TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley.
What happens when you come face-to-face with death not as a victim or an executioner, but as a witness? That's the question at the heart of journalist Elizabeth Bruenig's latest Atlantic cover story, "Inside America's Death Chambers - What Years Of Witnessing Executions Taught Me About Sin, Mercy, And The Possibility Of Redemption." In the piece, Bruenig takes us inside of her decision to serve as a volunteer witness to state-sanctioned deaths, from botched lethal injections to the country's first use of nitrogen hypoxia, which is a method of execution in which a person is put to death by breathing nitrogen gas.
Bruenig's essay weaves together her reporting with the personal. She and her family were devastated by the murder of a loved one. And through her faith, she explores sin and forgiveness and what it means to watch people society has decided must die.
Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at the Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for The New York Times and The Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. In 2023, she was a finalist again for her writing about a string of botched executions undertaken by the Alabama Department of Corrections, and her work led to a temporary moratorium on the death penalty while the state investigated its own failures. Elizabeth Bruenig, welcome to FRESH AIR.
ELIZABETH BRUENIG: Thank you so much for having me.
MOSLEY: Elizabeth, you're one of the few journalists who has become a regular presence in these execution chambers here in America. What is the process of becoming a witness? And why did you want to be one?
BRUENIG: Multiple states have laws on the books that allow witnesses to view executions. And the idea behind these laws is that there should be some level of transparency in the execution process to hold governments accountable, essentially, for this work they're carrying out with taxpayer money. And so there are three ways to witness executions. One is to be a media witness. So these are members of the press who apply with state Departments of Correction and, after submitting their applications, are subject to background checks and so forth, and then they are chosen, approved by the state to witness the execution. This can happen in a variety of ways. The state can hand pick journalists that they would like to witness the execution, or they can decide by lottery which members of the press are allowed to witness the execution.
The second way to witness is as a victim's family. So if you are the family member of a victim who has been murdered, you are offered the opportunity by the state to witness the execution. And family members, you know, in my experience, have felt multiple different ways about this. Some are ambivalent. Some want to see the executions and seem to derive some closure from that, and some aren't present at all.
The third way to witness an execution is as a personal witness of the offender who's being put to death. So this is usually a handful of people, including family, friends, spiritual advisers or attorneys, sometimes all of those, who are permitted to be there, essentially, as someone to be in the offender's corner.
MOSLEY: And you've been a combination of two of those things, right? You have been both a journalist and a personal witness.
BRUENIG: That's right. I began life as a media witness. And then in Alabama, in the course of my reporting, I sort of lost the opportunity to be a media witness in that state. And so I instead began serving as a personal witness.
MOSLEY: And we're going to get into that because one of the ways and one of the reasons why you became a personal witness is through your direct interaction with these death row inmates. Your opposition to the death penalty - you've always had these reasons, many of them moral, as to why you were against them, but they were sharpened after witnessing your first execution. Can you take us there?
BRUENIG: So, you know, I grew up in Texas and, when I was young, was in favor of the death penalty, and there's an emotional logic to it. I completely understand why people are moved by capital punishment and why they desire it in a lot of cases. And I felt that quite strongly as a young person. But then as I began to grow, my instincts about the death penalty changed. And I decided to start exploring execution, you know, in part to challenge myself on my moral commitments. And the first execution I witnessed was a federal execution carried out under the first Trump administration. They executed 13 people in about six months. This was sort of unprecedented federal execution spree.
The executions took place at Terre Haute prison in Indiana, and that is where I first served as a media witness. It was a rainy night. It was not the last or first in the series. I think it was the ninth. The offender was named Alfred Bourgeois, and he had been convicted of killing his toddler daughter in Texas. The reason it was a federal execution is because the murder took place at Corpus Christi, a military base. And, you know, when you go to witness an execution, or, at least, the first time, I was quite nervous. There was a lot of trepidation. And it was interesting to feel that in a context where for the prison officials, this just seemed to be an ordinary night.
