So as temperatures is like on a low grade, did you get the sip or have to need to get a dose of that?

In 2016, Dr. Joel Zivett, an anesthesiologist at Henry University Hospital,

was taking a look at some autopsies.

What I was asked to address was the blood levels of certain kinds of medications.

You see, these were autopsies of inmates who had been executed by lethal injection.

Federal defenders had hired Zivett to help them figure out whether these inmates had been

adequately anesthetized during their executions.

And what Zivett noticed was something peculiar.

So I began to see a pattern of organ failure where I saw that instead of what I thought would be

pristine findings, instantaneous death, I began to see a picture that was more consistent with

a slower death, a death associated with suffering.

What Zivett saw were unusually heavy lungs, lungs swollen with fluid, which meant these inmates could

very well have experienced the sensation of drowning or suffocation before they died.

It was a stunning finding because here was some physical document that could answer a question

that could otherwise not be answered, which was what exactly is the experience of a dying inmate.

Consider this. There has been a long held assumption that lethal injection is the most

painless method of execution. But now many lawyers and doctors are looking inside the bodies

of executed inmates and making the case that lethal injection could amount to torture.

From MPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, October 12.

I'm Rodney Carmichael. I'm Sydney Madden.

And on our new podcast, louder than a riot, we traced the collision of rhyme and punishment in America.

We were hunted, loudly, we were physically hunted. You'd be standing on the corner,

...