In the second episode of the lethal injection series, Steve Monacelli and Michael Phillips interview Dick Reavis, a journalist who witnessed the world’s first execution by lethal injection, that of Charlie Brooks in Texas in 1982. They report on how the lethal injection method was improvised after a Dallas reporter won a temporary court order allowing television stations to broadcast executions. Worried that a televised electrocution might turn the public against the death penalty, Texas politicians instead approved lethal injection. An Oklahoma coroner who admitted he had no expertise in chemistry and knew a lot about dead bodies but not “how to get them that way,” improvised the three-drug protocol eventually used by all death-penalty states, with horrifying results. Then, Monacelli and Phillips interview law professor Corinna Lain, who says that rather than a supposedly painless death, lethal injection is more like a slow drowning.

Sources:

Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (New York: New York University Press, 2025.)

Dick Reavis, “Charlie Brooks’ Last Words,” Texas Monthly (February 1983.) 

In the second episode of the lethal injection series, Steve Monacelli and Michael Phillips interview Dick Reavis, a journalist who witnessed the world&rsquo;s first execution by lethal injection, that of Charlie Brooks in Texas in 1982. They report on how the lethal injection method was improvised after a Dallas reporter won a temporary court order allowing television stations to broadcast executions. Worried that a televised electrocution might turn the public against the death penalty, Texas politicians instead approved lethal injection. An Oklahoma coroner who admitted he had no expertise in chemistry and knew a lot about dead bodies but not &ldquo;how to get them that way,&rdquo; improvised the three-drug protocol eventually used by all death-penalty states, with horrifying results. Then, Monacelli and Phillips interview law professor Corinna Lain, who says that rather than a supposedly painless death, lethal injection is more like a slow drowning.
Sources:
Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection&nbsp;(New York: New York University Press, 2025.)
Dick Reavis, &ldquo;Charlie Brooks&rsquo; Last Words,&rdquo;&nbsp;Texas Monthly&nbsp;(February 1983.)&nbsp;

It Could Happen Here started as an exploration of the possibility of a new civil war. Now a daily show, it's evolved into a chronicle of collapse as it happens, and an exploration of how we might build a better future. Every day Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, and James Stout take you on a jaunty walk through the burning ruins of the old world and towards a better one that lays just on the horizon.

It Could Happen Here started as an exploration of the possibility of a new civil war. Now a daily show, it's evolved into a chronicle of collapse as it happens, and an exploration of how we might build a better future. Every day Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, and James Stout take you on a jaunty walk through the burning ruins of the old world and towards a better one that lays just on the horizon.

It Could Happen Here

The Shady Business of Lethal Injection: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/15b0439f-9d5d-4f1b-887b-b38a015f3d4e/transcript

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