Pablo Torre Finds Out
Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison
Thu, 14 Nov 2024
A staggering number of death-row inmates have used their last words to do the same thing: pay tribute to their favorite sports teams. So we sent correspondent Dave Fleming to a supermax prison in Texas to find out why. Charles Flores — Inmate No. 999299 at the notorious Polunsky Unit in Livingston — has maintained his innocence for over 25 years and counting… while living in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. And Flores agreed to take us inside his hidden world of game-day enchiladas, trash talk, and fantasy football. Where there isn’t always next year.= To learn more about the case of Charles Flores: https://www.freecharlesflores.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the sound we are trying to discover?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
So much of living under death sentences is the unknown. You know, we're sent here. We were convicted and sentenced to death and sent to death row to have our lives taken from us, to be executed, you know, to be legally murdered. And, um, That's pretty heavy, man.
Right after this ad. You're listening to DraftKings Network. Dave Fleming, time is of the essence with this episode in lots of very real ways. Thank you for being here. My pleasure, as always. This one started, as many great things do, with a website I had never heard about.
It started with me coming across a website, a database, where you can read the final last statements of every prisoner that's been executed by the state of Texas. Me being me, I went down that rabbit hole, started reading them. It is a gut-wrenching, awful, exhausting experience.
The very basic premise of there's a publicly available website that records the last things that every executed prisoner on death row in the state of Texas says, you're mesmerized, right?
You can't stop scrolling. This is William Prince Davis, prisoner number 614. He was executed on September 4th, 1999. His last statement was, quote, I just thank the Lord for all that he has done for me. That is all. That is all I have to say, warden. Oh, and I would just like to say in closing, what about those cowboys?
What's staggering is that that guy, the guy you just quoted, William Prince Davis, is not alone.
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Chapter 2: What is life like on death row?
No, no, there's a shockingly large amount of death row prisoners who used that final opportunity to shout out their favorite sports teams.
John Burks, inmate number 949. His last statement says, quote, the Raiders are going all the way, y'all. Y'all pray for me and it's going to be all right. That's it. And it's time to roll up out of here. It's going down. Let's get it over with. That's it. June 14th, 2000. And so this is obviously the most remarkable proof of the power of sports that I'd ever encountered.
Just that alone, this very basic fact, you're about to die, killed by the state, and you want everybody to know that the last thing you cared about was the Dallas Cowboys.
I think your initial reaction was the same as mine, which is just sports means too much. This is crazy. Why wouldn't you talk about the victim or your families or regrets or anything like that? You're going to shout out the Cowboys? It's like... what does sports really mean to people? Right.
And also, therefore, what's it even like to love sports on death row?
How do they even have access to sports? Right. How can they be Cowboys fans and Raiders fans? Are they arguing about Dak Prescott? Right. Are they playing fantasy football? Are they, is there trash talk?
Is that dangerous? And so with these curiosities in mind and with me immediately, immediately just saying, okay, this is assigned to, Who do you decide to reach out to?
There are websites, there are databases where they will connect you to be a pen pal to people in prison, especially to people on death row who are exceptionally isolated usually. You get to look at their bio, sort of what their crime was when they were put in prison, what are their interests. And, you know, I came across a guy who had potential.
He was a lifelong Cowboys fan, grew up in Fort Worth. His dad was in the Air Force. They had a family ritual of going to church every Sunday and then coming home and sitting down in front of the TV to watch the Cowboys. You know, you just kind of knew right away. It was like, okay, this guy is a legit sports fan.
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Chapter 3: Why do death row inmates mention sports teams in their last words?
Week 11.
Week 11. Yes. Charles grew up big. You can tell that from the clips that we're watching. Was an offensive and defensive lineman in middle school. And the first thing he wants to talk about is the Cowboys-Texans game on Monday night, of course.
So the way death row is, the population is its population. There's more guys from the big cities, the big counties. So there are more guys from Dallas and Houston than anywhere else. So that makes for a lot more fans of both teams. So on that day, football is the sport. We wake up thinking about it. You know, when the... When the weekend starts, that's what we're talking about.
And especially a big game like that, a big rivalry. Because I don't know, man. It seems like that because the Texans have been up and down a lot of times. They seem to play the role of... The little brother, you know what I'm saying? And so they want to get, they want to beat the Cowboys. You know, they don't beat nobody else. They want to beat the Cowboys.
And I've been telling the guys, the Texan fans, I'm like, you know, on that day, we're not going to be friends. We're going to be rivals, you know what I'm saying?
His cell, smaller than this studio, 9 by 12? It's probably...
three of these booths wide, one on this side and one on this side. So it's about nine foot across.
Some of the death row cells are actually as small as 60 square feet, and they are in there 23 hours a day without exception.
And the doors, they have this mesh where windows are supposed to be. We have two, three foot, I think it's four inches.
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