be prepared to sacrifice additional liberties as our world becomes increasingly complex? thank you very much. peter: gregory? judge maggs: he has a premise on a question. i agree with the premise. one of the biggest concerns they had to address is now we will have a more powerful central government which means the states will be less powerful which means you might not have as much liberty as you might otherwise have. one of the biggest challenges the authors faced was how to explain that this was actually going to be an improvement. they talked about a lot of different things. they talked about the fact that if the union fell apart, every individual state would have to have their own standing army to defend itself but if we had a

union we would not need a standing army of this kind. if you had a federal government and state government to check each other. you mentioned today, is it the case that we have to sacrifice liberty in order to have a successful government. i hope not. as a judge i do not really get into politics but i do not think this is a new debate. it is very similar to the debate you pointed out occurred back then. peter: colleen from arizona state university, you have 30 seconds. did the federalist impact who we are today? prof. sheehan: yes. yes. i think the most important of the papers is federalist 51, or

medicine proclaims justice is the end of government, of civil society. it will never be pursued until liberty be lost in its pursuit. that is my answer to the last caller's question. judge maggs: it definitely has and watching that fabulous high school with the teacher and enthusiasm of students i think it would be hard to deny the impact of the papers have had on america. peter: thank you both so much for spending the last 90 minutes with us on c-span's books that shaped america. and thank you, callers. ♪

today. it's my pleasure to welcome to vanderbilt law school steven hale author of an extraordinary new book about capital punishment in tennessee death row. welcomes you hours in the shadow of the execution chamber. i read the book in manuscript last fall and ever since i've thinking about the story that it tells of people marked by pain, trauma and inescapable trans aggression and what happens when they find friendship an, unconditional love. it's truly a masterpiece of crime, punishment and redemption. and it's on sale outside. and stephen will be signing copies after the talk. steven hale, a reporter for the nashville banner and one of our city's sharpest working journalists. he spent years as a staff reporter covering criminal justice and for the nashville scene, he's written extensively

about tennessee's death row, and he's won an association of alternative news media best reporting award in 19 2020. his works also appear appeared at the appeal the daily beast and the washington post. joining him in conversation is alvaro andric, a chair director of the immigration practice clinic here, the law school, who has a deep to hale's story. so please join me in welcoming steven hale to vanderbilt. thank you. let me turn this on very go now i'm standing. thank you so much for being here. it's such an amazing kind of journey that has brought all the way here. yes, i think that we haven't talked much since we last saw each other back 2000, i think 19 or 20 about that time.

thank you for being here. i'm really honored to be able to share this you and be able to be here with you and i want to start and we haven't practice. there's too much we haven't done much of like a plan for this because i think he's going to come up very naturally. but i wanted to start by reading just one fragment from your book that i just started reading recently haven't finished. if i may be completely honest, but i wanted to to start with with a small chapter and small paragraph here it says the people experiences and that make up this book have changed my life. i hope that by presenting them here i can contribute in some small way. today are that we are all of us capable of terrible and beautiful things that people are so often harmed before their are others and that as a lawyer and activist, stevenson says each of us, is more than with the worst thing we've ever done. and with that, i wanted to start by asking you, how did you find

your way to unity? yes. thank you very much for here. thank you, everyone, for coming. i've never been to vanderbilt law school, so is a bit of an achievement for me. thank you? yeah, it's very special. you're here, alvaro and our friend is here because the two of you actually are the way that i made my way. unit two tennessee's death row in 2018. tennessee was gearing up for its first execu ation in nearly decade, and that was the execution. a man named billy ray eric alvaro was had become quite close with and as i was covering that case in the run up to that started asking around about i might be able to get in touch with some of the men on death row to try to interview them or see if they wanted to make a statement of any kind. these executions were approaching and as i was kind of asking around about that, i got put in touch with a man named

david bass, who was here in the audience and met up with him and told me this extraordinary thing, that there are these people who go to riverbend maximum security about, you know, 15 minutes from here and go to death row and sit around and hang out and visit the men. on tennessee's death row. and he said, in fact, i know the man who visits billy ray eric. and so he introduced me to you and everyone we talked know on the phone and, i ended up interviewing alvaro in the run up to that execution. and then after billy ray eric's execution. i was able to go out to the prison myself, to unit two, to the visitation there, which is a very surreal place. and sit in a small with, you know, ten men from death row. and about that many visitors, share some popcorn and have a sort of extraordinarily normal

