on this episode of "death row stories," a triple homicide on new year's eve. >> she was bludgeoned to death. >> an ex-conwho was framed. >> they wanted to get me out of the way. >> you're either a suspect or you're buried somewhere. >> with an execution approaching -- >> i am accusing the local authorities of gross incompetence. >> the state refuses to test dna. >> if you're convince of this man's guilt do the testing. >> they weren't after the truth. they were after a conviction. >> there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their

innocence. >> in this case there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs. put the truth forward. >> pampa, texas is a smaller town, population around 17,000. i was elected sheriff of gray county and took office january 1st of 1993. >> sheriff stubblefield after a year in office counted down to new year's eve at home with his family. >> i heard on my scanner, police department received a 911 call of a victim of either a shooting or a stabbing over at campbell street. i told my wife, i said, i'm

going to head down there. >> happy 1994! >> police discovered 22-year-old scooter kaler on his neighbor's front porch with knife wounds to his torso, kaler died shortly after reaching the hospital. police followed a blood trail to the home where scooter lived with his brother randy and mother twyla. >> blood smear on the glass of the front door. >> when i walked in, first thing i saw was a female laying on the floor there. and she's on her back. her face was beaten off of her, an ax handle. >> bloodstains down the wall. >> i went to the back bedroom. randolph was laying in the top bunk, set of bunk beds, on his

belly. he had earphones in his ears and had a walkman there beside him, and he was dead. there was three wounds there. one went into the heart. and that was the death blow. >> for sheriff stubblefield, the grizzly murders hit close to home. >> twyla and her sons, i had known them through church. twyla's kids were special needs kids. they were god's kids. even though they looked like grown men, mentally they were not. it was hard to take for everybody. >> the door that leads to the outside, i believe that's blood which leads out into the backyard. >> stubblefield knew that twyla's boyfriend, 31-year-old hank skinner, had moved in three months earlier. >> when you lived in a house and everyone in that house is murdered but you, you're either a suspect or you're buried

somewhere. >> hank skinner had recently been released from an eight month prison sentence for auto theft. he had 38 arrests to his name. >> i knew him to be a bad person. when we found out that skinner was not in the house, everyone received word to start driving the neighborhood to see if we'd find him out there. >> stubblefield showed up at the house of andrea reid. >> we told her he was looking for skinner, had she seen him, her reply was yes, she's in this house right now. as we walked in, i could see skinner standing in the closet that didn't have a door on it, but he kind of had the clothes pulled up around him. he had bloodstains on his pants. he had a bandage on his hand. i looked down at his socks and his socks were just so he could in blood. i said, you're being served on two grand jury indictments, one

for aggravated assault and one for injury to a child. and his response was, is that all? >> skinner was charged with three counts of murder. he would face the death penalty. >> the family will never be the same. twyla thought she was in love. the police department, they apparently couldn't figure out a way to get him when they was told he was there. they've got him now. >> local attorney harold comber was appointed to defend skinner. >> people feel offended in this kind of town when something like that happens to a woman and children. we didn't have things like that. but the consequences of being convicted of a capital murder case and assess the death penalty irreversible. you can't go back and get seconds. >> hank skinner's trial began in fort worth in march of 1995. >> prosecuting the original

trial was district attorney johnmann. he was a larger than life figure. he wore big cowboy boots and had a deep, booming voice. and he was a very commanding presence in the courtroom. >> the forensic evidence at the scene was very damning. there was a lot of blood, bloody hand prints in the doorways leading to twyla's son's bedroom were found to be mr. skinner's hand prints, his fingerprints. >> the front and the back of mr. skinner had blood that was consistent with twyla buzz by's. other bloodstains were determined to be a mixture of both twyla and elwin's. >> skinner claimed he'd been so high on codeine and alcohol that he passed out on the couch during the murders.

>> hank's claim that his codeine and vodka tcocktails he calls i left him in a semicomatose state. i'm not buying that at all. you don't come out of a comatose state, be able to walk and talk and reason. wanted to know why he was arrested. >> skinner's ex-girlfriend, andrea reed was the prosecution's star witness. >> according to ms. reed hank skinner showed up at her house. he wanted her to stitch up a cut in his hand and made her swear to god that she wouldn't tell. but she thought he had kicked twyla to death. >> john mann the prosecutor invited jurors to imagine

driving onto a ranch and seeing puddles of water on the ground. he said you can infer from that that it must have rained shortly before you arrived even if you didn't see it rain. this is just like that. you shouldn't be misled by thinking this is a complicated case. >> the jury came back in about two and a half hours. those jurors made the determination he's guilty. they also made the determination that the death penalty was, in fact, justified in this case. >> but as hank skinner waited on death row for over 20 years, new information would come to light pointing to hank's possible innocence and another suspect with a motive for the murders. >> you know, i don't feel like i'm some kind of a saint. i wasn't. but i'd spent 22 1/2 years down here for something i didn't do. they've killed 400 some people

