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 of into the weeds on it. the governor ordered a of the protocol. and that's been kind of put everything on pause for a little bit and i you mentioned it and i

read a little bit of the book and i hadn't realized i'd be curious to know, like you mentioned, is some sort of a lottery to chosen? can you can you can you tell us a little bit more about like why you thought you would want to do that one? i mean, i think i think i know, but i how hard was it for you to do that? how was the process like? and then what did you experience? yeah. so there's the the state the the state law requires that when the state executes someone that there can be media witnesses there to report on what happens. and it's even as specific as saying well there there will be a couple print reporters, a couple radio reporters, a couple of tv reporters. there will be one reporter from the county where the crime occurred. it's it's laid out like that. but in order, there's only a certain number. i i'm forgetting now it's been a while since this happened, but seven or eight, maybe that is capped at and so there's a

lottery system as odd as sounds where you you volunteer your name and reporters from different outlets submit their name and you know pick them random essentially to fill these slots. one funny thing about this that, you all can be the judge of what says about the archaic nature of the death penalty. but you to fax in your name to volunteer for this, which i always found kind of interesting when i was at nashville scene where i worked, i was covering these. and as billy's execution was approaching and we were going to apply for to witness it, i had to go around asking people in the office i'd not ever talked to you before how to fix something, because i didn't know actually how to submit my name for this in. the end when we actually used the service that was a like a fax email which seemed to me is just a an email but they accepted it and so it's yeah,

it's very it's a it's a very kind of strange but important process, you know, and that's why wanted to do it or why i volunteered to do it. a big part of it was just that i had always gotten on this soapbox about the transparency, the lack of transparency around the death penalty. there's not lot of openness about how it's done, the protocols, the drugs that are used, where those drugs come from, what kind of testing is done on them. and then, of course, when they execute someone they do it, you know, closed doors in the prison and i always just sort of felt very strongly and i guess a ranted about it, one too many times saying like, well, if they're going to do this, you know, they're going to let reporters go, watch them do it. and we have to do this and and then they started them. and i did feel a sort of obligation to volunteer to do it, having felt so strongly about importance of doing it, of course, i wasn't the only one. i mean, there was, you know, a group of reporters at every one of these executions from all over the state, reporters in nashville, as well, as you know,

from the places where these crimes occurred. so, yeah, i think ideally know you go in there as a pool of people, come back out and tell the rest of the media and then through them the the people, what has happened back there. and it's proven to be a very important thing in this state as well as other states. we've seen that executions often happen and then official press release that comes out from the state says this person has been there. you know, it was carried out by lethal injection off without a hitch. and then you listen to reporters that were in there and they tell a very different story about the person reacting, the drugs or, you know, choking or making, you know, doing all these things that are very important in terms of us. what's really happening to the people that we're executing. so it's it is a very crucial thing. and so i'm i'm glad to have done it in that sense. but now but is also difficult course. yeah i'm what are you hoping to people get from this book. what are you what are your hopes

when you write this book and when what are you trying to communicate what is it that we're getting from it? i think i just hope that we can all just look at this thing straight on this thing, you know, being death penalty and and, you know, i have my own feelings about it. people can make up their feelings about it, but i don't think we can do that if not actually looking at what it is. and so in the book, i tried to tell the story of, you know, at one point and i think in the introduction i say it's book is sort of the story of nights spent in the visitation gallery, in the execution chamber, you know. and so my hope is that people can read this both. they can see here the people who are on row hear their life stories to the that i was able to tell them. here's what they're like now if you go sit and talk with them and. you know thankfully people alvaro, david, other visitors who were kind enough to kind of talk to me and share their experiences. i was able to sort of hopefully

let people into those relationships. and then here's it looks like when we execute someone. and i think if someone look at all that and decide what they think about, then i guess i can that's up to them, you know, but for for a lot of us, i think, myself included, before i got into this as a reporter, it's not something that you're inclined to think a lot about or that you're really able to access. not many people have the opportunity to go sit with folks on death row in other states. the on death row pretty much can't do this. what is described in this book, i in a lot of states, if you're on death row, it means in your cell 23 hours a day and pacing in hallway one hour and. so, yeah, i mean what i want people to take from it, i guess is just as my best attempt to just show this really is and i think that for and i know for a lot of the visitors, the

