Gianna Toboni
Appearances
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Look, I think there are a lot of reasons. I wrote a book on it. No, no, no. Look, it's a fundamentally broken system. First, and you don't usually hear these arguments, right? We usually lead with the moral arguments in media, but I took a different approach. Of the 2,000 death row inmates that we have in our country on the state level, right, different from the Luigi Mangione federal death row,
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
only 15% are getting executed, right? The 49.9%, those cases are overturned, right? And then you have cases that are commuted. You have, you know, people dying of old age on death row. So a 15% completion rate, I mean, think about that in any other industry, right? Like a surgeon completes 15% of surgeries, right? A contractor completes 15%. It's totally unacceptable.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
A move that would require breaching the two-term limit outlined in the Constitution.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
So I was making a documentary for a show called Vice on HBO, and I needed an interview with a death row inmate. I wasn't trying to do anything beyond that one interview. Wrote him a letter, didn't know if I'd hear back, and then I got a call. Ely, Nevada. I was like, OK, this is him. And we started chatting.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
And from the first few minutes of that conversation, I understood that this guy was different. For one, he was completely unsympathetic. He was a violent offender, as you said. He was convicted of two murders. But he was also volunteering for execution.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Right. Only 10 percent of inmates volunteer for execution.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
So he wrote the judge a letter and he said, let's get this over with.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
A lot of these states don't carry out these sentences. Right. Right. So the attorney general's office has to pursue that. And the judge has to sign a warrant and then they schedule the execution. And then the prison chief has to find the drugs or the method that they're going to use to execute this guy.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yes. Yeah. He didn't mince words.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
So, I mean, in the past, we had kind of simple but very gruesome methods, right? Like burning, boiling, you know, guillotine, hanging, electric chair. And then we sort of kind of sanitized the death penalty in part to get the public on board with it, right? Public approval ratings just dived, right? And so we legalized lethal injection. And the idea was that we would make it more humane.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Well, what we've learned is that it is not more humane. That's what a lot of expert witnesses, anesthesiologists have told us about this method. Not to mention, you have to source all these drugs. Turns out drug companies like Pfizer don't want their drugs used in executions, right? They want to create the cancer cure or the next big vaccine.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
They don't want to be known as supplying the death drug. So it's been incredibly hard for states to source these drugs.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I mean, there's, I guess, a sourcing issue in the sense that, you know, if these drugs are used for execution and you pull them off the market in order to get prisons not to use them. So sodium thiopental, this is a drug that was used in executions for years when, you know, drug companies really don't want them used.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Sometimes they pull them from the market and then, you know, patients who actually need the drugs won't get access to them.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yeah, I mean, his ideal way of... Kill me with a gun. Exactly.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yeah, yeah. And by the way, finding a cowboy, a gun, and a bullet, all things that are not hard to come by in America.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yeah, and there's never a shortage of volunteers, right?
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I mean, you have the former warden of Florida State Prison who oversaw a bunch of executions. He said that he would get letters, thousands of letters, people saying, hey, if you need a volunteer to do the firing squad or to partake in the execution, I'm here.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
We can work on that. We can work on that.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yeah. So not volunteering. But what they're doing is they recognize that lethal injection is not a more humane method or doesn't cause less suffering. In fact, it can cause more suffering. You know, inmates understand that now. And so now they're actually opting for methods like firing squad. So lethal injection has a 7% rate of botched executions. Firing squad, that rate is effectively zero.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I mean, look, execution is brutal. Killing our own is brutal. And the way we've whitewashed this method of execution, it's all kind of ridiculous. And Firing Squad, I think that if we went back to that method, I think the public may start to second guess what their tolerance is for killing their own.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Look, I think a lot of people are. I sympathize deeply with victims' families. I mean, those murders are so horrific and create generational trauma. The perpetrators' families, they didn't do anything wrong, and they're dragged through this mess all the time. I would say the one subsect of people that we don't focus on that much are the people actually doing the executing.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
And a lot of these people, they're not bad people. It doesn't suggest that they're pro-death. I mean, this is their job. Right. And I talked to the warden, as I mentioned, at Florida State Prison. And that guy, I mean, he he really botched a bad execution by electric chair. I mean, effectively burned this person alive. He became an alcoholic and he had these nightmares.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I mean, had total PTSD where he described that, you know, each night he would go to sleep and the inmates that he had executed would walk into his room and they would sit at the foot of his bed and they would just stare at him. And they didn't have to say anything because he knew what they were thinking.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I mean, this book is not anti-death penalty. It's not pro-death penalty, right? This is a deep investigation into a broken system.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Yes. Yeah. What I want people to take away is, look, if we are going to have this practice carried out in our name and on our dime, right? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars per death sentence, right? Way more expensive than life without parole.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
Then I think we need to face what we're actually doing.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
I don't think we should sleep at night, you know, thinking that these guys are just peacefully falling asleep on a gurney and that's the end of the story. And if we're OK with these brutal executions, then, OK, we live in a democracy. Vote for the death penalty for all I care.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
but at least face what we're doing and understand that a lot of the time, we're not actually doing the executing, right? We're just putting people on death row, in many cases, solitary confinement. We're paying exorbitant amounts for this death penalty without actually even carrying it out.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Trump Threatens Third Term, Admin Admits Deportation Mistake
NBC News is reporting that the Bidens want back in.