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y the masculine fragrance. yves saint laurent. hank skinner sat on death row, still pro claiming his innocence. but his neighbors in pampa, texas believe that justice has been done. >> in pampa if you go to the coffee shops and you say what do you think about hank skinner? overwhelmingly you're going to hear he should have been killed a long time ago.

>> randy stubblefield, i've known him for years, was like wiley coyote and the roadrunner between me and him. he would not leave me alone. he seen an opportunity to frame hank skinner and he jumped right on it, you know what i'm saying? >> skinner has never taken responsibility for his own actions. i did this because so and so made me do this. he made me do this because he mistreated me. 31 years old and at that time he'd been arrested 30 something times. he is a career criminal. >> hank skinner had been on death row for five years when in the year 2000 a group of student journalists began studying hank's case. among them was emily miller, a student at northwestern's ma dill school of journalism. >> at the end of my senior year i was in the investigative

journalism class. then the opportunity came up to go to death row and interview hank skinner. what aspiring journalist wouldn't take up that opportunity? >> she and her classmates set out to find hank's ex-girlfriend andrea reed who had by now recanted her testimony against hank. >> andrea reed is an excentric woman. in meeting her alone you find little things unique to andrea reed. she keeps a rattlesnake in her trailer. >> your name? >> andrea reed. >> she rightfully is concerned. she would only be willing to talk to us in an audio file. we wouldn't be able to capture her image. >> now, you saw the trial, that he got into your trailer by himself when you went back to check on your kids. is that true? >> no. the police were trying to -- they were intimidating me. they were making me feel like i was helping him too much. and if i was, then i could go to

jail too. >> did hank confess to you to killing the twyla and those boys? >> no, he did not. >> so he told some stories that you didn't believe any of them were a confession? >> no. >> for hank's trial, prosecutors had flown andrea to fort worth and put her in a motel. andrea told emily it was like being under house arrest. >> in a sworn affidavit in 1997 andrea reed came out and said she felt threatened by police to give a certain story. she was worried that they could place her at the murder scene. so she was willing to play by their script. then we went down to texas death row to interview hank skinner. it was intimidating. being, gosh, what was i? barely legal to drink and here i was on texas death row. when he came to talk to us one of the first things i remember was how articulate he was.

>> i want the world to know that i'm not a murderer. that means more than anything to me because i've still got family that are being -- you know, they're suffering because of this. why would i kill her? i loved her more than anything in this world. i mean, and not only that, but scooter and randy, why kill them? you can't find a single person that truthfully will tell you that skinner never laid a hand on them. >> one of the things that struck me in talking to him was that there was a likely alternative suspect, robert danell. >> bob danell served time for grand larceny and also twyla's uncle. >> his name is robert dennell. everybody called him uncle bob. >> skinner's attorney introduced him as an alternate suspect at the original trial. hank claimed he walked in on uncle bob trying to rape twyla

weeks before the trial. >> he's got twyla up against the wall, strangling her in the kitchen. me and scooter peeled him off of her and threw him in his truck and told him don't ever come back. and she was so embarrassed by it because that's her uncle, her blood kin. she didn't want to tell it. >> emily and her classmates looked for people who could confirm these accusations. >> were you her friend? >> we were best friends. >> did you know her uncle bob? >> unfortunately. >> what did twyla tell you about him? >> that they were having sex. and he forced himself upon her. >> she told you that he forced. >> yes. >> do you think she was scared of him? >> yes, yes, i do, i know she

was. >> who do you think killed the kids? >> uncle bob. >> why? >> he was jealous of hank living in twyla's house. >> the people that saw hank skinner that night didn't believe hank did it. they saw the condition hank was in. and they didn't believe that he could possibly do it. >> it was new year's eve and we were all having a good time together, me and twyla and her sons. later on in the evening we called a friend of ours, mitchell, to come pick us up and take us to his new year's eve party. >> when i got over there, hank skinner was passed out on the couch. and i couldn't wake him up. i couldn't get any response whatsoever. in other words, he was out cold, you know. >> while hank skinner was asleep on the couch, twyla went to the new year's eve party. uncle bob was there.

