Pablo Torre Finds Out
Watching the Dallas Cowboys on Death Row: Our Visit to a Supermax Prison
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
Full Episode
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.
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.
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