experiences of going to the prison and actually meeting the human beings who are back there, complicated to the picture in a way that that was life changing really. you know, but i at least hope that the book is sort of gives people who read it an opportunity to experience that a little bit. what do you think? i guess execution stuff right now. where do you think this is going? do you see an end to. yeah, i think. i mean, there's there's a lot of interesting facts about it. i, i feel like like we in the kind of end stage of the death penalty as a country, um, i don't know. that means five years or 20 years, but i think at a certain point of view, zoom out and look at the timeline of the death penalty in america this period that we're in will be kind of the fourth quarter of it. i don't think we're going to i don't think like i have two kids. i don't think that they're

necessarily going to be living in a that's doing this the way we're doing it. i mean, i could be i could be wrong about but but and i say that because if you look at a graph of executions, the trajectory has been going down for 20 some years. i mean, it's spiked a little bit here recently in the past few years in the states have done it. but overall, the trajectory down, if you look at the number of death sentences we hand out that's going down. so, i mean, eventually, you know, the people in our death throes are largely in their sixties. in their seventies i mean, we're not sending as many people there as we used to. so eventually, just the math of it suggests that we're going to end it. i think the trouble is that i think it could be pretty ugly on the way out. you know, we're in position now. our states are having a really hard time getting drugs to use in execution. so they're to go to, you know, shadier to use a legal term shadier and shadier lengths to get them, whether it's from countries or from some compounding pharmacy that is not

kind of open to public scrutiny. and we're methods brought back that either haven't been used in a long time like electric chair firing squad or, like in alabama, the use of gas. so i think the last gasp of this system could pretty ugly but i do think it will end being the last gasp of it in i guess before we up for q&a do you see yourself continue to work in reporting and are you still involved in this in i guess, capturing and? and is there a second book, i guess that's question. no, i, i hope so. i'm certainly still to be reporting on this stuff as, as doing some reporting the national banner now. so i'm going to be covering criminal justice and that kind of thing broadly speaking. and of course, i'll still cover the death penalty as it comes up. i still talk pretty much with terry king, who i met through of this. and of course, they've gotten to

know other people that make me feel a sort of different kind investment in it and what's going on with it. and i still think it's a very important story. so in that sense, yeah i'll keep writing about it as it comes up. i don't know. that, you know, my wife's not here. i can be a little more honest and say, wouldn't mind writing another book one time, but that one took it out of me. so what are the maybe see. but yeah, but it was also a very compelling story. made me feel like i could spend that much time with it and then that's not always the case. so i think we want to open it up for q&a so that we can have questions and we have a mic. so i guess anybody got any questions for stephen or for myself, but thank stephen. yes. hi just out of curiosity, out of the row, inmates that you have met, is there a sense do some of

them or a percentage them still feel that they were wrongfully convicted or are and believe that that the death penalty is just not something that they i mean, granted, they are on death, but is that something that they're actively like fighting against or accepting it by? have they accepted? yeah, i understand there are absolutely people on tennessee's death row who have maintained their innocence for sure. but i will say more people than i think you might expect in my. and you can in on this to all of it. do not try to tell you that they're innocent mean i a lot of the conversations either i had or that i know other people have had when they visited and gotten to know people out there is actually surprisingly someone sitting down and going i did this thing 45 years ago and i'm ashamed of or i don't, or a lot

of times not even that it's i don't even recognize the person who would done that. i don't comprehend how i was the same person because their lives have changed in a lot of ways, whether it's for mental health reasons or, you know, they were young you know, they were in their they were 21 and they were just leaving a house that was full abuse and substance use or, you know, various things. so, yeah, i actually i think what was surprising to me is actually that it's not what people might expect, where everyone's just saying, oh, i, i didn't do anything. i just ended up here by accident. there are definitely people who say that they're innocent, you know, and i there are some people who have very credible claims and some of those have been reported on or there have been people in recent years who have gotten off of tennessee's death row. i think there's another complicating factor, just that there are a lot of guys out there who wouldn't you like? i'm innocent in the sense that i didn't commit any crime. but who see the problems with

the way that the death penalty is applied to know there are people out there who have a codefendant. they're both charged with as part of the same crime. but their codefendant is serving a 30 year sentence or serving life, whatever. but they're on death row, so they see the unfairness in that way which is different than innocence, but it's kind of, you know, so i think that's what comes up a lot. the issue in the back in the u.s. because it's been there. hello, my dad's when i'm the director of tennessee concert concerned about the death penalty and i really enjoy what you had to say. so thank you for all of that. but my question is, do you do anything in the legislature like any testimony as it comes to the death penalty? i know there's bill, hb 1663 to

