directly from the companies, the pharmaceutical companies, but if they thought a pharmacy was buying it for that use to turn around and sell it to us, they wouldn't sell it to the pharmacy. And how did working on Death Row impact the staff and you?
So I know there are two different conversations, but I want to know how it impacted you and I want to know how it impacted the staff, because I imagine some of the staff who had to watch the execution had also worked with these people for years and seen them change and seen some of them turn their life around. You know, in a perfect world, you would rotate your staff off of death row so they wouldn't get too accustomed to the people on death row.
But reality is, and traditionally and probably in most countries, prisons are relatively old and they were built in rural areas, not metropolitan areas. So you have a limited workforce or you got second and third generation correctional staff and because it pays so little, you have a high turnover rate. So it's almost impossible to have the perfect world where I can rotate staff every six months and et cetera.
So you're right, the staff do see where inmates have made a change and some staff depending upon if the administration allows them to, like in our state, the inmate can request clemency from the governor and the pardon pro board. So first you got to get a positive vote from the pardon pro board, a majority vote, and then you got to go to the governor who has the final authority they can grant you clemency.
And so you even have staff writing letters for people on death row to the pardon pro board and to the governor saying, Look, I've been doing this for 30 years, I've worked death row last year. I know this guy and he's the real deal. As they say in prison, sometimes everybody finds Jesus in prison, but they lose Jesus as soon as they get out. If they're Christian and this person's the real deal.
Or you also see some of the most horrific childhoods, unspeakable childhoods, that you would say, that's got to be fiction. You know, nobody could have a childhood like that. And so that's used to look at their childhoods and stuff. When you do a clemency packet to go to the governor and the pardon pro board saying, yeah, the person committed the crime and this is no excuse, but look at this and then look at them now. They've done everything.
No misconducts, they've done no assaults, they never joined any security threat groups or anything like that. They're respectful, they volunteer to do whatever they can do and they've done it for such a long time, it's not to get off the death row. But if you're going to grant clemency, here's some things to look at. And staff get involved in that also. But yeah, it's tough. It's really tough.
And being paramilitary and being in uniform, you don't share your feelings, you just take it home with you. You know, it's just kind of like law enforcement officers have the highest divorce rate, highest suicide rate. Same thing with correctional officers, high alcoholism, anything to self medicate to address it. And for me Personally, I always tried to go down by myself. It's a two hour drive from my home to the execution chamber. I tried to go by myself. And I had.
I had certain mixed CDs and stuff. Back in the days when you had CDs you didn't have streaming that I would listen to before and after. But there were occasions where politicians would say, you know, Justin, I'm over your corrections Committee, I'm over your funding. I want to ride with you to the execution. And I really hated those times because I couldn't be alone. I couldn't process what happened on the way back. You know, I had my set list. That kind of calmed me down a little bit.
And then sometimes those politicians on the way back, they were excited about what they saw. They saw it as a good thing. They couldn't wait to text people about their experiences and. Or they wanted to stop and eat on the way back. You know, I think, who wants to eat after watching this? You know, or they'd be on the phone all the way back, calling other legislators, talking about what a thrill it was to see this person die.
I had politicians tell me they wanted to see an execution, but they really wanted to see the really worst of the worst inmate die because they thought they would enjoy it more. That is very interesting. So you said earlier that you have to train for these things. And again, I've been so naive about the death penalty, I didn't know that you had to train for it, which is silly because it's such an important thing. It makes sense that you would have to.
But I know that you talk about this where you talk about the impact on staff wellbeing of having to be part of that. And it is that repetition where you're going through this a lot. So for one inmate who is going to be executed, how many times might you have to prepare for that? Wow. You know, I've never been asked that once the appeals are exhausted, a date has been set for that particular inmate. It starts immediately and it might be six months out.
So you're doing something almost every day now. You and I talked when we wrote the letter to our Attorney General asking for them to spread out the execution dates, and he agreed with that.
