Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix (HSGP)

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Sunday Speaker Topic: Transparency and the Death Penalty: Witnessing Executions - Dale Baich

Between 1996 and this year, Dale Baich witnessed 17 executions in Arizona and other jurisdictions. He will share his observations to add to the debate about whether the death penalty is sound public policy.

Dale Baich will recount nearly thirty years of witnessing executions and make the argument that the public cannot meaningfully evaluate capital punishment without understanding what occurs inside an execution chamber. Between 1996 and 2026, Baich witnessed seventeen executions in Nebraska, Ohio, Arizona, Texas, and the federal prison in Indiana—one by electrocution and fifteen by lethal injection. He will describe witnessing executions as an obligation to observe and report what government does when it deliberately takes a human life.

The presentation will contrast the unmistakable violence of electrocution with the sanitized appearance of lethal injection. Lethal injection, however, creates the illusion of a medical procedure in which a condemned prisoner peacefully falls asleep, concealing the brutality and uncertainty of the process. The firsthand accounts will demonstrate that executions frequently depart from that image. Descriptions include repeated and failed attempts to establish IV access, invasive femoral-line procedures, bleeding, pain, last-minute changes in execution drugs and protocols, and prisoners struggling physically as the drugs took effect. Particularly significant is Joseph Wood’s 2014 Arizona execution, during which Wood repeatedly gasped for nearly two hours and ultimately received fifteen doses of the execution drugs.
A central theme of the presentation will be the importance of transparency. Public witnesses serve as a check on government conduct and provide information necessary for informed debate over whether executions are fairly and humanely administered. Litigation and eyewitness accounts forced Arizona to reveal portions of the execution process previously hidden behind curtains, including IV insertion and administration of the lethal chemicals. Yet substantial secrecy remains concerning execution personnel, drug sources, and procedures.
The presentation will be both an eyewitness testimony and a challenge to the abstraction surrounding capital punishment. The death penalty is not simply a legal doctrine or political issue: it is government officials intentionally killing citizens. Recounting what was seen and heard during executions will allow the public to decide whether capital punishment remains sound public policy or is a tarnished relic from our past.

Bio:
Dale Baich spent twenty-six years as a member of the Capital Habeas Unit with the Federal Defender’s office in Arizona. He left that office in 2022. Dale serves as an adjunct professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he has taught a course on the death penalty since 2004. He is also a consultant to the Arizona Capital Representation Project on policy matters related to capital punishment.

Dale led litigation teams that challenged execution protocols in Arizona and other states. Some of the issues litigated related to the nature and origin of the drugs used, the qualifications of the executioners, the medical procedures employed, and what the media and other witnesses can see during the execution.
Over his career, Dale witnessed the executions of seventeen people. He was present at the 2014 execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona; it took nearly two hours because of an experimental drug cocktail used by the state, against the advice of experts. Dale has testified as a fact witness at method-of-execution cases in federal and state courts.

Please Note:
Doors open at 9:00 am for optional buffet breakfast ($10 donation) and socializing. Speaker program begins at 10:00 am.

Important: $10 breakfast fee waived for awesome humans bringing in food to share!