Transcript
Anne Holsinger 00:00
Hello and welcome to 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context. I’m Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Our guests today are Jimmy Jenkins, Criminal Justice Reporter for the Arizona Republic, and Sam Levin, Correspondent for The Guardian. Jimmy has witnessed executions firsthand in Arizona, and Sam has been investigating South Carolina’s return to executions after a thirteen-year pause. Today, we’re going to discuss their experiences as journalists covering the death penalty. Thank you both for joining us today.
Sam Levin 00:31
Thank you so much for having me.
Jimmy Jenkins 00:32
My pleasure.
Anne Holsinger 00:34
So, for both of you, to start off, could you each tell us a little bit about your journalism backgrounds and how you came to cover the death penalty? Sam, maybe you could go first?
Sam Levin 00:42
Sure. So, I work at The Guardian, and I’ve been here for ten years, and I’ve covered the criminal legal system and criminal justice for much of that time and my reporting has always been very focused on incarceration and people who are incarcerated and uplifting stories of people behind bars. And I’ve always been really interested in telling the stories of people who are most impacted by the harshest policies, people who are most disenfranchised by the system, and so I’ve reported a lot on people serving long sentences, life sentences, life without parole. And of course, the most extreme sentence you can be serving is a death sentence, and so I’ve been particularly interested in covering executions, covering capital punishment, covering the impact that has on the people who are sentenced, as well as on the system and the states and communities that are most impacted by the death penalty. And so, as we’ve seen more and more, you know, states in the South in particular, aggressively pursue executions in recent years, and as the Trump administration in its first term aggressively pursued executions, we at The Guardian have been aggressively covering these cases and covering the wider systems that are impacting people.
Jimmy Jenkins 02:00
I grew up in a small town in the Midwest called Terre Haute, Indiana. It’s the county seat of what was unfortunately an area that was ravaged by methamphetamine and opioid addiction in the 200-s and thereafter, kind of in the formative- my formative teen and early adult years. And, at the same time I was covering, or I was, studying criminal justice in college and, I was just kinda seeing on the ground how the criminal justice system wasn’t really serving my community members very well, just ended up throwing a lot of people in jail and prison. So, I decided to devote my journalism career that I’d eventually go into covering the criminal justice system. And, I have covered criminal justice for public radio stations, in Indiana and in Arizona. And now I work at the Arizona Republic where I’m a Criminal Justice Reporter. And part of the scope of that work is covering the Department of Corrections, which is one of the largest state agencies in Arizona, probably in most states as well. We do have a death row here. It’s become recently become activated again after a two-year moratorium. And so, in the past three to four years, I have served as The Republic’s reporter covering all things related to capital punishment, the death penalty, people on death row, kind of as an outgrowth of the work that I did, covering the prison system.
Anne Holsinger 03:18
Thank you. I have another question for both of you. Legal scholars and government watchdogs have long argued that media witnesses and objective coverage of capital cases are important to the execution process. How do you view your role as journalists covering this issue and executions in particular?
Sam Levin 03:36
To jump in on that, I think it’s, in some ways, the classic role of a journalist, which is, you know, scrutinizing the state and shining a light on systems that remain hidden or that officials want to keep hidden. And death row in particular is just extremely opaque hidden system and the people who live on death row, many for many years, decades, often are kept hidden from public view. And so, I view the role of covering capital punishment as one that is shining a light on their experiences, their stories, and on the systems that are set up to keep them incarcerated and the systems that are set up to sentence them in the first place and the systems put in place to execute them. And so, we’ve seen extreme secrecy in in the capital punishment system in America for a long time and especially recently and so my goal is always to shine a light on that and in some ways recognize the humanity of people serving long sentences, life sentences, and death sentences. We’re, in our society, you know, stigmatize people behind bars, and often folks who are convicted of and serving sentences for extremely serious or violent crimes don’t get an opportunity to tell their sides of the story, to have the full context of their lives understood, and to be able to speak out in in some circumstances, and so I see my role as uplifting that or providing an opportunity to to delve into that in a in a fair and thoughtful and sensitive way.