That was mainly for staff's benefit because the previous Attorney General who did not get elected was appointed by a governor and then ran for office and did not get elected by the people, had no conscience when it came to just, well, let's do one this week, one next week, let's do one here, let's do one here, let's do two tonight. Let's just go ahead and do two on this day. And so the new attorney general coming in in his humanity was, I'm going to follow the law.
These people are going to exhaust their appeals, but there's really no need to jam them all up and do 21 of them in a year or year and a half. You know, that's crazy. And so he asked the state Supreme Court to set a different schedule, and they did. And that was for staff's benefit, because if not, you would have been training 365 days a year for about a year and a half. So I don't have a concrete answer for you. How many days of training?
If you work death row and you're actively doing executions and you have an execution schedule that's two years out, you're training a couple of days a week. And that takes some anxiety off of staff, but it puts a lot of pressure on staff. I mean, you even train on, you know, it's kind of like being on stage left, stage right. The warden stands here, the chief stands over here. What happens if there's a commotion in the visiting room and the staff are overwhelmed by what's happening?
Do you leave your spot? You do a lot of tabletop exercises. You do a lot of what ifs? What if the vein collapse and the person is screaming in agony? What do we do? The doctor's over here. What do we do? Do we close the blinds? Do we push through more drugs? Do we hold his head down? Do we muffle his mouth so he's not screaming? You have to go through all of these scenarios because you're dealing with a human body and it's very unpredictable, Very unpredictable.
And for the foreseeable future, we're always going to have the death penalty. How do you think we protect staff from the impacts of that? Or can we not? Because when I read your letter, that's why I got in touch with you, and I've thought about it since. So I read your letter months ago, and it took a while for me to be able to find contact details for you. And I can't tell you how much that letter then impacted me.
Where I was regularly thinking about the impact of death row on the staff, and it wasn't something I'd even considered before, but it's such an important topic. Do you think it is possible to mitigate the impact on them? Because when you are watching somebody die and you might not believe in the death penalty, how do you process that? And live with that. Wow, that's a tough question. I think you show support for your staff. You show the seriousness of training and following protocols.
You make counseling and therapy available to staff. If you have a staff member that says, not only do I not believe in it, I don't mind working death row, I will not work in execution. You let them. You let them off. You don't force it. On the other hand, you have to be a little bit suspicious of staff who are volunteering constantly. And you gotta ask them why. I think doing roundtable discussions with staff.
If you look at states that have changed leadership and changed execution protocols about the same time, and then you talk to staff and you look at mishaps that have occurred in states where the execution didn't go right, it's because of staff not being that familiar with the new protocols or their anxiety was so high. I'm thinking of a couple where there's a lot of secrecy around executions in some states recently have changed their protocols but wouldn't tell staff.
You just show up, we're going to do this. And it's like that's when you have mishaps. Because they haven't practiced those protocols. They're not sure. And hesitation is a real danger. Plus the other thing, and not every location can do this. If you're preparing somebody for an execution and you're doing lethal drugging, that's what I'm used to. And the veins don't look right or you don't have. You have one good vein and not a backup.
You got to be able to have the political people in place, including the governor who says, you're right, we're not going to do this one right now. We're going to wait and try to figure out some other way of doing it. Don't force them to do a cut down. A cut down is I'm going to get a vein on your inner thigh. So we're getting ready for the execution and the veins in your arms are no good. They just won't take an iv.
Well, I can do a cut down in your groin area and I can put one there, but it's going to require a doctor to make that cut. And so if you looked at the boxed execution in Oklahoma and the investigation after it, it was because of two things. They had changed protocols and they didn't have the resources, they didn't have two good veins, and they wanted to do two executions in one night.
And the governor's office is complicit in this because the director at the time who lost his job over it eventually. And the governor's chief legal advisor lost his job over it, and rightfully so. They made that decision against the recommendation of the corrections director, who said, this is not looking good. And they said, what are the odds that. Well, it's 50, 50. We'll take those odds, pursuit the execution.
