The Shady Business of Lethal Injection: The Quality of Mercy

It Could Happen Here

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Daily News, Politics, News

4.3 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the conclusion of this three-part series on lethal injection, Steve Monacelli and Dr. Michael Phillips interview Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim who was shot and blinded in one eye by a white supremacist on a killing spree in Dallas following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Bhuiyan explains why he campaigned to prevent the execution of his attacker, Mark Stroman. His efforts led European companies that produce lethal chemicals to stop selling them for executions in states like Texas. The episode then looks at how states have evaded such bans by buying the drugs on the black market. Finally, we’ll hear from a from a priest, the Rev. Jeff Hood, who has held the hands of more than 10 condemned prisoners and witnessed their prolonged, tortured deaths. The series ends with a discussion of the uncertain future of the death penalty in this country.

Sources:

Breanna Ehrlich, “The Last Face Death Row Inmates See,” Rolling Stone, March 29, 2025 (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/death-row-reverend-jeff-hood-1235305460/)

Anand Giridharadas, The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014.)

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:05.9	Cool Zone Media.
0:07.9	A warning.
0:08.9	This episode includes violent content, which some listeners might find disturbing.
0:15.8	I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis,
0:22.4	and the co-author of longtime journalist Betsy Freeoff, of the history of eugenics in Texas called
0:28.0	Purifying Knife. And I'm Stephen Montchelli. I'm an investigative journalist in Dallas
0:32.2	who specializes in political extremism and the far right. And I report for places like the Texas Observer, the Bart Meyer, and more.
0:40.0	Like millions across the United States, Mark Anthony Stroman was startled by the events
0:45.8	then unfolded on the terrible morning of September 11, 2001.
0:50.5	The disbelief that greeted that terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center of the Pentagon can be heard on the first announcement of the tragedy on a Dallas talk radio station, WBAP.
1:03.3	All right.
1:04.2	Thank you, our 7.51, nine minutes before 8 o'clock at News Talk 820,BAP here on the here on the Tuesday morning.
1:13.7	And the reason I am hesitating here, there's word of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan.
1:21.2	And the World Trade, a plane actually crashing into the side of the World Trade Center.
1:27.4	We're going to have details for you
1:28.3	all that from ABC News and just a couple of moments. Strowman later wrote that September 11th
1:35.2	filled him with a great sense of rage, hatred, loss, bitterness, and utter degradation.
1:41.4	He blamed Arabs and Muslims as a group for the events that day and wanted, quote,
1:46.9	those Arabs to feel the same sense of insecurity about their immediate surroundings. I wanted to
1:52.7	feel the same sense of vulnerability and uncertainty on American soil. Stroman, a Dallas resident,
1:59.3	had already served two prison terms during which he had joined the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
	...

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