Jimmy Jenkins 05:15
I think it’s important to let the public know all the time and resources and money that goes into the prosecution and the carrying out of death sentences in America, and especially in Arizona. We, you know, devote a lot of time and energy and resources on both sides, of course, to many cases to their defense as well as the prosecution and so I think it’s important even if readers and citizens out there don’t see it as, like, a number, maybe a big issue for them or just something that they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, I still think it’s important for folks to know that, you know, hey, your government is doing this in your name. Here are all the steps that have been taken to carry out this sentence. And, you know, I have found that the more people learn about the death penalty, you know, the more questions they have, they react to it. So, I think it’s, it has been, it has validated my reporting that we do get so much feedback. You know, anytime we report on the process, the steps leading up to an execution, we always get a ton of reader feedback. So, I think that is important, kind of educating the public about an issue that maybe they don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about but has such grave importance. And then witnessing the execution, I think, is maybe one of the most important jobs that reporters can do because we are witnessing this most grievous act of, you know, most serious justice that the government can dole out. I’ve witnessed, several executions now, and it’s important to have many qualified observers there because it’s so hard to make note of everything. Oftentimes, we’re only, I mean, in, in Arizona, we’re only allowed to have a pencil and a paper that’s provided to us. There’s never any recording provided that people can go back on later and compare notes. So, and then when we do go to the debriefing that’s hosted by the Department of Corrections afterwards, you always find that even the most, keen eyed trained reporters, they have different takeaways. They sometimes even see things differently. And so for this most serious and final act of justice, I think it’s important to have as many competent, trained, reporters there to document it and to let the public know what happened.
Anne Holsinger 07:24
Yeah, to build off that last part of your answer, do you believe that if media witnesses were not present, the public could receive a complete and accurate account of what happens during executions?
Jimmy Jenkins 07:35
In the times that I have witnessed executions, the, official recitation of the events that progressed by the Department of Corrections has not matched, in some cases at all what I witnessed. And so it’s this unfortunate realization that I think many reporters have over time is that you just unfortunately, you can’t always trust your government. You can’t always trust people in the criminal legal system to tell the truth and to be honest about what’s happening. And in many cases, it’s done to cover up mishaps, things that don’t go well. One example I would point to would be in the execution of Frank Atwood. To hear the state tell it, it went seamlessly, and Mr. Atwood actually was very compliant with his executioners, and in in my viewing, it was a complete and total botch job. They struggled for more than thirty minutes to try to insert IVs into his arms. And Mr. Atwood, the condemned man, at the end finally had to guide the executioners and to help them figure out how to put an IV into his arm, and, you know, none of that was going to be told to the public. So that revelation led to, calls for greater examination of our death penalty in Arizona and eventually a two like I said, a two-year moratorium. So just one example of why it’s important to have independent members of the press there witnessing.
Sam Levin 08:58
I think a lot about an example in Alabama that happened last year of Kenneth Smith, who was the first person to be put to death with nitrogen gas, which was really an experimental or is an experimental method, but especially as, as he was sort of this test case for this new method. And the state attorney general afterwards said that it was a textbook execution, that it went exactly as it was supposed to, and even encouraged other states to follow suit. But there were five media witnesses who were there and present for the execution who provided a completely different picture and said he was shaking violently and thrashing spasms and having seizure like movements and that took a long time for him to die and that he was causing the gurney to visibly move and shake and, you know, just a really horrific picture. And, and these executions are always in some ways going to be gruesome, but what the media saw was so different from what the was reported by state officials, as Jimmy is saying. And so, the reports from the media were absolutely vital in just helping the public understand what actually happened and I think they formed the basis of lawsuits after that. So, I think we would not have an accurate picture at all of what is happening in these execution rooms without the media witnesses who do extremely vital and courageous work to sit in and document that for the public record.
Anne Holsinger 10:24
Many states have strict secrecy policies associated with executions and with access to prisoners more generally. Sam, you’ve reported that South Carolina bans media interviews with incarcerated people. How does this policy impact your ability to investigate conditions and cases and share that information with the public?