And so the people who worked for the Department of Corrections, who were ushering the witnesses around, taking us into the media center and then taking us to the execution chamber, were all very calm, very professional. The way that a lot of executions are set up is with the execution chamber as a spoke in a wheel. And it is surrounded on three or four sides by witness chambers that have windows into the execution chamber. Oftentimes, the offender cannot see out. Witnesses can only see in, and these windows are usually covered by curtains that the executioners pull back after they have, in the case of lethal injection, set the IV lines and prepared the offender to be executed. At that point, the offender is read their death warrant, and then they are offered the opportunity to give their last words. In Alfred Bourgeois' case, his last words were a protestation of his innocence, which is a cause his family has continued to pursue.
It was a lethal injection, so it's not obvious when they begin administering the drugs. The IV line that carries the drugs to the offender snakes through a hole in the wall to an unseen location where someone is actually administering the drugs. There's a great deal of secrecy about the staff who work on executions. And I only realized that the poison was flowing when he started sort of jerking and heaving and dying in a way that was, you know, completely startling to me because I had believed, naively, that lethal injections are calm procedures that are much like going to sleep under anesthesia. And that is not what the experience was like. It did not appear that way.
MOSLEY: Your perspective in watching these executions, it comes from being a journalist, from being a witness. But there's also another personal aspect of this - being part of a family that has experienced tremendous loss. Your husband's sister, Heather, was murdered. What happened to Heather?
BRUENIG: Heather was murdered in 2016. She was 28. She was in a relationship with someone in Florida while she was living in Texas. And she was about to go to Florida and marry this man. But a former boyfriend seemed to object to that, went to her trailer and stabbed her to death.
MOSLEY: How did that moment, the nature of her death, really start to also shift your view of justice? Because you write about how her father told you, I don't think it helps anybody, when you asked him more generally about the death penalty, even after him losing his daughter in this brutal way.
BRUENIG: Yes. For my husband and his family, Heather's loss was in a lot of ways devastating. And one thing I think I realized very clearly after Heather was killed is that nothing can ever heal what's lost in a murder. There's no way that that can be restored, that anything, really, can be restored to you once a loved one has been murdered. And so there's a question of how to respond to that fact.
One of my friends, the philosopher Agnes Callard at the University of Chicago, wrote this really interesting article that stayed with me. She wrote it for the Boston Review, and it's called "On Anger." And in that essay, she argues that once someone has wronged you, there's no logical reason to ever stop being angry because the wrong they have done to you is permanent. And that's one approach to the loss of a loved one, is, you know, sort of unending anger and an interest in retribution, in vengeance. And oftentimes that translates into execution in our justice system.
And I want to be clear that I don't fault families who feel that way, at all. That's a completely understandable way to feel. And far be it from me to tell any particular family how they should respond to these feelings. But there's a second path, which has to do with if not forgiveness, then at least mercy. And my husband and his father were very straightforward about their feeling that this wouldn't help anything, wouldn't reverse anything, and they just didn't want, I think, further contact with this issue. It was a more definitive end to the case for Heather's killer to be sentenced to over four decades in prison.
MOSLEY: Mercy - I want to talk about that for a moment because it's a biblical term. You're Catholic, so mercy is central to your faith. But what does it mean?
BRUENIG: I think defining mercy is easiest when you compare it with forgiveness. So forgiveness is an affective thing. It has to do with one's emotions and orientation towards the offender. And it happens, you know, within people's hearts. Mercy, on the other hand, has more obvious political applications. So mercy just means to elect to withhold the most serious punishment associated with any one offense. So if you think of an offense like murder, oftentimes, advocates of the death penalty will say, this person deserves death. They've done something so evil, they deserve to die. And I don't personally agree with that, but I don't think that one has to dispute it in order to say, well, yes, all right, the person deserves death, but it's still good for us - the body politic - to elect to withhold that highest punishment. That's mercy.
MOSLEY: You know, also, you write in this article that mercy doesn't require reconciliation. So you can forgive, but that doesn't mean that you're going to forget 'cause that's just not even possible. Many of these death row inmates - I mean, you write about so many of them not only in this latest piece, but over the years - they've sometimes spent decades in prison. Some of them show signs that they've been reformed while in prison. Do you think that the death penalty, fundamentally, though, is kind of incompatible with this idea of mercy? Of course, it's in compatible with Christianity.