time, which really was unforgettable and led me to writing this book, basically. and so i guess when you like when you first got there, was there an idea of this is going to happen? how i how did that when did the book in it? well, the i think after i two things as you know some of the folks who on death row held a memorial service, a funeral for billy ray eric and i ended up going to that and was very moved by it. some of billy's paintings were there and. some folks spoke, including alvaro, about and about the time they'd spent with him. and then i also so that experience and then getting to go myself to the visitation gallery and visit of these men and see the community existed out there in a place which is almost by definition supposed to eliminate community was when i

there was probably more of a story there that a long time ago now but at the time it seemed like a good idea to try to write a book it but yeah and i know and i know in the book you talk about your your first visit which for me personally extremely i guess it was a learning experience go into into the prison itself and and all the things i'm curious to know more about how it was for you like how when you've had you ever been to a jail or prison before you know. i don't have to think i don't know if that i had i think i had been to a prison once before. maybe not, not in this kind of context, certainly not to talk to anyone. it was very it was very interesting experience. i'd actually love for you to tell your story as well, which i happen to know is a good one. but and maybe folks have been out to the prison, but yeah, you

know, we we showed there, i want to say 515 and kind of waited outside, mingling around with some folks and right away. there's a sense of this very kind of unusual and overlooked community because people there waiting outside the prison, some of them were there to go visit, people on death row, but others were family members of other people at the prison who are just waiting to go visit their ones and so there's this kind of group of people are either carrying the weight of that. they're going to visit people who have been kind of shunned from society. it's a very unusual kind group and, you know, there a lot of funny things about it, though. the first being that there is is kind of a almost. almost a game of chicken between visitors there to see who would go. and first meet anyone who's been out to this morning. yes, i'm lauren killeen. i'm a second year litigation associate at our d.c. office.

i do. on general capturing the back from another inmate with the voice of which is generally referred to defense work in our enforcement and defense investigations practice. so so that's very interesting interesting. i think we're good then i think we're cool now the. end turned around like as if someone was back just deciding to give their own lecture. yeah yeah. what i was saying that there was this almost this game of chicken between the visitors of who was going to go in first because the corporal who is sort of over the security apparatus there at riverbend, which is i always say, feels it's a security checkpoint and. actually, it feels a lot more like a kind of going through security at some like small, hostile, foreign nation. it's not very elaborate. there's a few people there who are just kind of curt with you. and sometimes nice sometimes not. not in a hurry to do much of

anything. but if you walk in before they want you to, they will just send you back outside. so i know i remember david and some of the folks who were there kind of giving each other a hard time, who was going to go in first. and of course, there's a there's a whole process making sure you're not wearing some article of clothing you're not allowed to wear and going through metal detectors and scanners and whatnot and but think the thing the thing that really did stick with me and i mentioned this before and you and i have talked about it alvaro this thing to me about going to the prison that i had not thought of, even myself, i had gone there. but i say everyone now, which is that one of the strangest experiences of going into a prison is that as you sort of move deeper, the prison, you can never go through the door in front of you until the door behind you. and so there's this the it's not metaphorical. i mean, you really are. it's a real sense of that. you're being kind of locked in there in a way and even though

it's sort of embarrassing to say in hindsight, but in the moment, it does kind of make you feel a little anxious, you know, even though, you know, of course, that you're you will just walk back out. it doesn't quite feel that way. and that's a weird way to enter into this world. and then feel kind of this elevated and then go into this room and feel it all sort of pass as you have this remarkably normal inner interaction with with the men on death. but but yeah. what, what about yours? i think. yeah, yeah, i and i'll definitely say that and think that, that it was part of the thing that was so surreal to me. and i'm curious to know and i know it will be tough to come out of it. can you raise your hand if you've been to the jail prison already or at some point you go, so we got some folks up in there. so yeah, the closing and the opening of the doors. so it just gives you this like, you know, just feels really weird in it.