Because politically, and there's only one reason to do two executions in one night, and that's to get attention that we are strong on the death penalty. We're a law and order state. Even though we've talked earlier that research would indicate having the death penalty has no deterrent on crime whatsoever. And it's, you gotta admit, for what it is, it's revenge and an impeachment of humanity to do it.
When you look at that, and I look at the question that you've asked about what to do with staff, and I would say all the above. Be synchronized. Be careful with your protocol. Show respect and dignity. Give your staff the time to vet with the understanding that, you know, most of these staff are pretty stoic and you prepare them knowing that they're probably not going to ask for any assistance, counseling wise or otherwise.
But you also have to question, why is correctional staff doing the executions? Now, we do house them, we do have death row, but our staff are not trained assassins. They're the lowest paid in government in most cases. You got military, have the military do it or have a special team do it that's been trained in combat to kill people who can just go in, you know, have med. Have army medics do it.
But you're asking staff that are there to help offenders, make sure they get to medical, make sure they get the needs. And what we say in the United States, you know, you don't violate their Eighth Amendment rights, which is cruel and unusual punishment. You treat them with dignity and then you got to turn around and kill them. You know, I'm one of those people when I used to say, well, why does corrections do this? People just look at you and go, well, that's because that's what they do.
Yeah, historically. But, you know, I can go back to the history of the UK and, you know, you had a famous hangman that hung a lot of Nazis and he was a celebrity. He never had to buy a drink at a pub. And so I'm not necessarily being facetious, maybe a little bit. Well, let's just make it all public. Let's execute people like we did after World War II, you know, at the town square and hang them and let everybody See it and maybe we'll lose our appetite for it.
I'm glad you mentioned that about the staff, because that's something that I've like. I'm very open about the fact that I don't agree with the death penalty. And I have always wondered who on earth gives that individual the right to kill a person for killing someone else? And I do agree that it's not those individual correctional officers that have decided that the death penalty is going to be used. So it's.
It does seem very unfair to make them the ones to do it and potentially have that on their conscience that they are complicit in it. Yeah. The interesting thing, too, you talked about staff believing in the death penalty or not believing in it. Some do and some don't. The bottom line is, let's just say the ones that do, they also understand that if you want that person punished, incarceration at high security for the rest of their life is daily punishment.
They also, and I cannot speak for them, but they also see the death penalty as. That's a little too easy. Keep them in prison. And for somebody who's worked in corrections now for 47 years, 37 within the department of Corrections, and now as a consultant, I know what prison life is like. And you think about suicides in prison, that's people that like, I can't get up every morning for the rest of my life like this. I can't lie. I cannot live this way.
And not only do I have not live this way, you know, my life's in danger anyway. I just don't know where it's going to come from, other inmates or whatever, you know, so. And I don't want to be a geriatric inmate in prison when I'm 75 years old. So that's one of the reasons you have a high suicide rate in prison, is because it's tough. So I've never lost a loved one to a violent offense or never lost anybody through a homicide. I don't know how that would affect me.
But I do know I would want the person to spend the rest of their life in prison, because I know what prison is like. And so there is that Neanderthal portion of me that would say, if I wanted punishment, keep them in prison. And that's the same way I felt about Timothy McVeigh. Justin, thank you so much. I feel like this conversation could go on forever because there's so much to it. But I am so grateful for you for coming on and sharing that.
And I can't imagine it's an easy topic to talk about, you know, especially since you were so heavily involved in it. It had such an impact on you and especially when you don't agree with the death penalty. So I am grateful for you coming on and talking with me about it for the last hour and a half. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your questions. They're obviously well thought out and intelligent. And you'll know when we first visited, I don't do podcasts. I wasn't going to be involved.
But your questions were so well thought out and the direction that you. The objectivity that you took with me. I agreed to do the podcast. I'm glad I did. I've enjoyed it and thank you very much. This felt like a really important episode to share with you and I'd love it if you'd reach out to me to let me know what you thought of it. I'd be really grateful if you'd please rate the podcast on whatever platform you listen.
It only takes a second and it helps increase exposure to the podcast and these really important topics. I hope you found this conversation informative.