AD
play_arrow

keyboard_arrow_right

Listeners:

Top listeners:

skip_previous skip_next
00:00 00:00
playlist_play chevron_left
volume_up
  • cover play_arrow

    HYFIN Connecting The Culture

  • play_arrow

    Rhythm Lab Radio Redefining the Urban Sound

  • play_arrow

    88Nine

  • play_arrow

    Discovering her past: Element uncovers her roots through African Ancestry DNA testing Tarik Moody

News

States botched more executions of Black prisoners. Experts think they know why

todayApril 19, 2024 1

Background
share close
AD
AD
  • cover play_arrow

    States botched more executions of Black prisoners. Experts think they know why Tarik Moody

A lethal injection gurney is seen at the at Nevada State Prison, a former penitentiary in Carson City, Nev., in 2022.
Emily Najera for NPR
A lethal injection gurney is seen at the at Nevada State Prison, a former penitentiary in Carson City, Nev., in 2022. Emily Najera for NPR

Studies of the death penalty have long shown racial inequality in its application, but a new report has found the disparity extends inside the death chamber itself. In an analysis of the more than 1,400 lethal injection executions conducted in the U.S. since 1982, researchers for the nonprofit Reprieve reported that states made significantly more mistakes during the executions of Black people than they did with prisoners of other races.

Reprieve, which advocates against the death penalty, found that nationwide, half of the botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, though only a third of the prisoners executed were Black. The pattern was starkest in some Southern states. In Arkansas, Oklahoma and Georgia, three quarters or more of the botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, though they accounted only for a third or less of executions in those states.

Lethal injection requires execution workers to administer drugs intravenously to the prisoner to stop their heart. It has become the most commonly used execution method across the country, though it is also the method with the most recorded “botches,” or mistakes.

There is no standard definition of what constitutes a botched execution. For its analysis, Reprieve designated an execution as botched if it met certain criteria. Researchers checked documents and witness reports to confirm details like whether there was evidence that a prisoner made visible or audible expressions of pain, was still conscious after a drug was administered, or whether execution workers had struggled at length to find a prisoner’s veins.

That happened in 2022, when execution workers in Alabama spent three hours attempting to insert an IV line into the veins of Joe Nathan James, Jr., a Black man. His autopsy showed puncture marks and cuts in his feet, hands, wrists and arms.. A few months later, Alabama left white prisoner Kenneth Smith alive on the gurney for hours after they struggled to find a vein to use for his lethal injection execution, prompting his lawyers to ask the state to use nitrogen gas to execute him in January.

Lengthy procedures like those were not uncommon, the Reprieve analysis found. Over one third of lethal injections lasted more than 45 minutes and over a quarter took an hour or more.

The executions typically involved a three-drug regimen, though the protocol can vary. Some states have injected just one drug and others up to four. With the three-drug method, the first drug used is an anesthetic, to numb the prisoner. The second drug paralyzes the muscles, and the third stops the heart. Most executions were conducted with sodium thiopental as the anesthetic. Other states used drugs like pentobarbital, midazolam, etomidate or fentanyl in their regimens. None of the drugs have been FDA-approved for this application, and pharmaceutical companies have widely opposed their use in executions.

Still, the Reprieve analysis found that no specific drug led states to make more mistakes.

“There are botched executions, many of them, regardless of the drug, regardless of the cocktail,” said Maya Foa, the executive director of Reprieve. “Continuing to tinker with the machinery of death is not making this better.”

Reprieve determined that 73 lethal injection executions were botched; just over 5% of those conducted since 1982. The total may be conservative. Previous research has identified that the percentage of botched lethal injection executions using the same criteria could be higher than 7%, though that study did not examine the race of the prisoners, as Reprieve’s did.

“The analysis shows not only are we botching these executions and causing people torture more often than with many other methods,” said Foa, “But we are doing that to Black prisoners far, far more frequently than we are to white prisoners.”

