Original subtitles

- Warning, what you are about to see

could be disturbing to some viewers.

Viewer discretion is advised.

[ominous music]

Imagine being found guilty of a crime

and your sentence is hard time

in a chicken suit.

[ominous music]

- [Adam] Motorists are met with a crazy sight.

- You might think that he is advertising

for a new fried chicken restaurant,

but that's actually not what's happening at all.

- Or finding your executioner

is an elephant.

[ominous music]

- [Austin] Asian elephants can weigh up to 15,000 pounds.

- An elephant will crush a person's skull

easily and quickly as it would a cantaloupe.

[elephant trumpeting] [ominous music]

- How about a night at the pub

that ends in a bizarre walk of shame?

- They devise a punishment for public drunkenness

meant to humiliate.

- You're not just trying to shame one person,

you're trying to shame the entire community.

[ominous music]

- These are the punishments so peculiar

they are truly unbelievable.

[dramatic eerie music]

[music fading]

There is seemingly no end to the ways one can punish someone

who has done you wrong,

but King Xerxes of Persia has to get creative

when that certain someone isn't a someone at all.

[ominous music]

- In the fifth century BC,

the leader of Persia,

which is modern-day Iran,

is Xerxes the Great

who is in warfare with surrounding nations,

including Greece. [ominous music]

- And Xerxes has a bit of beef with the Greeks at the time

because in a previous battle against his father, Darius,

the Greeks defeated him.

So Xerxes is on a mission to avenge his father's fall

at the hands of the Greek forces.

To do this though,

Xerxes and his army has to cross this body of water

known as the Strait of Dardanelles.

- He has a massive army

and he has to get them across this water.

And remember, this isn't modern mechanized warfare,

this is going to take a lot of work

and most importantly, this is gonna take a bridge.

- [Dan] Not just any bridge.

[dramatic music]

Xerxes orders his men to build

a large floating overpass nearly a mile long,

something difficult to pull off in even perfect conditions.

[tense music]

- They gather about 600 ships

to bridge the gap across the strait.

They're lashed together with ropes of flax,

logs or other debris,

and then it acts like a pontoon

and the forces can walk across it to get to the other side.

[tense dramatic music]

- They're all ready to cross it

and then a massive storm sweeps in.

[thunder rumbling]

Before one troop can even cross it.

- Xerxes is infuriated.

Now he's being stopped from being able to

avenge his father, Darius.

So, naturally, he turns his ire towards the offending party.

Someone has to be held responsible

for this bridge not holding up.

And for Xerxes, there's only one culprit:

the sea. [dramatic music]

Xerxes has a plan on how to set the sea straight.

He looks at the sea as he would any other enemy.

Be brutal, be decisive. [tense music]

- He has his soldiers line up all along the edge

of the Strait of Dardanelles

and he gives them all a heavy, mighty chain

and he orders each soldier

to whip the sea 300 times each.

[dramatic music]

It's ridiculous, we know that, I know that, you know that,

but who's gonna tell Xerxes that?

If he's crazy enough to order soldiers to whip the ocean,

what's he gonna do to you if you say no?

- [Dan] But as Xerxes' men punish the water,

it starts to fight back.

- This punishment doesn't seem to be working

on the Strait of Dardanelles,

and so naturally this pisses Xerxes off even more,

so he now ups the ante.

- Next, each man is compelled

to poke the sea with red-hot pokers,

and they are met with nothing

but, well, the sizzle of the iron

immediately cooling under the water's touch.

[dramatic music] [water sizzling]

- But Xerxes isn't done,

so he says, "We are gonna throw shackles into the sea

and then it will learn who's boss."

But the sea just, you know, kind of keeps on being the sea.

[dramatic music]

- Also, as a side note, every engineer

who built the bridge was ordered to be decapitated.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Xerxes orders the bridge rebuilt.

- But he's killed all his engineers,

so he's gotta get new engineers

and he builds a brand new pontoon bridge

so that he can exact his vengeance on the Greeks.

- Tragically, Xerxes' great feat

in crossing the strait is all for naught.

Despite their massive numbers,

they had bad intel on the terrain

and their army is ineffectual.

They're defeated, they have to turn tail

and return to Persia.

- When Xerxes returns to the Dardanelles,

he finds another storm destroyed the bridge.

- There's nowhere for the Persians to run to,

and so they have to be brutalized even further.

It's not a happy ending for the Persians

via the hands of the Greeks.

[music fading]

- It's clear the sea just can't learn its lesson.