>> she got over there and everybody's where's hank at? and she says he's over at the house, sick, passed out. we can't wake him up. so bob knows he's got a chance. >> howard mitchell's daughter sarah was at the party with twyla and uncle bob. >> did you notice anything unusual with twyla that night. >> yeah, it was her uncle. he was following her around, hitting on her, doing all these things he wasn't supposed to. trying to kiss her and talk into her ear. this is uncle, not supposed to be happening. he would follow her constantly. >> he was stalking her. this needed further investigation. >> now focused on robert denell emily and her fellow student were about to learn about physical evidence that could place bob at the scene of the murders.

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♪ while hank skinner sat on death row for the murders of twila busby and her sons, emily miller and her fellow journalism students poured over evidence. they found a key piece of evidence, a bloody windbreaker next to twila's body. >> the jacket was a man's, extra

large, 44, 46, too big for me. they said the jacket was worn by the assailant because it has medium velocity blood impact spatter. >> suspecting the windbreaker belonged to bob denell, the student spoke to a neighbor who cared for bob's wife. >> this is the picture of a jacket found at the crime scene. >> i'm 100% sure this is robert denell's jacket. he wore it all the time. i never saw robert wear the jacket after -- after the murders, ever. >> ellis also saw bob cleaning his truck just after the murders. >> he took the rubber and everything out of the floor board and cleaned the carpet. >> it turned out that denell's own wife had been suspicious about his involvement in the murders. >> she was questioning him about what had happened to twila and her boys.

and she told me that he had told her that if she didn't shut up and quit talking to him about it and quit asking him about it, that she would end up the same way that they did, he would do the same to her that he did to them, meaning referencing to twila and her boys, he would kill her like he killed them. >> three years after the murders, bob denell was driving drunk when he crashed into a tractor-trailer. he was killed instantly. >> twila's uncle, i mean, he was never a suspect on it. but it's awful easy to point your finger to a man who can't defend himself because he's no longer living. >> hank skinner had been on death row for almost a decade when attorney roberto when joined his appeals team. owen directed the capital punishment -- was surprised to learn the windbreaker had never been submitted for dna testing. >> there were human hairs on

this jacket, sweat stains, bloodstains on this jacket. it was a veritable cornucopia of possible dna testing. >> owen believed he had strong grounds for appeal because the state had failed to test the windbreaker, and other key evidence. >> in the living room there is a black plastic garbage bag. and inside that garbage bag there were found a knife and a hand towel and they didn't test either of those items. there's a second knife, which was found on the porch of the house and this i think now we would say is very likely the murder weapon for mr. busby and mr. caler. they didn't do any dna testing on that either. the testing they did seemed designed to confirm their case against mr. skinner rather than to explore the possibility that someone else's dna was present at the scene. >> in 2001 skinner's attorneys filed a request with the state to run dna tests on the evidence. district attorney john mann

refused. >> this case doesn't turn on dna. there was an overwhelming amount of evidence. i could have salted him away without any dna evidence at the trial. >> john mann made his decision that night when he went to the murder scene. he had already made statements to the media that i'm the one who done it. >> they're not going to stop, oops, we made a mistake, it's not hank. >> they wanted to get me out of the way, and they did. >> mann argued that skinner's original defense attorney had known about the dna evidence but made a decision to not have it tested. >> the state said, well, dna existed at the time of mr. skinner's trial. so you lose mr. skinner, because it's your fault for not having sought the testing when you could have done it. >> to counter the state of texas stone walling, emily's journalism professor decided to take skinner's case to the press. >> lo and behold every media

outlet wanted it. nancy grace invited us on for an interview. >> welcome to pros and cons, david protest, professor, i know blood spatter evidence. how could this guy have gotten blood spatters on his shirt if he wasn't there when the crime was committed? >> he doesn't deny being there. he was unconscious, toxicology reports confirm this. my students conducted interviews who suggest strongly that twila busby's uncle could have been the killer. >> he was completely checked out. you're taunting skinner and a bunch of other dopers. that's what you've got. skinn skinner did it and he got the death penalty. >> mr. mann, i'm sorry, a bloody set of fingerprints were found on a bag containing the knife. will you join me in requesting the court conduct dna evidence before a possibly innocent man is put to death? >> gentlemen and emily, i'm

going to have to let you go. >> one month after the nancy grace show john mann changed his mind about the dna. >> he decided on his own to do some dna testing but he did it without the involvement of the defense. he boxed up some items and sent them off for testing and told the lab what to test. >> the first items mann sent for testing included a set of human hairs found in twila's hands. >> and the mitochondrial dna on those hairs comes back to twila busby's mitochondrial line. >> this meant the hairs belonged to someone on twila's mother's side of her family. >> they didn't like hairs from either twila or her sons. a reasonable juror could say those hairs could blong to denell. >> although those three hairs that tested to her maternal lineage looked like they were a different color, that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't her hair or one of her sons' hairs.