A gurney lies in Alabama's lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala.
Dave Martin/AP
A gurney lies in Alabama’s lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala. Dave Martin/AP

Studies of the death penalty have previously shown racial discrimination is prevalent throughout many steps of administering capital punishment – from jury selection to the sentencing and appeals process. A 2020 report from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center showed that people of color have been overrepresented on death rows in the U.S., and that killers of Black people were less likely to face the death penalty than those who kill white people.

But the Reprieve analysis is one of the first times that empirical evidence has indicated that racism extends even to the final step of the death penalty: the execution itself. While the study does not explain how or why states make more mistakes when executing Black prisoners, Foa said she thinks that the fact that Black people suffer from higher mortality rates and receive poorer medical treatment in the U.S should provide clues.

Ruqaiijah Yearby, a professor of health law at The Ohio State University who studies racism in healthcare, agreed. She said that racist tropes that can limit Black people from accessing equitable medical care, like the false notion that Black people have a higher tolerance for pain, could also be involved in the administration of drugs in the death chamber. Yearby cited research that showed that nationwide, Black cancer patients received lower doses of pain medication than cancer patients who were white.

“Black people don’t have thicker skin, we don’t have bigger bones,” Yearby said. “But if you believe that, then you’re going to treat somebody differently than if you’re going to do it to a white person.”

Dr. Scott Bowman, a professor of criminal justice at Texas State University whose academic work has focused on race and law enforcement, said he would expect that sort of discrimination to show up in lethal injection executions in subtle ways.

“You can’t find a vein and you think, well, it really is hard to find veins in Black people, so I’m just going to keep sticking,” he said.

Researchers would find it difficult to identify those kinds of interactions in the death chamber, partly because they could be subtle, and because the criminal justice system lacks transparency when those in power make mistakes, he said. But insiders could know more.

NPR interviewed four workers, none of whom were Black, who collectively witnessed or helped carry out 26 executions across the country.

Craig Baxley, a former executioner from South Carolina who pushed lethal injection drugs into prisoners’ veins, said he “never noticed anything as far as treatment, or how anybody reacted to whether they were white or Black.”

Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of the state prison in San Quentin, Calif., who oversaw four executions during her tenure, said something similar.

“I didn’t see any difference at all,” she remembered.

Woodford was aware, though, of some execution workers who may have believed people of color might have been more difficult to inject with the lethal injection drugs, a common misconception.

“I heard some guys say, ‘Oh these guys are really muscular, it’s going to be harder,” she said. An execution worker in Nevada suggested that “maybe the nervous system of the Black inmate works different.”

Spiritual advisor Jeff Hood is seen after Kenneth Smith was executed in 2024 in Atmore, Ala. Smith, a white man, was executed by gas after Ala. botched his lethal injection in 2022.
Gabrielle Caplan for NPR
Spiritual advisor Jeff Hood is seen after Kenneth Smith was executed in 2024 in Atmore, Ala. Smith, a white man, was executed by gas after Ala. botched his lethal injection in 2022. Gabrielle Caplan for NPR

But Jeff Hood, a spiritual advisor who has been inside the death chamber during three executions of Black people and three white prisoners in Oklahoma, Texas and Alabama, said he did witness differences in the treatment of Black prisoners while they were strapped to the gurney.

“I can definitely tell you that the restraints that I have seen on Black folk have been unquestionably tighter than the restraints that I have seen on white folk,” Hood said.

He believes that was related to the correctional officers’ fear and prejudice of Black people, something Hood says is common where he lives in Arkansas. The only times Hood said he heard execution workers discussing whether a prisoner would resist was when the person scheduled to be executed was a person of color. This may have had an impact on how Black prisoners were treated as they were put to death, he thinks.

“If your assumption is that the person who is condemned is going to resist, then you are going to take much more liberties with the body than if you believe that the person was going to be perfectly peaceful,” the spiritual advisor said. “And when you begin to take liberties with someone’s body, you leave protocol and you leave best practices. When you leave protocol and you leave best practices, of course you are going to have a botched execution.”