Sam Levin 10:43
It’s a huge barrier. As I was saying earlier, my goal as a reporter covering the criminal legal system is to elevate the voices directly of people who are incarcerated, people who are experiencing the system, and South Carolina makes that impossible. And so I’ve reported on in-depth on five of the six recent executions in South Carolina as part of this new wave of killings by the state and I’ve never had an opportunity to talk directly with the people who are being executed before their executions, as they fight the cases, fight for their stories to be heard. And several of them have wanted to, as I understand from their attorneys. And so, I did some in-depth reporting on the case of a man named Marion Bowman, and he really wanted to speak out and there was no way for me to speak to him directly and so we had to work out a workaround in which I created questions for his attorneys to bring to him in his cell and talk to him and kind of take notes and then come back to me and relay them to me, as best he could with sort of direct quotes. And we had to be very clear as we were presenting it to readers that that’s what we did because there’s a lot of risk. We don’t want him to get in trouble or have access taken away in his final weeks of life. So, it’s very harrowing and stressful to do it that way and it’s also doesn’t get me a chance to hear his voice and, and just actually talk to him. And so that that’s a huge barrier, and I think we do our best to find ways to still elevate people’s experiences through their attorneys, their loved ones, their advocates, and just hearing from their voices directly and communicating in whatever ways we can that comply with the protocols of, of the state. But this is an issue that the ACLU is litigating because they argue it’s a clear free speech issue and I would argue the same that, that folks in these moments should, should have an opportunity to speak out and suppress information and make it harder to scrutinize the systems in place and the conditions that people are living under and so with Marion, we talked a lot through his lawyer about just the horrific conditions he was facing as he was waiting to be executed in these really harsh, harsh environment, that they’re placed in before their execution. And so we did our best to shine a light on that in in the way that we could.
Anne Holsinger 13:13
Jimmy, does Arizona have similar restrictions? What challenges have you faced in trying to get information from prisoners and prison officials?
Jimmy Jenkins 13:21
We actually have had a recent change of administration that has led to a, more access to incarcerated people. So, for many years, as a reporter, you’d have to call a communications person that the prison ask permission to interview an incarcerated person. That person would have to be escorted to an office. A phone call would be set up. At the time, I was working in public radio, so, you know, we’re trying to do audio and get levels right, and it just it was a very cumbersome process. Many times, those requests for interviews were denied. But under a recent administration change at, for the governor and for the Department of Corrections, they are now allow, and because also because of the distribution of electronic tablets to most incarcerated people, they have basically turned the system over to the press and the incarcerated people and their attorneys. So, there is in Arizona, there is no more requirement as far as this administration is concerned to have to reach out and ask permission. So, we actually do have access to people, including those who are on death row. So that is really valuable because we are, are as reporters, we’re able to, you know, check-in with the incarcerated people that we’re reporting on, we’re able to actually get their permission to tell their story as opposed to just, you know, taking the word for their legal representative, which I think is very important. One thing, though, when you are reporting on a person who is approaching their execution date, they are placed into more, restrictive housing as the time near the execution progresses. And so those people have reported to me that going from a state where they did have this newfound ability to contact the press, they are able to speak with their friends and loved ones, that is actually taken away from them right at the end, you know, when they tell me that they have, you know, wanted, wanted that connection the most. So, it’s still a barrier at the end, of their life before they’re facing the execution. But up until about a month out in Arizona, we currently do have access via emailing, texting. We can also do phone calls and video calls with the incarcerated people.
Anne Holsinger 15:38
It’s incredible how different state policies can be and how rapidly they can change.
Jimmy Jenkins 15:42
That’s right.
Anne Holsinger 15:43
Sam, are there other obstacles you’ve faced trying to report on capital cases and executions in South Carolina?
Sam Levin 15:51
Yeah. It is really interesting how things vary state by state. In South Carolina, the ACLU there has said that it appears to be the most restrictive policy in terms of a total ban on media interviews. But just as an aside, I’m based in California and have reported a lot in on the prison system here and on the death row here. And California has this unique system where you are not allowed to do a formal interview, a formal media interview set up by the Department of Corrections, that they just completely ban that. And so, kind of like how Jimmy was describing, you can still talk to people as sort of a regular citizen. You can have a phone call with them, and that is allowed, which South Carolina would not allow. If you were to do that and then quote someone, you would be violating the policy. But in California, if I wanted to, you know, meet an incarcerated person and maybe take photos of them, that is banned. And California is obviously considered one of the most progressive states. And it does have media access in terms of events. And so San Quentin is a famous prison here in California and, you know, they might have an event where you go to graduation, and then you can bring a photographer, and you can chat with people who can record the interviews. But if I’m doing an in-depth story on one person, I can’t set up an interview with them to do that. And so, I’ve done in person interviews in California where I’m just visiting them as a regular visitor. And then I have to basically bring in one piece of paper and I find a pencil from the game section of the visiting room and take notes on that one piece of paper. And it’s really not an ideal situation for being a reporter and elevating someone’s story. So just to say that it does vary state by state. And then in terms of South Carolina, I mean, the biggest obstacle is that South Carolina has a major secrecy law that has allowed them to keep hidden basic information about the processes behind executions, crucially, the suppliers who are providing the supplies that allow for executions to happen and have allowed for executions to resume. And that is a state law that is also being challenged by the ACLU, but it bans basic information from being given to the public about how these systems are working and operating and the ACLU has argued that they have certain information that they would release if they didn’t think they could be criminally prosecuted for doing so. So this is just a major barrier to basic transparency that requires litigation to get around.