>> that's what i would say too if i were in their position and i was trying to explain away why their expert said these hairs didn't look like twila's and elwin caler's and -- >> john mann shut down any further dna testing. >> skinner thinks the longer time that he has on appeal after appeal after appeal the greater probability that texas will do away with the death sentence and he will be commuted to life. i think that's all he's after. >> i don't have to prove who did do it. that's the police's job. all i've got to prove is i didn't do it. and we have that evidence now.

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in 1996 french anti-death penalty activist sandrin of george began writing letters to several inmates in texas. one of them was hank skinner. >> hank is a very sociable person. he has a great sense of humor. sometimes cynical. but i like that, so that's okay. we started writing and he told me about his case. honestly, i thought this is nuts. if you're convinced of this man's guilt, do the testing. >> sandrin, you weren't there, how can you be so convinced he

didn't do it? >> it is just mind boggling that evidence preserved from the crime scene, including a male jacket and the murder weapons to this day is not tested. >> curious why hank's attorney harold comer hadn't tested key evidence sandrin traveled to pampa. >> he was a former prosecutor who had prosecuted hank twice. there were leads in testing he should have pursued. there's a bloody hand print on the trash bag where the knife is found with the kitchen towel. it's not hank's print. whose is it? >> comer insists that not testing every item for dna was a strategic decision. >> we argued that you can't send a man to his death. as long as there's evidence laying off in some evidence room that has not been tested. i think if we'd insisted on testing before trial he would

have not had the avenue of appeal that he has now and it could well he would have been executed by now. >> we thought that was not a reasonable strategy under the circumstances of the case given that you had a client insisting on his innocence. >> in 2005 owen filed an appeal arguing that comer provided ineffective counsel in not testing dna and failing to introduce hank's codeine allergy which could have explained how he slept through the murders. >> the toxicology reports said codeine and vodka. >> skinner's blood codeine level was .44. a toxicologist testified that was so high skinner would have been in a coma-like state. >> then the question is if he were allergic to codeine, why would he take it? >> to counter hank's allergy claim, the state called dr. michael chamalis who treated

hank for broken ribs. >> it takes a tremendous amount of trauma to break four ribs. there was no doubt he had broken ribs but i did not think that that was recent because of the findings externally. drug seekers will say i'm allergic to codeine because it's not strong enough. so i was very dubious about giving him narcotics. i told the nurse, i said, i want you to keep the door open and watch him. and then she told me that she had seen him taking syringes out and putting them in his pocket. mr. skinner was a very smart man. he did not want to go out on the street and buy drugs. >> the fact that a previous emergency room physician who had treated him believed him to be a drug seeker indicates that he wasn't actually allergic to codeine and probably could have developed quite a tolerance to it. >> on the night of the crime he had a ton of codeine in his system. the only way that doesn't affect

you is if you are a regular user of codeine. and the doctor says hank didn't want codeine. >> we had been partying all afternoon. i accidentally ingested some codeine pills out of twila's drink and i got sick. i had no idea what was going on. when you suffer a codeine reaction your vision is out and it's going like this and like this, this way and that way. i'm messed up to the point, and i can't operate. i can't talk. i can't walk. i'm just incoherent and incapacitated. when i woke up everybody in the house was dead or dying. >> the u.s. district court in amarillo agreed with owen that

skinner's previous counsel should have introduced his codeine allergy. but they ruled that this information would not have swayed the jury. they also ruled that comer's decision not to test the dna was an intentional legal strategy and not grounds for a retrial. >> the state's approach is to say, well, any individual item of evidence that we've come up with to call into question their theory standing alone wouldn't have changed the outcome of the case. but when you think of it as a wall and suddenly it has a lot of little holes in it a reasonable juror might say this just is too much doubt for me. >> despite crucial dna evidence yet to be tested the court set an execution date, february 24th, 2010. >> this is just so damn insane, it's like a bad rerun of the twilight zone. my lawyer came up here to see me and he told me, he said, man, i'm scared, i'm going to be honest with you, we're in trouble.