BRUENIG: Absolutely. That's my view. I think there's incredible biblical precedent for opposing executions. In the New Testament, for example, we see Jesus Christ intervene to stop an execution. This is the stoning of the adulteress. That was an execution that was mandated by law. It was completely copacetic for its time. And Jesus Christ, nevertheless, intervened to say, those of you without sin may cast the first stone. And I think that's a pretty strong condemnation of the idea of execution. But if that example is not enough, the next execution that takes place in the New Testament is the execution of Christ, which I think should be very moving and should sort of set off alarm bells with Christians about this practice of execution.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist and Atlantic staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig. We're talking about her July cover story, "Witness," which explores what it means to observe executions firsthand and how that experience has reshaped her views on capital punishment, mercy and justice. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today I'm talking to journalist Elizabeth Bruenig. Her July cover story in The Atlantic is called "Witness." It chronicles her time serving as a witness to executions and the spiritual, emotional and political questions that emerged as a result.
Let's get a little bit more into forgiveness and kind of the moral complexity of that because you tell this story of James Edward Barber. He murdered a 75-year-old woman during a drug binge in Alabama. You note in your piece that at some point during his incarceration, he found God, and he began writing to his victim's granddaughter. What came of those letters?
BRUENIG: Yes. So James Barber, who was known to people who knew him as Jimi, he murdered, as you said, a 75-year-old woman. She was the grandmother of an ex-girlfriend of his, and they had had a very familial relationship. There was no anger or hatred, it seemed, in his heart for Dottie Epps (ph), the woman that he murdered. It appeared to just be the product of this dayslong alcohol, opiate and crack binge that he was on at the time. And it was a grisly murder. It was pretty brutal. He used a hammer to carry out the murder. And it was devastating for her family.
Jimi, I think, immediately realized, even when he was in the county jail before he had been convicted and sent to prison - I think he recognized right there that his life needed to change and that, in certain ways, it was over but that he still had the opportunity to become someone he wanted to be.
He said he decided, however he left prison, whether it was on his own two feet or in a body bag, he wanted to be a better man than the person he was when he went in. For Jimi, that meant taking a ton of correspondence courses on the Bible. He was extremely biblically literate. He was, you know, profoundly religious. He had never attempted to reach out to the family of Dottie Epps because he felt like they probably wouldn't want to hear from him. But he received a letter one day from the granddaughter of his victim. Her name was Sarah Gregory. And she wrote him a letter forgiving him. She said in her letter that she had to do it, essentially, for her own sake because she couldn't keep carrying the anger and hatred around in her heart. It was burdening her.
And so she decided to forgive him and let him know. And he wrote back a letter immediately thanking her, I mean, in the strongest possible terms, expressing his extreme gratitude for her forgiveness. I think for Jimi, that was a sort of seminal moment in his life. That was a turning point, where the forgiveness of God sort of became manifest to him through this letter, through Sarah Gregory.
MOSLEY: She even called him a friend in the end, which for some - I think they might be astounded by the grace and mercy that she is exhibiting. In this situation, do you ever consider, though, those individual stories of forgiveness as powerful, as they are, might overshadow, in some instances, many families who still feel very broken and angry and want punishment? I mean, do you ever worry that your empathy for people on death row would be misinterpreted as disrespect towards victims?
BRUENIG: Absolutely. It is a concern I have, and it's certainly the case that plenty of victims of crime, even victims of crime that are not murder, are offended by this idea that one might forgive or reconcile with an offender. I completely understand that. It's certainly not the case that in my life, when people wrong me, I instantaneously forgive them in a sort of saintlike way. That's not the case. I think the distinction that I would make for people who are considering those feelings, for people who have that disposition towards what I describe in the piece is just that no one is arguing that there shouldn't be punishment for this crime or for any other.
Withholding the most severe punishment possible - in this case, capital punishment - is mercy, and that seems like something one can offer, even if one's emotions and life have yet to adapt to their loss. That being said, I tried to be clear in the peace that no one can demand forgiveness of anyone. The fact that Christians live under a mandate of forgiveness has to do with a divine commandment, but no one person can command another person to forgive. That has to come from within.
MOSLEY: One of the things you do write about this - some of the corrections folks offering kindness to these condemned people. What kinds of acts of kindness did you see or did you witness? And why did you feel like it was important to make note of it?