Anne Holsinger 18:15
So, I’d like to move to some questions about specific cases that both of you have covered. Jimmy, during your time with the Arizona Republic, you witnessed multiple executions, as you mentioned, but only one of those was on behalf of the newspaper. We understand that your previous critical reporting on executions may have affected your relationship with Arizona’s corrections department. Could you tell our listeners about how you came to witness Frank Atwood’s execution in 2022 as a personal witness rather than a media witness and whether officials’ reactions to your previous reporting played a role in that arrangement?
Jimmy Jenkins 18:48
Yes. We, the Arizona Republic had historically, you know, as far back as I can tell, had always been one of the media witnesses for executions in Arizona. Critically, my predecessor, in this role, Michael Kiefer at the Arizona Republic reported before there was the first halting of executions in Arizona. He reported on how it took, you know, more than two hours to execute a man with lethal injection, which really, got the ball rolling for all kinds of legal challenges and ended up causing a moratorium for many years in Arizona. So the Arizona Republic had always been, a member of this, like we talked about, very essential task of the press. When Arizona announced that it was going to resume executions again in 2022, the Arizona Republic and they announced that they were seeking death warrants, the Arizona Republic reached out to the Department of Corrections as normal and said, you know, we would like to request to be a media witness. We were denied that request. Like I said, I think that’s the first time ever. When we inquired as to why we were not selected, my editor had a conversation with people in the governor’s administration at the time, former governor Doug Ducey, who told him point blank that maybe we would have a seat, as a witness if our previous coverage of the Department of Corrections had not been in their opinion so critical, or I think they even went so far as to say that it had been wrong, but we’re not able to point out any falsehood. And so, we were told directly that it was because of our previous critical coverage of the Department of Corrections that and my coverage specifically that I would not be allowed to be a media witness. And so, we, we then applied as the rest of the press corps here are able to do to attend the press conference after, and you hear from your colleagues who were selected and you do your reporting that way. That was the first execution. That was Clarence Dixon. For the second execution when Mr. Atwood was announced, we made the request again, had the same response. We sent a, we had our legal representation send a letter basically demanding that we, you know, not be discriminated against for our previous reporting, that request was rebuffed. And so, in a way to, you know, we were not aware of any other press outlets at the time that had been selected. And so, you know, there was some concern that maybe there wouldn’t be any press selected at all. That ended up not to be true. There ended up to be two or at least three official press representatives. But because I had been in contact with Mr. Atwood and his legal team, which was doing very robust work in the run up to that execution, in Arizona, the condemned person has a list of people that they can invite to serve as witnesses for them personally. And so, I asked Mr. Atwood’s attorneys who asked him, and he granted my request to be one of his personal witnesses. I believe I was listed as a colleague. I never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Atwood. I had spoken with him over, you know, electronic messaging, texting, and emails. And then I was subsequently, I would say, smeared, defamed by that administration, by them. Basically, they made allegations that I was, you know, somehow a part of Mr. Atwood’s legal team or I don’t know, associated with him in some way, but we made it very clear along the whole way that we were just merely trying to gain a presence at this, you know, really important moment for us to do the reporting that we had always done. And so, I was granted access based on being a colleague of Mr. Atwood. I attended; I was treated very oddly. You know, now that I’ve gone through the process as a journalist, I’ve seen the difference. And I was kept to myself for most of the morning. I had to park in a separate area. I was given a separate DOC escort, which no one else had received. I was monitored by armed guards for a while before I was finally allowed to commingle with the other representatives of Mr. Atwood who, you know, his friends and family who he had invited. That ended up being very valuable because I was able to get the perspective of the condemned person’s supporters and attorneys, and he had, members of his church who were there as well. So, it was a very valuable perspective, but when it came time to view the actual execution, I was not even given the ability to have, bring in a pencil or a paper. So, I had to write my entire report from memory. I will say that I was able to do so because the events of that day were so striking and burned so clearly into my mind. But as we’ve talked about before, it it’s such a difficult task to do in the first place even if you had, like, a recorder on and a laptop and, you know, all the resources that we normally have. But, you know, not even being able to write down, taking notes, not even able to note time or other things was very difficult. I will say that with all due respect to my colleagues who witnessed the execution, I was the only reporter that day who brought up the fact that it was pretty much a debacle. They had a hard time accessing his veins. And, you know, I saw it as a condemned man having to help his executioners perform the execution and no one else had really made that distinction. So, it was a challenging day, and I think we should have been allowed in in the first place.
