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Episode 1004. “What’s going wrong?” Neil Young once asked Alabama, and it’s still a good question 52 years later in the wake of the unprecedented execution of Eugene Michael Smith on January 25, 2024 by nitrogen gas. Casey returns to share why learning about the death penalty made her want to be a lawyer before we review the recent history of capital punishment in the U.S. and the dangers of an originalist interpretation of a “cruel and unusual” execution. We then take a closer look at how a completely untested method of taking a human life came to be used in Alabama and find some hope for an end to state-sanctioned murder.
2. VIDEO: Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall describes Smith’s execution as “textbook” 3. Bucklew v. Precythe :: 587 U.S. ___ (2019)
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Graphic generated by Dall-e and seemed fitting.