BRUENIG: Yeah. So I wouldn't have guessed this before getting involved with this work, but the relationships between prison staff - between guards and wardens - and the people of death row are often not completely antagonistic. I would have assumed that was the case, that it was just pure antagonism on both sides. But that's not the case. These people actually get to know each other. And a lot of guards that I've spoken to have mixed feelings about these executions, especially the executions of people who have good reputations on death row, people like Jimi Barber. And they develop friendships.
I had one guard tell me that some of the guys in the prison are like family to him. And I think that can manifest in a lot of different ways. But even just having a certain level of moral support, even knowing that one or two guards aren't happy to see what is happening, I think, can make a great deal of difference in people's coping with what's taking place.
MOSLEY: Our guest today is Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and we're talking about her latest article, "Witness: Inside America's Death Chambers." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and today I'm talking to journalist Elizabeth Bruenig. Her July cover story in The Atlantic is called "Witness." It chronicles her time serving as a media witness to executions, some of them botched, and the spiritual, emotional and political questions that emerged as a result.
I want to talk with you about Kenneth Eugene Smith. He's someone that you forged a relationship with. He became the world's first person executed using nitrogen hypoxia at a facility in Alabama, and you were there.
BRUENIG: Yes. So I met Kenny in 2022. Kenny was a very jovial, kind of jolly guy. He was a kind of old Southern grandpa, great storyteller, very relaxed and easygoing. The guys on death row in Alabama's death row all liked Kenny. Even the guards liked Kenny. One of them told Kenny, you're one of the few guys I'm not afraid to turn my back on. And I think that speaks volumes to what kind of presence Kenny was.
We communicated for a couple of years. Kenny faced execution, survived. I was there for that. And then the second execution attempt involved this new execution technology, nitrogen hypoxia, which had never been tried before anywhere in the world. Kenny's execution was the first. And before execution, prisons offer extended visiting hours for the offender who is going to be executed to give them an opportunity to spend time with their spiritual advisers and their lawyers and maybe especially their family.
I was allowed to visit Kenny in that time with his family in the visitation yard. We spent hours together. And it was sort of my mistake, in retrospect, to bring in a pen and paper, but it just seemed so important because what was happening to Kenny was so important and globally significant. And also, on some level, I just wanted to remember the last few things Kenny would ever say to me.
MOSLEY: You were taken off the witness list because you brought that pen and paper. And you write so vividly about this interaction that you all had where they told you you could no longer be a witness. But I want to get back to his first execution attempt being botched. In simple terms, he didn't die the first time. But what actually happened in his case?
BRUENIG: Right, so it's kind of a broad term, botched. It can refer to executions where something went awry, something unexpected happened. An execution is botched if there's, you know, an extreme amount of physical duress, or the execution method isn't working particularly well, even if the execution goes forward - if a person struggles for, you know, many long minutes or has an unexpected reaction, or if the execution staff responsible for setting the IV lines are just not capable of doing it, that's all a botch. And in this case, in Kenny's case, he survived his botched execution. He was to be executed by lethal injection, and the execution staff simply couldn't find a vein.
They stuck him multiple times all over the place with needles, trying to access a vein. Their execution protocol requires two IV lines to be set, and they were never able to set a second one. They tried to insert a sort of long surgical needle underneath Kenny's collarbone to try to find a subclavian vein. But that, too, didn't work. All of this is done without anesthetic of any kind. So Kenny was in a great deal of pain and couldn't lift his arm for, I think, a week or two after that. Another thing is that executions often take place in the evening, at night, because that's when staff is available. So the execution began in the evening and ran until midnight. And when the clock struck midnight, Kenny was still alive. And at that point, the executioners, by law, were required to stop pursuing the execution.
MOSLEY: Right, even if they're not complete.
BRUENIG: Yes, exactly.
MOSLEY: Did he have any lasting effects from that botched execution?
BRUENIG: Yes, Kenny was never the same. He remained, you know, very loving, very committed to his family. We remained close. But he was changed. I mean, he would cry thinking about it. He suffered an enormous amount of anxiety leading up to his first execution date and then his second execution date. And I realize people who have suffered, you know, criminal victimization or any kind of abuse, really, being totally unsympathetic to the sort of emotional, psychological duress that Kenny suffered. And again, I understand that. But just speaking in a strictly objective way as a journalist, he suffered a great deal.