Anne Holsinger 24:25
Thank you for sharing that experience. Sam, in May of this year, you broke a story about the autopsy of Mikhail Mahdi following his firing squad execution. You revealed that experts believe Mr. Mahdi’s execution was botched. Could you walk us through what you found?
Sam Levin 24:42
Yeah. So, South Carolina is one of several states that have resumed using firing squad as a method, and South Carolina is the first to actually carry out a firing squad execution in fifteen years. And Mikhail Mahdi is the second person to be killed by this method. And so there had, I was not a witness for this execution, but there had been growing concerns I heard from his attorneys and others that something might have gone wrong in this execution. At the same time, an execution by firing squad is always going to be gruesome and horrific to observe in ways that I can’t really comprehend and so I needed more information to understand what potentially went wrong, and the autopsy was the best sort of piece of evidence that could help understand what might have gone wrong. And so, once I obtained a copy of the autopsy, which was the state’s official autopsy, it was clear that there were concerns in what actually happened, which were raised by the attorneys. And on a basic level, the protocols in South Carolina call for there to be three shooters who essentially simultaneously fire three shots into the individual’s heart. And the autopsy clearly showed that there were only two bullet wounds, and they appeared to be a bit lower than his heart and in the chest area. And his attorneys and some witnesses had reported that it seemed that it took a longer time than expected for him to, to die. The state has said that this should be relatively instant and cause minimal pain beyond the moment of the shooting, and it had sort of appeared otherwise. So, the autopsy raised serious questions over whether the third shooter in the room missed, didn’t fire, what happened. It’s unclear, but it seemed according to the attorneys and based on what the autopsy showed, that the protocol was not followed and that that might have prolonged his suffering, which is greatly concerning. And the state responded by saying that they believe that one of the bullet wounds might have had two bullets in it, which experts said was relatively impossible and preposterous claim to be making the idea that two bullets somehow entered in the exact same place and made one wound. But the state has insisted that its protocol was followed, and we have clearly scrutinized those claims based on the records.
Anne Holsinger 27:23
What concerns do the findings from Mr. Mahdi’s autopsy raise going forward?
Sam Levin 27:29
They raise so many concerns about how the state is carrying out executions. On a basic level, they raise concerns about the protocols in place for firing squads, which we are seeing increasingly be used. And you have a state like Idaho that is in the process of making firing squads the primary method. And there are some arguments that people have made that firing squad is potentially more humane than killings by lethal injection because they’re, they’re quicker and faster. And so, if that is an argument that people are making, I think it’s vital to understand what kind of pain it’s causing people, how these protocols work, whether it’s safe, whether it’s safe for people in the room. Leading up to the first firing squad execution in fifteen years, there were a lot of people who were looking at pictures of the execution chamber and just concerned about the potential of bullets ricocheting and, you know, whether they would even want to be in that room when that was happening. Is this safe? Is it safe for the people who are shooting? Is it safe for the witnesses? So, there are grave concerns about just how these firing squad killings are carried out. But on a deeper or systemic level, there’s questions about what information people have about what will happen to them when they’re killed. And so, South Carolina is one of the states that essentially gives people the quote, unquote choice of the method they want to choose. It’s an extremely sort of grim reality, but it’s how do you want to die. You can choose between electrocution, lethal injection, or firing squad. And attorneys for the folks on death row have argued that that’s not a fair choice, and they don’t have the proper information. And it’s an awful choice to have to make in particular because there have been concerns about how the lethal injections have been carried out and concerns that that has led to prolonged suffering and a condition that’s akin to a feeling of drowning for some people, who took a very long time for the lethal injections to cause their deaths. And so, people are obviously in this impossible situation, and they’re still fighting for basic information about how each of these methods work, what the protocols are, who the suppliers are, all this information that is kept secret through these laws. And so when things go wrong, as we’ve seen evidence of repeatedly in South Carolina’s killings that have rapidly occurred over the last year, it puts people in a really difficult position and it raises serious questions about how these methods are being carried out.