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for dna analysis on bloodstains and the windbreaker found at the crime scene. on march 24th, 2010 skinner was transported to the huntsville execution unit, the busiest death chamber in the country. hank's execution was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. >> we were trying on all fronts to stop the execution without success. the clock was ticking down. >> my lawyer tells me, he says, this claim that you filed, i want to tell you, to be honest with you, man, they haven't denied it yet. i'm sure they're going to. you need to prepare yourself. >> emily miller was following the case from a newsroom in atlanta. >> i to do up five months pregnant and said there's a man that's scheduled to die in texas today and he's asking for dna to be tested. this case should not go unnoticed. >> for sandrin, the execution

had become even more personal. >> i had to tell my friends, i said guys there's something you don't know about my life but i'm married and my husband is on death row in texas. >> after 12 years of writing letters and talking through protective glass sandrin and hank were married in 2008. sandrin and the rest of hank's family were given a final visit. >> hank's daughters wants to come down and see him. his eldest daughter did not remember him. his second daughter, she had never lived with her dad so they were basically meeting their dad for the first time. >> talking to my daughters on the phone there, just delirious crying. i tried to be strong for my kids and my wife. telling them, don't worry about it. after it's over with, get a few tequila shots. remember me as i was in life, laughing and joking and talking. and so they told me you've got to get off the phone.

>> the way they, i would say, kicked you out of the unit is really unpleasant. i have over the years seen many, many families in the visitation room saying good-bye on execution day, to say good-bye over the phone through the glass. i don't really know how to describe that because it's -- sorry. >> sheriff randy stubblefield drove 500 miles to watch hank die. >> i had told twila's mother that i would be there at that time. i am pro-death penalty. hank's had too many opportunities in and out of the prison system. again, my opinion, the bible says eye for an eye, and that's what i believe. >> at 4:00 p.m. hank was given his final meal and received last rites from a priest. >> it's worse than having someone with a gun in your face.

the way they kill you, strap you down to a table, perfectly healthy, live otherwise, and they're going to inject you full of gunk and kill you. it's like put ago dog to sleep. i was thinking of all the guys i knew who had come over here and suffered this same thing. the gurney is like a horizontal cross. you're being crucified laying down. we were all sitting around fixing to be moved into the observation room. he had family that was there. they were bringing him down the hall and into the death chamber. getting him ready to be strapped in. chaplain hands me the phone and my lawyer said -- when he did that i knew the next words out of his mouth was going to be, i'm sorry, hank, and i was thinking it's over with. he says, well, the supreme court granted you a stay.

>> wow, i can tell you at that point your body just gives up because you've been holding on for so long that pressure just goes off your shoulders. but suddenly your legs don't carry you. >> i was a nervous wreck. i couldn't talk. i couldn't -- i felt out of place. i felt like i wasn't supposed to be here. i had a lot of stuff going on in my mind. in minute i thought they were going to come knock on my cel door and say oops we made a mistake, we've got to take you back over there. you know what i'm saying? so we left. there was a lot of protesters outside. his wife, who he'd married since he's been on death row was there with her group. we didn't speak to anyone. we just went and got in our cars and we left. >> this is a case where it might be easier than many other cases to lose hope. we have had success at moments

in the case. but by prevailing in the supreme court all we got was to go back to federal district court and start over with our lawsuit. >> a year after the u.s. supreme court's ruling, the texas legislature changed state laws regarding dna analysis. finally rob owen would get to test key evidence from the crime scene. >> the jacket found next to twila busby's body is probably the most important piece of evidence in the case. it could confirm our theory that robert denell was the person responsible for twila busby's murder. the state contacted us and said, well, basically, we'll do the testing. but there's one thing. we don't have the jacket. the jacket had been lost. y the masculine fragrance. yves saint laurent.