The authors of the Reprieve report recommended imposing a moratorium on lethal injection executions conducted at the state and federal levels, noting that there were fundamental legal, constitutional and ethical issues with the method. They called on governors of states where executions are allowed to commission investigations to better understand the issues, as well as repeal secrecy laws that may have prevented previous oversight.

“The death penalty in its application in the United States is racist,” said Foa, Reprieve’s executive director. “And we cannot continue to do this.”

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Transcript :

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Lethal injection is the most commonly used method of execution in the U.S. It is also the method associated with the most recorded mistakes. NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner is here to bring us reporting on a new study that says those mistakes happen disproportionately when Black prisoners are being put to death. Hi, Chiara.

CHIARA EISNER, BYLINE: Hi.

FADEL: When you say mistakes with lethal injection, we often hear the word botched. What does that really mean? What happens?

EISNER: So there is no universal definition of what makes an execution botched, and states hide a lot about how they conduct these executions, so it can be hard to tell what happens even when everything appears to go fine. But this new report, from a nonprofit called Reprieve, used a few criteria to sift through the more than 1,400 lethal injections that have happened. That’s whether a prisoner had audibly or visibly expressed pain, if they seemed to be still conscious and alert after the drugs that are supposed to numb and paralyze them were injected, whether it took workers a long time to find a vein, and they found 73 executions that they considered botched.

FADEL: Now, there’s a lot of research that indicates the imposition of the death penalty itself is often discriminatory, so what’s new about this?

EISNER: This is the first time that research has shown this clearly that that sort of racism has extended into the death chamber itself, and the numbers in this report were quite striking. Nationwide, half of those 73 botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, though only a third of the prisoners executed were Black, and in Southern states, the pattern was more dramatic. In Arkansas, Oklahoma and Georgia, 75% or more of the states’ botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite the fact that executions of Black people accounted for just around a third of the executions in each of those states.

FADEL: So why? What does your reporting show about why this is happening?

EISNER: I talked to two sets of experts to find an answer – academics who study racism and execution workers who see what happens in the death chamber firsthand. Ruqaiijah Yearby is a professor of health law at the Ohio State University. She studies racism in health care, and she described how racist tropes like how Black people experience less pain or have superhuman strength – that can affect their medical treatment.

RUQAIIJAH YEARBY: Black people don’t have thicker skin. We don’t have bigger bones. But if you believe that, then you’re going to treat somebody differently than if you’re going to do it to a white person.

EISNER: Research shows that nationwide, Black cancer patients received less pain medication. Something similar could be happening in the death chamber, she said.

FADEL: And now, you said you talked to execution workers also. What’d they say?

EISNER: Yes. I talked to four workers who collectively witnessed or worked on 26 executions across the country in seven different states. None of them were Black, I should say. Three of the folks I talked with said they didn’t notice any discriminatory treatment of Black people themselves. The fourth person I talked to, who was a spiritual adviser named Jeff Hood – he said he did see workers treat Black prisoners differently. He said the correctional officers he saw made the restraints on Black prisoners tighter, because they feared maybe that Black prisoners would resist more.

JEFF HOOD: If your assumption is that the person who is condemned is going to resist, then you are going to take much more liberties with their body, and when you leave protocol, of course, you are going to have a botched execution.

FADEL: NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner. Thank you, Chiara.

EISNER: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

AD

Written by: Tarik Moody

Rate it

Who we are

HYFIN is a media movement from Radio Milwaukee.

Milwaukee’s only Urban Alternative radio station features the full spectrum of Black music beyond R&B and Hip-Hop plus Milwaukee music. HYFIN connects the culture with the latest Black culture news, podcasts and more. Listen to best hip hop & R&B, dance, Afrobeats and more!

Listen

Our radio is always online!
Listen now completely free!
AD
AD
AD
AD
0%

Get your tickets now for just $10 in advance or $15 at the door and join us at 220 East Pittsburgh on May 10th.