Anne Holsinger 30:00
So to return to Arizona and Jimmy, the Arizona Department of Corrections granted the Arizona Republic’s request to witness Aaron Gunches execution earlier this year. Were there noticeable differences between serving as a media witness in this execution versus your prior experience serving as a personal witness? And, also, did you notice any differences in the way the execution was carried out? Because you had mentioned earlier that there have been some protocol changes under the new administration in Arizona.
Jimmy Jenkins 30:32
Yes. The most significant differences were, kind of where you’re held, how you’re treated before and leading up to the execution. I was kept with the other official media reporters in the run up to the execution. And then when we were, escorted into the execution chamber, I was given a pencil and paper, and, you know, allowed to take my notes and so that was obviously a huge difference. The execution itself, yes, there was also a difference there. As I said earlier, I remember the Atwood execution as just really it seemed chaotic at times. The people who were in the room inserting the IV line seemed nervous. I remember them sweating and their hands were shaking. I remember the cart that they had all their supplies on was kind of scattered and haphazard and almost seemed kind of dirty and disheveled, like the opposite of what you would expect in a medical setting. And then, of course, it did take them a very long time to, insert the IVs. They ended up having to go into the top of Mr. Atwood’s hand where you sometimes see an IV placed on a person at his suggestion, and that was finally how they were able to get the chemicals into his body. Mr. Atwood also had a spiritual adviser present with him in the room laying hands on him, which was the first time that had happened in Arizona. That was following court precedent that was set in Texas, so that was different. For Mr. Gunches, I felt that the, as the Department of Corrections said they had done, it appeared that they had practiced more. The process seemed to go more quickly and efficiently. Mister Gunches, it should be noted, was always in favor of his own execution as well, so there was never that kind of, you know, normal tension, I guess, you would say between, you know, the condemned person and the execution team. This is a man who had said previously that, you know, he just kinda wanted them to get on with it. So, the mentality, was different that may have led to a little different energy in the room between the execution team and the condemned man. I did witness, there’s some disagreement amongst the witnesses over this, but I witnessed, a person trying to insert a second IV line as they do for a backup into Mr. Gunches’ arm. They appeared to have trouble with that, turned to another person in the room, a medical attendant who then successfully completed the task. Then I will say that Mr. Gunches’ exhalations and his reactions after the pentobarbital started to flow seemed a little more dramatic to me. I also noticed some more marked discoloration change in his face. Whereas, Mr. Atwood’s reaction, I think, was, it was a little harder to tell. In both instances, you were able to tell when the condemned person stopped breathing, but with Mr. Gunches, it was a little more dramatic. The air being forced out of his lungs, you know, seemed to be coming at a higher rate. There was some concern about pulmonary edema in in, pentobarbital executions. However, I did, receive the coroner’s report, the medical examiner’s report for Mr. Gunches, which was issued after his execution. And it showed that they had done an extensive job searching for, any kind of sign of pulmonary edema, and they had found none.
Anne Holsinger 34:00
We’ve read and spoken with corrections officials about the trauma they’ve experienced from being involved in executions. Having witnessed multiple executions, Jimmy, is it possible for you to describe the emotional impact of that?