MOSLEY: You were not able to see Kenneth Eugene Smith's second execution, but officials have given a description of his execution. He's the first man to ever receive nitrogen hypoxia. And they described him as thrashing about once it was administered. But the commissioner noted that these thrashing movements were expected side effects and that the gas is painless. But there is an argument or a question on whether that is true.
BRUENIG: Yes. So with various execution methods, there's always a claim that this new execution method is the true scientific key to humane executions. And that was the case with lethal injection. This was supposed to be a painless and easy way to execute people. I think Ronald Reagan analogized lethal injection to putting injured horses to sleep. It's simply not the case that every new innovation in execution methods is better than the last. And there's no reason to think that nitrogen hypoxia, just because it's novel, is a more humane execution method than prior execution methods. Nitrogen hypoxia, once again, like lethal injection, was promised to be quick and painless, like going to sleep. Advocates pointed to accidental nitrogen hypoxia deaths in factory settings, for example, where people are working around...
MOSLEY: Because it's just, like, giving gas, the nitrogen.
BRUENIG: Right. And so the claim was they would, you know, still be breathing, they wouldn't experience the feeling of gasping for air. They would just sort of peacefully lose consciousness. And that's not what happened.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist and Atlantic staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig. We're talking about her July cover story, "Witness," which explores what it means to observe executions firsthand and how that experience has reshaped her views on capital punishment, mercy and justice. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today, I'm talking to journalist Elizabeth Bruenig. Her July cover story in The Atlantic is called "Witness: Inside America's Death chambers."
One startling modern-day finding of modern-day executions is that the number of Black prisoners in particular experience botched executions at a higher rate. And you wanted to delve deeper into this issue of botched executions. You've written about this over the years. You went to go be a part of an autopsy process of a death row inmate named Joe Nathan James Jr. I want to turn our attention to him for a minute because I want to know, what were you trying to understand in that case, and what did you find?
BRUENIG: In Joe Nathan James' case, he was executed in Alabama in the summer - July, I think - and his execution didn't seem to go off right. Media witnesses who were there - I was not among them - reported that it took hours for the execution to begin. And during those hours, they were not informed of what was taking place. When media witnesses arrived in the execution chamber and the curtain opened, Joe Nathan James was already unconscious. This is sort of unheard of in lethal injections because the inmates' last moments, they're meant to be offered the opportunity to respond to their death warrant and more importantly, to give their last words. Joe Nathan James was not able to do either of those things because he, for some reason, wasn't responsive. That seemed very strange to me. The state gave a statement after that execution, claiming that it wasn't botched. And that seemed even more unusual to me that they would specify that there was no botch. So I went to Alabama and working with Joe Nathan James' family, scheduled a second autopsy. All offenders who are executed are autopsied first by state medical examiners, then their bodies are released to the families. I wanted an opportunity to see if Joe Nathan James' body could tell the story of what happened in that execution chamber.
MOSLEY: What is the purpose of the autopsy right after an execution, knowing how they executed the person?
BRUENIG: Death certificates in executions are often labeled judicial homicide. And so, determining the cause of death, I think, is part of determining, to a certainty, that this was an execution that was carried out. So I spoke with Joe Nathan James' family and his brother, Hakim, and they were also curious and troubled by the way his execution had been carried out. So we arranged this second autopsy in Birmingham. I attended it. It was - took place in a little green funeral home in this room in the back with a box fan going because it was so hot in summer in Alabama. James was lying on a table, and when I looked at his arms, hands and feet, it was obvious that there were multiple attempts to find a vein. There were multiple puncture sites with bruises. But I think the most remarkable thing was that there were incisions in his arm, like someone had attempted to perform what is called a cut down. A cut down is when a physician can't find a vein in the arm, so the flesh of the arm is cut open to reveal a vein to the naked eye.
This is way outside of Alabama's execution protocol. It's also difficult to imagine how this cut down was performed because in execution chambers there's no reason for physicians to have scalpels. And it's unclear whether these cuts were even made with a medical scalpel.
MOSLEY: What has the state said about it?