Next up, a judge who some might say

takes his punishments a bridge too far.

[expectant music]

- It's a beautiful sunny spring day in Painesville, Ohio,

and motorists are met with a crazy sight:

a full-grown man in a chicken suit.

[expectant music]

- You might think that he is advertising

for a new fried chicken restaurant,

or he's one of those sign spinners

trying to get people to go inside,

but that's actually not what's happening at all.

- Oddly enough, the man in the chicken suit

is serving a very unusual sentence

from Judge Mike Cicconetti.

Judge Cicconetti is famous for handing out unusual sentences

where the punishment fits the crime.

- [Dan] You might be wondering,

what did this man do to end up here?

- 2007, Fabian Rodriguez-Ramirez

thinks he's soliciting prostitution from a sex worker,

but it's actually an undercover police officer.

[sirens blaring] - Judge Cicconetti

gives Rodriguez-Ramirez a choice,

either 30 days in the slammer

or wear a chicken suit out in public on a busy street.

[tense music]

- [Dan] Rodriguez-Ramirez takes the chicken suit

and Cicconetti adds an intriguing side order.

- It seems the Judge Cicconetti is also

a bit of a movie buff,

so inspired by the 1982 film,

"Best Little Whorehouse in Texas",

he declares Rodriguez-Ramirez,

in addition to the chicken suit,

must have a sign "No Chicken Ranch in our city,"

which alludes to the Chicken Ranch brothel in the movie.

- [Dan] But does this bizarre

kind of punishment actually work?

- Judge Cicconetti has an amazing track record

of these unusual and peculiar punishments

that also seem to be quite effective.

So much so that he has a 10% recidivist re-offending rate

compared to the national average of 75%.

- Most states allow judges to put

their own spin on sentences,

especially if it's for low-level misdemeanors.

But some states even allow it

for more serious types of crimes.

So in the past, this judge has sentenced a man

who called a police officer a pig

to stand next to a pig pen with a sign

that says, "This is not a police officer."

- He even sentenced a couple,

guilty of stealing a baby Jesus statue,

to dress up as Mary and Joseph

and walk through town with a mule.

[playful music] - With roughly 40 cases a day

being adjudicated in his courtroom.

Judge Cicconetti is sort of single-handedly

overhauling the Ohio judicial system

and helping with jail overcrowding.

[music ending]

- Just like when your mom pulls out

an embarrassing baby photo,

some experiences never leave you.

- Capital punishment is sometimes

seen as a necessary evil in many societies past and present,

and it's also often considered inhumane.

But what happens when the executioner

isn't actually human? [ethereal music] [birds calling]

- In ninth century India,

officials began to look for a more

spectacular and terrorizing way of executing wrongdoers.

- They decide to use one of their

most abundant natural resources:

the elephant. [dramatic music]

- Asian elephants can weigh up to 15,000 pounds.

They're industrious, they're intelligent,

they're excellent at following orders,

and they're ubiquitous on the subcontinent.

- The elephant's trainer, or "mahout",

can teach them to do any number of things,

to entertain an audience or to crush a person to death.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] They call their new form of punishment "Gunga Rao"

and it quite literally means

"casting beneath an elephant's feet."

- This new method of execution becomes very popular

among elites who often had large menageries of elephants.

[dark music]

- It's an enforcement tool.

It separates and makes people know who's in charge.

It's the people with the elephants.

[dark music]

- When given a command by a trainer,

an elephant will crush a person's skull

as easily and quickly as it would a cantaloupe.

[dark music]

- Or they can engage in a much slower form of execution,

instructing the elephant to break limbs one at a time,

avoiding the vital organs,

trying to draw out the length of the death,

the agony, the pain, the suffering,

and then finally finishing them off.

[dark music]

- In some traditions, the prisoner is forced to undergo

what might be called trial by ordeal.

The elephant is instructed to roll over him,

puppy dog style, crushing him to death.

But if the prisoner survives, he's set free.

- [Dan] This form of punishment becomes so popular

it begins to spread,

with each country adding their own local flare.

- The neighboring country of Sri Lanka adopts this practice,

but they bring a particular twist to it.

They affix blades to the elephant's tusks,

allowing the beast to tear apart the prisoner

as if he's in a food processor.

[dark music]

- In Siam, what we now call Thailand,

they introduced an element of psychological dread

and suspense by having the elephant

walk three times around the prisoner,

slowly increasing the sense of dread

before crushing them to death.

- Not to be outdone, in Vietnam, criminals are condemned

to Gunga Rao by being tied to a stake

and having an elephant run them down.