Jimmy Jenkins 34:13
Yes. I reached out to many people who had witnessed executions before Mr. Atwood and Mr. Gunches’ execution, just to seek their advice. And one of the questions I would always ask is how I should prepare myself, you know, mentally and emotionally because I wanted to, you know, maintain my faculties, maintain a professional environment while I’m witnessing something that I know is, can be pretty traumatic. And so I think taking those preparations in the run up to the execution was very important. I mentally kind of walked myself through the whole process several times before being there on the actual day, which was really important. So, I think just preparing for it, talking to a lot of people beforehand. I will say that on both occasions, Sister Helen Prejean was kind enough to take my calls and speak to me and offer me guidance as to how, you know, a reporter should handle this kind of a situation. I think one thing, one salient point that she conveyed to me that I carried on after the Atwood execution was, she told me that it was okay not to fall to pieces. It was okay not to become emotional and sad when everyone else around you is. And she said, it’s your job. We need you, Jimmy, to to be, you know, to keep it together and to, to try and document the best as best you can what you’re witnessing. And she reminded me also that, you know, while you are reporting on someone for a very long time, you, you know, you get a sense that you know them. You get a sense that you know their legal counsel. You start to develop, relationships with these people. It’s okay as a journalist if you find yourself afterwards, you know, maybe not too emotionally distraught. And that was the case for me. I was bracing for maybe to be very significantly impacted as it was happening, and perhaps even more so afterwards. But, you know, I made sure to talk to a counselor afterwards both times, and I felt like I was able to process it and handle it okay. That’s not everyone else’s experience, but I think I attribute it to just going into it acknowledging what a really huge, serious, significant event it is and a trauma that we’re all about to witness and giving it the gravity that I think it deserves and just being prepared for witnessing that.
Anne Holsinger 36:31
Thank you. I appreciate your openness in sharing that. Sam, while you haven’t witnessed an execution directly, you’ve conducted in-depth investigations into these life and death cases. How have you handled the emotional intensity of this work?
Sam Levin 36:43
Yeah. I don’t envy folks who have witnessed these executions as much as it’s really critical and if the opportunity arises where it makes sense in the process of my reporting, I would take it. But I think that work is so vital and it’s also extremely traumatizing in ways that you obviously can’t understand until you are in that room. And I think what Jimmy is describing about the preparations and talking to lots of people about it and sort of being in connection with folks who have knowledge is really crucial. But yes, I find it really hard to report on these cases. I find it some of the hardest, stories emotionally, partly just because you’re working closely with the attorneys or sometimes the people themselves, obviously not in South Carolina where I’m banned from talking to them, but in other places where you’re talking to folks who are facing these life and death matters. And so just knowing that what is coming is their death is just really hard. And then the mechanics of reporting their death on the day it’s happening, I find really draining, you know, just even the idea of sort of prewriting their death. It’s so grim and hard to process in some ways and so I do find it extremely emotional and I don’t necessarily enjoy the process of reporting on these cases as important as it is and as dedicated as I am to it because I do find it really draining. I guess the parallel I have is also reporting a lot on police killings and watching body camera footage is something that I do a lot in my job, and I find sort of equally hard. And I think related to the point Jimmy was making about how to prepare, I think part of it is not necessarily compartmentalizing, but about being very thoughtful and diligent about how you absorb this information and how you document it and take note of it. And so, I got really good advice about watching body camera footage that was be very kind of clinical about it. Prepare yourself to watch it, watch it, take very good notes, watch it again to fact check, but don’t just sort of turn it on without thinking about it and then watch it seven times in a row without really processing it or taking notes, but really approach it as, as your job and to, to take notes and to document it in a way that is less likely to emotionally impact you. And I feel the same way about looking at the photos of Mr. Mahdi’s autopsy, which were also gruesome to look at and wanted to be very thoughtful about how I absorbed that imagery and being very diligent about looking into it and making sure I’m scrutinizing every aspect of it without trying to internalize it too much or being careless in how I consume those gruesome images. And so, I think it’s important to be really thoughtful, but yeah, I do find the work really hard.
Anne Holsinger 39:37
Well, I’m grateful to you both for taking the time to share these experiences and to be open about how they’ve affected you. I do have one wrap up question for both of you. Based on your experiences, what do you think ideal journalistic access to death penalty cases and executions would look like? And what barriers to transparency concern you the most? Sam, do you wanna go first?