BRUENIG: The state has never said anything other than that there was no botch, that they have the right to set what they call a central line if they need to, which is, again, what they were trying to do with Kenny when they access a subclavian vein. It's possible that they believed that setting a central line could somehow be done via cut down, but we've never heard from execution staff about what happened. One thing about execution staff, physicians, healthcare workers don't really want anything to do with executions. In some places, it could affect their licensure and I think a lot of people in the healthcare profession didn't get into it to kill people. It's quite the opposite. But, you know, just looking at the evidence on Joe Nathan James' body, I think it's clear that the people who were tasked with killing him just weren't up to it, didn't have the technical skill.
MOSLEY: Has any state acknowledged wrongdoing after any execution that was questionably botched?
BRUENIG: Yes. So Tennessee had a period of struggling with executions and decided to hire an independent investigator to look into their department of corrections, figure out what was going on. And we're not sure what changes they made to their protocol after that investigation. Alabama never came out and took responsibility for what happened in their death chambers, this sequence of botched executions. But once again, they placed a moratorium on executions for a small period of time in order to investigate their department of corrections and figure out what kept going wrong in the death chamber. And the findings of that investigation have never been made public. But in that respect, I think states acknowledge when there are serious problems. Even if they have what I consider to be insufficient responses, I think they realize that there are problems.
MOSLEY: I am sure there are people who are questioning right now why it actually matters whether an execution happens humanely. I mean, even in talking about someone like James, one of the first questions people likely have before even feeling empathy in what you're saying is, well, what did he do to get here? Did you ever have that mindset when thinking about death row inmates?
BRUENIG: Yeah, so there's a real conflict there. How do you consider the interests of - in some ways, defend the interests of - someone who's done something very wrong? Why ought we be sensitive to their pain? And to that, I would answer in a couple of ways. The first thing is, torture is not part of the punishment. It's not legally mandated. You can't sentence someone to torture. The reason that sentences matter, that statutes matter, is because executions are being carried out in the name of a taxpaying public. And we, as the voters in a democracy, have established that we do not sentence people to torture.
So I think that's a principled way to come at it that doesn't require someone to say that the pain of the offender is, you know, extremely morally important. But I do think that's also the case. You know, torture and murder, torture and killing - especially coupled together, but separately as well - are extremely wrong. And in fact, those are the offenses that land people on death row. So it seems sort of illogical to me to sort of continue that violence and that injustice as a method of making reparations.
MOSLEY: If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist and Atlantic staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig. We're talking about her July cover story, "Witness: Inside America's Death Chambers." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today I'm talking to journalist Elizabeth Bruenig. Her July cover story in The Atlantic is called "Witness."
We know that President Trump, on his first day, really, back in office, he signed this executive order directing the Department of Justice to restore the federal death penalty. And I'm thinking about all of the research that we are reading about where the views of the death penalty are shifting and changing. The latest Gallup poll shows that support for the death penalty is at its lowest point in 50 years. And yet, the majority of Americans still feel in support of the death penalty when someone is convicted of murder. What do you think about this moment in particular, with President Trump reinstating this and really making this a major priority when Americans are at this point where they are coming to maybe deeper inquiries and thoughts about this?
BRUENIG: So the Trump administration has taken a pretty hard line towards the death penalty, to say the least. It was in the last round of the Trump administration that these 13 executions, these 13 federal executions, were carried out by Trump and Bill Barr. And it seemed that the Trump administration was pleased with the reception of those executions. Most people working on capital punishment expected, I think quite fairly, that Trump would resume federal executions when he was in office again. And I think that concern is what led President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of the people on federal death row to life without parole.
The Trump administration was apparently quite bothered by this. And in his first move back in office, as you said, he signed an executive order, among the first few executive orders, directing the restoration of the federal death penalty. There are still some federal prisoners on death row, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylann Roof, who both face charges of terrorism, are held at the ADX supermax in Colorado. And they still face execution. But their cases are still in progress. You know, we're in an interesting moment with the death penalty because at the same time that Trump himself has spoken about bringing back group executions, he's spoken of televised executions where multiple people are executed at once.