In essence, it's like an entire city bus

coming straight at you, death is eminent.

[dramatic music]

- Death by elephant.

One of the more unbelievable ways

society has meted out justice.

But what happens when it's not the executioner,

but the accused that is an animal?

[ominous music]

- It's December, 1457, in Savigny, France.

A five-year-old boy has been brutalized

and will end up dying from his wounds.

[ominous music]

This is an outrage to the people in the town,

they demand justice.

The people in the town start combing the town

trying to find the person who would dare commit

a heinous act like this to such a small child.

- Eventually the crowd finds the suspect

and brings them before a judge.

But this suspect...

not like other murder suspects.

[pig snorting] [dramatic music]

- The accused is a pig.

Actually, a sow. [tinkling music]

And she and her six little piglets

have been accused of murdering this boy.

- And the court takes this very seriously.

One of the more interesting aspects of medieval life

is that animals could be put on trial.

[eerie music]

Both the pig and the pig's owner are dragged off to jail.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] But this little piggy lawyers up.

- The thinking is at the time that

because animals are considered God's creatures,

that they are entitled to have representation.

And these animals don't just have lawyers,

sometimes they have the best lawyers that are in town.

[somber music]

- So at the trial, despite the accused

being a pig and her piglets,

everything seems, like, oddly normal.

Witnesses are called to testify

and they're talking about how heinous of an act this is

and how terrible this pig is.

It's a full-on trial.

[somber music]

And on top of that, the animal is put in human clothes

because they have to be presented well in court.

And if the animal really needed it,

because, you know, if they're on the witness stand,

they would be given, like, a little booster seat,

you know, just to prop them up

so that everybody could see them.

[tense music]

- [Dan] After closing arguments,

the sow's fate lies in the hands of the judge.

[tense music]

[gavel banging]

- The judge considers the sow to be the ringleader

of this heinous attack,

and as per the sentencing guidelines of the day,

says that the sow must be hung by her hind legs

from a tree until she is dead.

[tense music]

- The judge decides to spare the six little piglets,

deciding that they were young

and they were simply products of their poor environment.

- [Dan] Today we'd think that this situation

is totally outlandish,

but the spectacle of an animal being brought to justice

is surprisingly not uncommon

in medieval England and Europe.

- There are roughly 100 known cases

of an animal being brought before a court of law

and being accused of a certain offense.

And it wasn't limited to pigs,

but it seems that people just need an outlet for their anger

and if they can't take it out on Mother Nature,

they take it out on the agent of Mother Nature.

- These days we've gotten past putting animals on trial.

Even for high crimes,

like eating your favorite slippers.

- Public humiliation, it's a punishment employed

for centuries to chastise wrongdoers,

but few have done it better or more unbelievably

than the folks of 16th century England.

[ominous music]

- In 16th century England, it was far more common

to drink beer than water,

especially in cities like London.

[ominous music]

- Anyone can brew their own ale and serve it and sell it.

[cups clinking]

It's the wild west of pub culture.

- And because beer is so common,

it's not unusual to see people staggering drunk in the city.

So you have an outbreak of public drunkenness

that becomes a real problem in the community.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Then parliament decides

they must do something about it.

[dramatic music] [cups clinking]

- The 16th century killjoys in parliament

come up with the Alehouse Act of 1551.

It makes public drunken disorderly conduct

a civil offense. [expectant music]

- The way it works is that the first time

you are drunk in public, you have to pay a fine

and it's five shillings,

which is about eight days worth of wages

for a skilled trades person.

- [Dan] As painful as it is to cough up

that kind of cash,

repeat offenders face paying a much higher price:

their dignity.

- The act is difficult to enforce

because public drunkenness is common,

but repeat offenders are nailed with what is called

"the drunkard's cloak".

[somber music]

- The drunkard's cloak is a beer barrel

with a hole in the top for your head.

It comes down over your shoulders

and, if you're lucky, there'll be holes in the sides

for you to put your arms through.

- The offender would be forced to wear this barrel

and parade through the town,

and then people could throw things at them and yell insults.

Basically humiliate them with the idea

that this would prevent the drunk person

from becoming drunk in public again.

- It becomes the original walk of shame.

- The drunkard's cloak punishment is used so often

in the hard-drinking town of Newcastle upon Tyne

that it's sometimes called the "Newcastle cloak".

You're not just trying to shame one person,

you're trying to shame the entire community

out of public drunkenness

because they're going to see

people walking up and down

in this perpetual drunkenness walk of shame

and say, "I don't wanna be like that.