Sam Levin 40:01
Sure. I think ideal access from my reporting would be, first, regular access to people who are incarcerated and that doesn’t just apply to death row, but to all people who are incarcerated, just having real opportunities to connect with people and meet with them in ways that resemble meeting with people on the outside. I think they create so many barriers that even in places that have the most access and that have the, the most transparency with media still does not resemble the kind of interview environments you would have with other folks. And so I think finding ways to do that, and we’ve, Jimmy and I both talked about different workarounds we’ve done, and that’s how we’ve had to do it. But if these places, you know, have nothing to hide, they should make it easier for people to tell their stories and so they think that is crucial. And then I think just access to information about what is behind these executions is vital. I think we see states really moving in the opposite direction of transparency with explicit secrecy laws, which are allowing them to move forward and allowing them to get these supplies in secret and allowing them to carry out these executions with little scrutiny on how they’re doing so. And so, I think all of the litigation challenging that and efforts to uncover these methods despite, you know, what is happening, in in the legal system is, is really crucial. And so, I would really like to see changes in in those laws and just more transparency around how, how these executions are are happening.
Jimmy Jenkins 41:35
I think ideal transparency, looks like having access to all the information, you know, supporting you know, going ahead with these executions. So, I think that means that the government should be totally open with how much we’ve paid for the drugs, who where we access them from. In Arizona, they are compounded into a, a liquid form so that they can be injectable. You know, we should be told we should have access to who that compounder is. We’re paying them a lot of money. We don’t know who that person is or what kind of training or licensure that they have or what their history is. It would look like access to the execution team and to their records and to figuring out who these people are, what their qualifications are, how much they have trained, you know, why their state feels confident in assigning them to the teams. I talked to a previous executioner who told me that they really had to keep an eye out for people who were believed to be potential, you know, sadists, like people who were volunteering for these execution teams because it was something that they enjoyed or wanted to be a part of. And he told me when he was execution leader that that was something that they had to actively look for and to vet. And so, you know, the selection of the team is very important, and it may have led to why we’ve had botched executions in Arizona in the past. And I believe everyone should be able to see this final act that has been carried out in their name. So I fully believe that I know that there are recordings made of the executions in Arizona. If they were not made available to the public, you know, as the event is happening, I think they should be, released to the public afterwards so that the, so that the people of Arizona can see what’s being done in their name and, so that they can see this final act of justice being carried out in their name. Because I think when people see it happen, when they see the things that can go wrong, when they learn more about the expense and the difficulties and the trauma that is related to carrying out the death penalty, it tends to have a profound impact on them and, and how they feel about the death penalty. So, I think ideal access would be, you know, just showing the public what you’re doing in their name.
Anne Holsinger 43:53
Do either of you have anything else you would like to share with our listeners?
Sam Levin 43:57
Just one final point is just that I think it’s really crucial to always zoom out from The United States to help understand how we got here and what our system is. I have the benefit of working for The Guardian, which is an international news organization headquartered in the UK. So, I think sometimes we have that outsider lens. I’m obviously based in the US, and we have a large operation here, but I think it helps me frame these issues in a sense that the US is extremely unique and extraordinary in how it incarcerates people and how it sentences people to death and how it executes people. And I think it’s just crucial to remember that the way we do things in the US has become very normalized here, but it is not normal in many other comparable nations in the world. It’s quite extraordinary that we sentence so many people to spend the rest of their lives in prison and that we sentence so many people to be executed in the way that we sentenced people to death and how they remain on death row for decades in litigation that costs taxpayer millions and millions of dollars over many, many years. So, I think all of this is quite extraordinary, and I always try to remind myself of that even when I’m reporting on the same thing over and over and over again. And it does become normal because South Carolina has now done the same thing six times, and we see it in many different states. And it is very normalized here, but I try to just zoom out and remember that much of what is happening here is not normal and, in many ways, should not be normalized.
Jimmy Jenkins 45:24
I don’t think I have anything to add. I think you’ve covered everything. Thank you.
Anne Holsinger 45:27
Well, thank you both so much for sharing your time and your experiences today. If our listeners would like to learn more about the death penalty, they can visit DPI’s website at deathpenaltyinfo.org. You can find more of Sam’s work at The Guardian and more of Jimmy’s work at the Arizona Republic. To support the 12:01 podcast and all of DPI’s work, please visit deathpenaltyinfo.org/donate. And to make sure you never miss an episode, please subscribe to 12:01in your podcast app of choice.