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♪ mom. ♪ in 2012, state prosecutors finally agreed to run dna testing on all the crime scene evidence from the murder of twila busby and her sons. hank skinner believed that a bloody windbreaker found at the scene was the key to proving his innocence. but the state said they had lost it. >> we were battling the state of texas for 13 years to get this evidence tested. the one thing by itself that would have exonerated me, the state has mysteriously lost it. >> it's unfortunate that

sometimes a piece of evidence is mislaid in an evidence room, in a locker, or it gets lost during transport to the court, but it's a human system and you have expect that sometimes mistakes will happen. >> there is no reason why an object as large as a man's windbreaker jacket should just disappear. and even in this case the state managed to maintain the custody of items as small as fingernail clippings, and yet somehow they lost this jacket they say. in 2005 john mann testified and i had the opportunity to ask him straightforwardly whether he thought the law enforcement apparatus in tampa was equipped to handle an investigation of a case as serious as this one, and to his great credit he very candidly said no. you really get it there from the horse's mouth. i don't really think this law

enforcement agency is cable of doing this. that ought to give people serious pause about pursuing this judgment. >> an evidentiary hearing into the conviction of death row inmate hank skinner gets under way. findings from three separate post-conviction dna tests. but the one piece of evidence that could not be tested, that's this jacket, was lost by the state. since it was not tested and cannot be located, it cannot be a part of this hearing. >> despite the missing windbreaker, the state claimed test results from other evidence only cemented hank's guilt. >> that testing revealed the blood that was spattered on hank was spattered on pretty much every facet, front, back, sides, the cuffs of the shirt, the insides of the legs, the front, and the back, and that just isn't possible unless his body was moving in space while the blood was spattering against it. >> we know that he has a hand injury that suggests he grappled with the assailant. that could have resulted in there being some blood on the back of his clothing. >> testing also revealed the

bloody palm prints found on the wall matched hank's dna. >> the cut was on his palm. if your hand is slick with the victim's blood all over the handle your hand is going to slide down onto the blade of the knife. >> the person who stabbed caler almost certainly had caler's blood on his own hands. if that assailant was mr. skinner whose own right hand is bleeding by the time he leaves the house, there should be mixtures of mr. taylor's blood and mr. skinner's blood. we don't find that. there's only mr. skinner's blood. >> but a bloody towel found in the trash bag with one of the knives contained dna from an unidentified person. >> the towel shows twyla's blood and someone else's dna, someone else in the room who was not mr. skinner or one of the other victims. there's also some foreign dna on one side of the towel that we do know who it belongs to. one of the state's dna experts and the court reporter from the

trial, his dna is present on at least two items. one of those is the knife. it is really troubling that after a decade or more of struggling to get this dna testing the state couldn't complete the testing without contaminating some of the evidence. >> the 31st district judge ruled that the new evidence was inconclusive and would not have affected the jury's decision. after more than two decades and millions of dollars in legal fees, hank skinner sits on death row, still proclaiming his innocence. today, hank's last hope is reanalysis of the dna evidence. if that fails to reveal any new information, a new execution date will be set. >> our duty as the defense counsel, even if we believe a person is guilty is to make the state prove the guilt beyond a

reasonable doubt. particularly in a capital murder case. it's worth the time i think and it's worth the money. the alternative is unthinkable. >> when i add together the very best possible arguments that mr. skinner's supporters make such as the court reporter's dna being found on the knife handle, such as the missing gray windbreaker, it still seems to me like if you wake up and find your girlfriend dead on the floor in front of you and her child is dead in his bed you wouldn't immediately go to your narcotics anonymous sponsor's house. you'd call the police. >> i don't know what happened that night, and it haunts me to this day. when we still don't have the truth 20-some-odd years later, this is the system run amok. >> i'm not accusing the local authorities of conspiring to frame a man that they believe or know is innocent.

i am accusing them of gross incompetence and i think that's born out by the evidence. should an entity that can't administer the system any more competently than that be allowed to kill people? >> if he gets another execution date, i'll be there. the skinner case has been the biggest case i ever worked on. the death sentence was imposed on this case. to me, when that's done and over with, it's going to be put a close yoour onto a part of my life that i've had for 22 years sitting here. closure's like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder. that's such a fallacy. closure is up to you. it's not up to killing somebody that's going to grant it to you. i can't tell you how many people have come out of that death house over there, now they're doubly traumatized because they lost their loved one and stood there and watched somebody else die. so they're not getting any solace out of it at all. there's no such thing as closure. >> well, i got to hang up. >> yeah. okay. all right.

let me ask you a question, do you think i did this? on this episode of "death row stories" -- >> she'd been strangled and stabbed. >> a babysitter is found brutally murdered. >> this murder was about as violent as you can get. >> and a secret recording -- >> you murdered a girl. >> you won't tell them. >> leads to a swift death sentence. >> he had blood on his hands. there is no innocent explanation. >> but allegations of corruption -- >> it was someone else's dna left there, and they're hiding who it is. >> -- raise serious questions. >> i didn't do this murder. i'm not guilty. >> there's a body on the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case there are a number o