just going in there. remember, it's actually beautiful landscaping place like a river van. if you have been it's like at 5 p.m. the summer day. it looks really beautiful, very calm, really quiet. the silence is just something that is really it gets kind my nerves and then going to visit especially when i went to see billy you know you talk about it in the book and you capture i, i made a point not to research who billy eric was, what had happened to him at all, to the point that, you know, how he looked like. and so the first time i went there, i, you know, you get escorted all the way through to. and then on the way there, i was like thinking, my gosh, like, i don't know who this person, like what this person was like, how will i know who this person is and walking into a unit to there's this cool glass window door. and then and then i saw somebody wait, like peeking in, seeing really pensively. and i realized, okay, that's probably billion. you know, we sat down and chatted, but it was so for

somebody was coming in visiting for the first time. and i had no experience at all coming. that was my first time going into into the prison i had no clue what to talk to him about. and i'm curious for to share a little bit about what you found when you went there and who is that. yeah. so when went the first time i went with with david to a reference to the man named allie injuries and we went see the man that they had been visiting regularly. he was a man named terry king and and who same as you. i had not? you know, i think i probably had read maybe a bit of a court or something like this, but i hadn't done the kind of deep googling that you might do. and i'm not really sure why. normally that is what i would do, but i guess i just decided i'm going to go out here and, you know, meet this person and without kind of researching them the way that i wouldn't do to you when we met or whatever. and we you know we went out

there and. terry kind of emerged from this from this back back in the unit into the visitation gallery, just wearing a white t shirt and the sort of doc pants and this manila folder, manila envelope and produced a bag of microwave popcorn from it and gave me a hug and was just like, you know, i have this popcorn and i know it's for some reason i think about that quite a bit because it was it was a very i think, maybe imagined something more formal or more kind of serious. you know, it's a very sort of heavy place, but it was not a heavy interaction. it was a very light, you know, kind of friendly experience. and, you know, a little microwave there in the corner and a cooler of water and some toys for kids if that if they come and he popped his popcorn and poured it out on napkins for

all of us to share and we just sat there probably an hour and a half, you know, two, 2 hours, whatever it ends up being and talking and from the very beginning, the thing i think i think terry and me and some of the other guys who are out there that have had visitors, the sort of the free world, as they call it, was very, i think, aware that people that come to visit him have a lot of questions that they're uncomfortable asking. you know because it's a it's a it's a very sort of relationship. at the beginning, you know, everything about this person and they don't anything about you. so it's it's it can be sort of strange. and he just kept repeating me, you know, ask anything you want and you can ask me anything you want. and. the one thing i always laugh about is about, you know, middle midway through our conversation, i started to feel really comfortable. you know, i told him stuff about my life. you know, we're talking about, i don't know, and family and this

kind of thing and i, i was kind of just overwhelmed by how like, chill this place was. and i to terry was like, okay, you know, there's everyone's out here, like, kind of chatting and talking. no one's in handcuffs or chains or anything. is there anyone back here that you're, like, kind of afraid of like that you wouldn't want to be here with us right now. that would worry you. and he looked at me like i had you know, lost my mind and forgotten where i was. and he goes, hell yes, you know, so it was just funny. kind of have that experience of of sort of whiplash of the place is a prison and. it is death row. there are people there who are very mentally ill or very kind of who cannot have that kind of interaction. but there are all these other men who can and so it was just it was just of. and you what led to the book? i couldn't shake that experience. and so that's why i wanted to write about it more.

you know, i remember going in been really had no clue what i was going to find and who i was going to find in death row. and i remember thinking in my mind, i had a vision of what that would look like probably. and think i've told this to many people, which was very funny. i, i always said, i always thought that spongebob squarepants movie when go into this like bar and there's all these really very muscular and big, big people who are like all like and that's what i thought i was going to find there. and i was surprised that no one there looks like that. yeah. i mean, i, i think time has passed, i can, i can tell the story. the statute of limitations when i was there, you know, we're in a law school, you guys can inform if i'm the the first night i went out there, i went to auburn university city and. the first time i was out there, this came up, you know, just in conversation and some guy i'm even forgetting who it was now off the top of my head but as we were kind of, we were getting ready to leave and i was i was

being to a couple more of the men out there that i hadn't met and david also went to auburn. and so i think he may have introduced me as like, oh, this is stephen. you know, he went to auburn, too, and made some comment about this is in the fall. so football seasons going on and you know this this man responded by making a pretty a pretty cutting remark about auburn's football team being and then a joke about how he he wouldn't he wouldn't bet on them because this was apparently something he had been doing in some way. so it's it's it's just like you say, it's just like this was this very disorienting thing to it kept happening while i was out there. i would get 3 minutes into a conversation that seemed like i might be having with anyone then you kind of there are certain things that might remind you where you are and the thing about that time in particular i went out there for the first time is this was in between two executions. so it was after billy ray's

