Michelle Lyons: 278 executions, and life watching death row prisoners’ final minutes

Unfiltered with Oli Dugmore

Unfiltered with Oli Dugmore || JOE Media

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her time working with and for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Michelle Lyons was witness to nearly 300 executions, and though she watched hundreds of inmates be put to death, she’s one of the most cheerful people you could ever meet.In this extraordinary interview with James O’Brien, Michelle takes us into the execution chamber, into the lives of the inmates that she came to know, and the personal, professional and moral conflict she was forced to grapple with.Last chance to vote for Unfiltered at the British Podcast Awards! Simply go to britshpodcastawards.com/vote and search for ‘Unfiltered with James O’Brien’. Voting closes on May 17. Thank you.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Unfiltered with James O'Brien, brought to you by Joe.
0:07.0	Hello, I'm James O'Brien. Thank you for choosing episode 31 of Unfiltered, which I think will
0:17.4	be a little different to most of the previous 30, because my guest, Michelle Lyons, is almost certainly someone of whom you have not heard, but it is her story that makes her so interesting.
0:29.0	Her book is called Death Row The Final Minutes, but it's the description underneath the title that tells you everything
0:34.6	you need to know at this point.
0:36.4	My life as an execution witness in America's most infamous prison.
0:41.2	I'm going to tell you that there were almost 300 executions that she
0:45.4	witnessed. You'll understand why potentially she could be one of the most
0:49.3	interesting people we've interviewed. When you were on your way here and I was waiting for you to arrive, I wasn't quite
1:02.0	sure what to expect. Presumably you get a lot of this, do you? I thought there might be a sort of Morticia Adams element to your personality. And the minute you came through the door, you were a Boolean, upbeat, we've been swapping tips on good pubs to drinking in London while
1:15.0	you were here. You have a, you know, infectious laugh, you have a clear joy in the world around
1:20.7	you. And yet most of your working life has been about death.
1:25.2	It is somewhat ironic.
1:26.8	I think hopefully that's what helped me be resilient after leaving that job and what made some of it so complicated for me.
1:35.0	You know and that's actually something that we talk about in the book is that this is largely my
1:39.8	personality, this is how I am and there was actually this one instance where I
1:44.8	thought that I was being very good about not letting it get to me it wasn't
1:48.2	affecting me and I had gone into my doctor's office for you know my annual checkup
1:52.2	and the nurse there asked if
1:54.1	everything was okay and I said yeah of course why she said because you're you're
1:58.1	not light like you normally are and stuff and I it really bothered me when I left
2:02.2	because I thought that I had this great facade still going on and I don't think that it
	...

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