I don't wanna wear the drunkard's cloak."

- Once the drunkard's cloak takes off across England,

it spreads into other countries across Europe.

- It is adopted in Spain, it's adopted in Denmark.

In Germany, it's now known as the "Schandmantel"

or, literally, the coat or the cloak of shame.

Now, German authorities add a particular twist.

They line the barrel with sheet metal

so that wearing it becomes not only personally embarrassing,

but a physical affliction as well.

- If you're wearing the Schandmantel in public,

get ready for some rotten vegetables

because your peers and your neighbors are encouraged

to hurl rotten refuse at you

while you take your walk of shame.

- [Dan] The practice even makes its way to America.

- In 1863, in the state of Maine,

a Civil-War-era lieutenant forces two of his recruits

to walk around wearing the barrel of shame

and also carrying signs saying,

"I'm wearing this for being publicly drunk."

- The men are mercilessly razzed by their peers

and fellow soldiers.

According to the lieutenant,

they'll never get drunk in uniform again.

Turns out wearing a barrel is the universal

drunkard's walk of shame.

[dramatic sting]

- Centuries later, public shaming still proves

an effective form of punishment,

especially when one Texas judge

opts for something unbelievable.

[ominous music]

- It's 2010 in Texas and Eloise and Daniel Mireles

are in a courtroom waiting for their sentence.

Eloise is an employee of Harris County,

she and her husband have taken over $250,000

from a fund set aside for victims of crime

called the Harris County Crime Victims Fund.

- As an employee of Harris County,

Eloise identifies a loophole

that allows her to divert money orders

and cashier's checks away from the crime victims fund

and into her personal bank account.

- She's taking money from people who do need the money

and she's using it to do nights on the town,

buy new clothes, her and her husband are having a ball.

[gavel banging] [somber music]

In this case, the judge, Kevin Fine, orders them

to pay back the $255,000 that they took

over a period of 10 years

and to also serve 180 days in the Harris County jail.

[gate clanging]

- But Judge Fine is not done serving out his justice yet.

He also says, "Since you stole

from the people of your community,

we also want the people in the town

to know what exactly it is that you did."

- [Dan] Then the judge adds something

bound to make them unpopular with their neighbors.

[tense music]

- He orders them to place this giant sign

in front of their house,

which reads, "The occupants of this house,

Daniel and Eloise Mireles, are convicted thieves."

He also says that the couple, for five hours on the weekend

for six years straight must wear a sign that says,

"I am a thief.

I stole $250,000 from the Harris County Crime Victims Fund."

[dramatic music]

- They have to wear sandwich board signs over their bodies

and walk around public streets, at busy intersections,

in busy shopping districts.

In fact, some of the same places

where they might have spent some of this pilfered money.

- This is a really personal sentence,

and the judge does build in a fail-safe

if they fail to complete any part of their sentence,

if they take the sign down, if they miss a weekend,

they will have to go to prison for up to 10 years.

[gate clanging]

- Newspaper articles report that every single weekend

this couple can be seen wandering the busy intersection

of Post Oak and Westheimer with nothing but their signs

and just these sullen grimaces on their faces.

But at the same time, one could also argue

it is still better than prison,

at least you get to be outside.

[music ending]

- You know what they say,

the couple that's shamed together stays together.

- These days, anyone can showcase their perceived talents

online and at worst be hit with an unfollow

or a few nasty comments.

But back in medieval times, musicians performing off-key

were met with something much more brutal.

[ominous music]

- We like to think that we take

our music seriously these days, right?

We've got the Grammy Awards,

you've got the Billboard Awards, you've got CMAs,

you got all manner of accolades are placed upon musicians

that we love because they make good music.

But back in medieval Europe,

it is actually considered a crime to play music badly.

- [Dan] Enter the shame flute.

[ominous music]

For the aspiring but terrible musician in your life.

- The shame flute isn't actually an instrument at all.

[ominous music]

- The idea is that it is this massive instrument

that is bolted around the neck of a person

who did a terrible job playing music.

[ominous music]

- And their hands are clamped to it,

giving the impression the musician is playing

yet no sound comes out.

Which is probably a good thing

if they're a bad musician in the first place.

[bell tolling] - Then this awful musician

is paraded through the town

where they are regaled with insults,

jeers, rotting fruit being thrown at them.

Heckling is actually encouraged.

- [Dan] How does one avoid a session on the shame flute?

Practice, practice, practice.