execution and before the execution of a man named as the gorski and we were right in between those two. and so it was a very kind of a light visit, but was this cloud hanging over it? you know, ed, wasn't there that night, but people who came to that room and visited with people like billy scheduled to be executed and, that was kind of up ahead. and so that there was a heaviness, too, in all those interactions that night actually there, terry shared with me a letter that he had written and sort of, you know, goodbye, basically, and there was there was a lot going on at once there, which i'm sure you can relate to. you know, there's it takes a while to sort out after you leave in one of the things that you discussed in previous events parnassus this is the community that formed within the inmates who are individuals who are there and in you told the story about, one of them being sick.

nobody else came for them. could tell us a little bit more about that. yeah. at the time there is a man named charles wright. was very and and had you know gotten to the point where he was having he had a hard time taking care of himself but the other on the unit knew that if he got so visibly sick that the prison would move him to the infirmary and he'd be by himself and he wouldn't have his community. i mean, these guys have lived there longer than. i've been alive, you know. and so that was their world and that's their community. and so they they a few of the men out there had begun taking care of. charles, i mean, you know, bathing him, cleaning up, helping him clean up after like very, you know, intimately taking of him.

so that he wouldn't be removed from the unit. because then he would be by himself in the infirmary, which did eventually happen. he you know, he got sick and eventually died of cancer before darkly. and sort of bizarrely, he scheduled for an execution and his attorneys and people who cared about had kind of gone to the governor and the you know, state and said like, look, he's ill. you know, he's he's terminally ill. he's going to die. can he, you know, didn't ask for him to be granted clemency some kind and the state was i mean, the state was going to execute him. he just died first of cancer. but raised this very strange prospect, a of a man being, you know, i guess basically what carried into the mean he wouldn't have been able to walk in there you by that point but they were they were playing on

on executing him but yeah i was i was you know that was i was very by that that these these guys again it cuts across everything that the place is supposed to represent. right. which is that these are people who can longer live in society because they're these, you know, monstrous individuals who have done something that we cannot forgive and at the same, they're they're back their caring for one of their own in a way that, you know the state wasn't going to do the it's not like the health care they're getting is top notch. you know. and so that was a very powerful thing to learn. yeah, sure. and i wanted to put it in perspective. so this was in 1918 when when executions resume. you mentioned that in the book. but i'm curious for you to tell a little bit about why had executions stop in tennessee. right. so there been and it's kind of

happening again now. there was a period where there was a lot of litigation over. tennessee's execution methods. and also, i think a combination that was that there, the leadership of the state at the time the governor or attorney general. you know, state supreme court there was there was this litigation and there was also maybe not as for whatever reason, not quite as much desire to push for this. you know, there's there's there's kind of a a spectrum of how of how sort of urgently state officials can push for executions to happen. you know, if they don't want them to happen, they don't have to. and if they really want to, they can kind of try to move it along. but there was a lot of litigation over lethal injection protocol. and what drugs were being used and whether it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. and so by 2018, in 2018, that

trial over the lethal injection protocol finished and the courts upheld the protocol. and so that kind of cleared the way for these executions to continue. and as some of you may know, in tennessee, we have the lethal injection, but also the electric chair. and so a large number of the guys out there, because they were sentenced to death before lethal injection was brought in, they actually have a choice. they can be executed by injection or they can be executed in the electric chair, which is literally they were sentenced to when they were sentenced to death. that's another kind of very grim feature of this is that you around 30 days. i think it is before the execution date. the warden comes to them with a document for them to sign, either waiving their right to, you know, the lethal injection or to like to electric chair.

and so they they're faced with that decision, too. and i know as these executions were coming up, there's always lot of discussion out of the prison on guys like what what people were choosing and, you know, they were watching executions happen then trying to decide, well, how bad that seem versus how bad this other options means. you know, when when billy ray, eric was executed, i witnessed that execution. and, you know, there were medical experts afterward that said they believed he had experienced torture. and so you had some of the guys that followed him choosing the electric chair with the idea that that would be quicker or it was more certain would happen. and, you know, so it's and right now we're in kind of law that is because of problems with the lethal injection protocol and questions about what drugs state, what drug or drugs the state would use if they were going to try resume executions. so there's there was a the governor without kind