expand the death penalty. a child rapist or have you did anything with that? so i've actually i wrote a short item for the banner about that bill. i guess that would have been a week ago or a little bit ago, but just so for people who aren't familiar, the death penalty in a lot of including tennessee right now is reserved for homicides where a person is killed. and there's a bill at the legislature right. that would expand, make, make people convicted of child rape eligible for the death penalty, even if the child involved doesn't die. and strangers it may sound that that that would be a an outlier among in our country in terms of applying. and i'm interested to see what happens with that bill and i've been watching it and like i said, i did write a little bit about it. it's kind of an interesting debate because i think some there are some people who are worried that in a lot of cases

like that, you have a the alleged rapist, is a family member. and maybe if if a if a person knows that that person might face the death penalty, will there be a effect on the people coming forward about? that i don't know the answer that really, but i know there's a there's a lot of about kind of what that is. there's also just i know there was some debate in one of the committee hearings it that i was watching when some people were just saying this may just bring a bunch of legal issues that these victims families will then have to fight through for the next 30 years. and it some of them may prefer to do that. so it's a complicated but i haven't had been following that for sure. in the back very feel. steven, thank you so much for doing work and for sharing it in the book and in here with us today, i want to sort of follow up on on some themes you had. and in response to the first question about how substantial

the the role of the substance abuse in the home, the family, the the role of the mental and and developmental delays and all know it's i think anybody who's taken any serious look at the death penalty knows that it's almost impossible to be sentenced to death without. so many of these contributing factors overlay and then to talk about the notion of being welcomed onto death row and orderliness of the space once you have that these mostly men but these these people who are in a controlled environment and in a place where their support and how very civilized and compassionate and how much care and order is there, has it has it changed way that you as a reporter or as a tennessee and look at the underlying treatment

of that mental illness and substance abuse and support for families and children that are dealing that that in the broader population? yeah, absolutely. i think, um, you will not walk through a death and meet someone who, in my experience, who grew certainly the way i did. you with, with two working parents to send me to a private high school and paid for me to go to college and didn't hit me, didn't use drugs while i was in the womb and didn't, you know and it's not to say that there's no one out there who overcomes those things. obviously some, people, you know, have awful childhoods and grow up to be, you know. so it's not a universal, but put it like this. not everyone who grows up that way ends up on death row, but as far as i can tell, just about everyone on death row has a background similar that and so yeah it has made me think a lot about that both in a in a personal way when i walk around

and it's it's a humbling to go to read through some of these case files and say, you know, if i swapped me, this person, what makes me think i wouldn't have ended up exactly where they ended up? and i think if you do come that conclusion, it becomes, you know, very difficult not to think about some of stuff differently as as the orderliness on death row. i think it is a sort of counterintuitive thing. but if you talk to people who work in the prison system in tennessee, a lot of them will tell you they'd rather work on you to a riverbend than anywhere you know, because the guys there calm, pretty low key. there are people there with some profound issues, but by and large the issues that a correctional is going to face in a lot of other prisons not going to face there. and i always think i always want to stress the point that not that i think that even though i

do think there are some programs on tennessee's death row that are are good and are helpful to people, i think it's not so much that like, oh, so it turns out being sent to death row can be good for prison. but what it is, is that for a lot of these guys, they have not had a stable moment in their life until they got sent to a prison. and so what that makes me think about is what are other interventions, you know, all of them. a lot of in a lot of cases, people did attempt to intervene in some way or another. i mean, i've talked about this but billy ray eric was six years old when a teacher was like, i we need to look into this child's mental health like. he's not okay. so, you know, but the interventions were not the kind that maybe he would get now or that you would want someone to have and so, yeah, i think that is is pretty humbling to think about and does make you think about what can we be doing to to give people the chance at

another or another path that a lot of these guys didn't seem to have. i think there was another question. yes. i first thank you for speaking with us. wanted to ask you about something you said about this being that the last quarter, the death penalty and do you see that being because of it seems go on the voyage or the close to legislatures of the federal government actually eliminating it for going to become so impractical? that's just no longer feasible. it still be on the books. we have the death penalty. we're just not going to execute anyone anymore. that's a really good and i should probably stop that because i don't know why i'm out here making predictions, but i but it's a good point. and i think, i think you're right. i think it's probably both. i mean, right now there are i, i, i would get the number wrong, but there are a number of states who have abolish the death penalty. but to your point, there are also a number of states who have the death penalty and they