He hasn't specified the method that he would like to see, but he seems to believe that executions are popular with people, that that's what they want to see. At the same time, though, as public support is at a 50-year low for capital punishment, which it is, and even though we have fewer executions happening now than happened, for example, in the 1990s - I think in 1999, nearly a hundred people were executed. Even this year, we're nowhere near that. And despite all that, executions are increasing. The Trump administration seems to be encouraging states to pick up this habit of executions in order to advance political causes. And therefore, you know, attorneys general in several states - Florida, Texas, Oklahoma - have begun requesting more death warrants. And at the moment, we are experiencing an unusually high proportion of death warrants that are actually carried out.
MOSLEY: This is reminding me of sort of the executions in town square, lynchings where people come around and watch. So you being a witness, for instance, is a very curated experience. The state designates a few people to be in a room. And what you're saying that our president is calling for is for everyone to be in on it, for everyone to be able to see it.
BRUENIG: Right. And as you say, that would be a return to past practices, especially of public hangings. And in the early 20th century, public opinion sort of turned on public executions, which had heretofore been extremely popular. Hundreds and hundreds of people would come from miles and miles away to witness these hanging executions, and they would take on almost a carnivalesque atmosphere, people selling food, people playing music, people staying in hotels, getting drunk, partying in the streets. And in the early 20th century, people began to think, all right, these displays of killing are not good for people to see. They don't bring out the best in people.
In executions in the early 20th century, for example, priests would often perform, preach at the executions about the repentance and the soul of the offender, and the crowd could react multiple ways to that. They could react angrily, or they could become indignant on behalf of the offender. States didn't like this, and so executions withdrew behind prison walls and began taking place with only a few select witnesses.
MOSLEY: I've always understood the - kind of the judicial maneuvering that has to happen for an execution to come to the time of it, actually, the execution happening. But why do executions typically take so long?
BRUENIG: Yes, they do take quite a long time. I think over 50% of people currently on death row in the United States have been there longer than 18 years. If you visit prisoners on death row, it's like a nursing home, essentially. These are old people in a lot of cases who are being executed. And that is, you know, for several reasons. But the most important is that the litigation in capital cases takes a really long time because if you're going to execute someone, you have to make sure that you've got the right person, that the trial was conducted according to law, that the person had the best representation available to them, that they had effective assistance of counsel, that there were no extenuating circumstances that would prevent their execution, such as an intellectual disability. And so establishing all of those various concerns, establishing whether the offender's rights were honored in the trial process and submitting their appeals, requires a lot of litigation that takes a long time. And I think that frustrates a lot of supporters of capital punishment, who, you know, often fantasize in public about shortening that appeals process sort of by any means necessary. But if you eliminate that appeals process, you're going to be executing a lot more innocent people.
MOSLEY: You know, Elizabeth, I'm just thinking about you witnessing all of these executions. You're sitting with families of victims and death row inmates. Do you feel hopeful or more cynical about human nature and our ability to figure this out?
BRUENIG: You know, I think, at least in the Christian religion, there's a sort of presumption of darkness in the human heart. And so in that respect, I certainly wouldn't say I have, you know, complete confidence that one day we'll move past the interests in execution and move past execution. That being said, in countries like the U.K., where execution has been abolished, support for capital punishment tends to drop. And so if one day, we get to a place as a nation where we ban capital punishment, joining lots and lots and lots of developed countries in the world, then it's possible that support for it will continue to drop and that people will come to think in a different way about crime and punishment. Certainly, the American way of dealing with crime is not the only option, and a lot of countries in Western Europe, for example, seem to take a more rehabilitative approach. I believe that could be very beneficial to Americans - not only to offenders, but to victims and to the public at large. And I also - I'm just moved by human resilience and opportunities for - however small - redemption and forgiveness. And so, in that sense, this work has been pretty inspiring.
MOSLEY: Elizabeth Bruenig, thank you so much.
BRUENIG: Thank you so much for having me.
MOSLEY: Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her July cover story is titled "Witness: Inside America's Death Chambers." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR - Larry Charles. He's contributed to TV shows and films that both reflect and have made an impact on pop culture in our country. He served as a writer, director and executive producer on shows like "Seinfeld," "Mad About You," "Entourage" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." He's also directed films by Sacha Baron Cohen, including "Borat" and "Bruno." I hope you can join us.
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