- If poor musicians are forced to wear the shame flute,

then aspiring musicians are much less likely

to play an instrument in public

until they're really good at it,

which helps you to understand that

the real offense here isn't playing bad music,

it's playing bad music where you can be heard.

- You can actually see a real shame flute

in one of two places,

either the Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenberg,

or at the Torture Museum in Amsterdam.

It might also make you start to think about which musicians

that are around today should we be shackling

to the shame flute? [bell tolling]

- While these tone deaf-culprits are silenced,

this next set of offenders long for some quiet.

- It's a warm summer evening in 2008

and 24-year-old student Andrew Vactor

is driving around Urbana, Ohio.

He's taking in the nice breezes,

his windows are down, he's feeling the flow,

and he's blasting hip-hop.

[intense rock music]

- Let's be clear, to those not interested in

what Andrew's playing the music is a nuisance.

Some might even call it a form of noise pollution

that disturbs their pets, unsettles their children,

and quite frankly wakes them up in the middle of the night.

And yet for Andrew, it's just a good time.

- [Dan] Despite the commotion,

Andrew continues to cruise around

enjoying his mobile concert,

oblivious to the outside world.

[intense music]

- He's got the volume up to 11.

It's so loud, Andrew fails to hear the police sirens

as he's pulled over. [sirens blaring]

- When Andrew finally gets pulled over,

he's cited for public disturbance

due to the loud beats emanating from his ride.

- And eventually Andrew finds himself

at the Champaign County Courthouse

in front of Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott.

In court, the judge hears Andrew's case

and she actually offers the young man a deal,

a bargain, so to speak.

- He can either pay a $150 fine,

or an 80% reduction, a $35 fine.

However, he'll be sentenced to listen to 20 hours of music.

- [Dan] Andrew decides to take the deal.

20 hours of music doesn't sound so bad.

But this DJ's not taking any requests.

[tense music]

- Judge Fornof-Lippencott decides to give Andrew

a taste of his own medicine

since he subjected so many people

to listen to music they didn't want to hear,

she's gonna subject him to music

that he might not wanna hear.

- Instead of the deep, urban, bass music which Andrew loves,

the judge orders that he listen to classical music,

which she also hopes might broaden his horizons.

- So Andrew settles in to fulfill his sentence

and the classical music begins.

[light classical music]

So we can imagine him sitting there listening

as the orchestra begins to swell

and the room fills with the sounds of Beethoven, Mozart,

and it drives him to the point of madness.

[music ends]

Andrew only lasts about 15 minutes.

[light classical music]

Andrew decides to pay the $150 fine

rather than be subjected to what he considers to be

cruel and unusual punishment by classical music.

[classical music swelling and ending]

- [Dan] 15 years later, a man in Wales

takes a similar tactic when his ears

are accosted by his noisy neighbors.

[tense music]

- It's Swansea, Wales in 2023

and a man is at his wits end.

His noisy neighbors, three young women,

are perpetually blasting music next door.

- He has no peace and quiet, it's nonstop music,

it's so loud, everything in his home is shaking.

The windows are rattling,

the pictures on the wall are vibrating,

and he decides he's got to do something about it.

[intense music]

- [Dan] So the man conducts an experiment of his own.

- Just like Special Forces broke

drug lord Noriega with heavy metal,

he's gonna blast music of his own kind.

He props his speakers up against their common wall

and he turns the volume all the way up

and he chooses one of the most metal

classical music pieces of all time.

[powerful classical music]

Gustav Holst's "The Planets",

specifically "Mars, the Bringer of War".

[powerful classical music]

Puts it on loop and then leaves the house.

[powerful classical music]

After three days, he comes home,

turns off his stereo and it's quiet.

[music ending] Somehow the message

has been delivered.

[dramatic music]

- Let this be a lesson to the younger set,

don't piss off your elders.

We've got classical music and we're not afraid to use it.

- Perhaps no era is as synonymous with punishment

as the Spanish Inquisition.

Getting a confession is a requirement for the Inquisitors

and should the accused choose not to cooperate,

their punishment is nothing short of cruel and unusual.

[dark music]

- The Inquisition is a powerful office

established by the Roman Catholic Church

to root out heresy during the 15th century.

At this time, the Catholic church is the

ultimate authority. There is no separation of church and state,

the church law is the law.

- And the church deemed that it's acceptable

to attack and torture anyone

who doesn't follow the religious law as they see it.

- Now, just to make sure that Catholic law is being upheld,

there is a group of people that are known as Inquisitors.

[dark dramatic music]

- The Inquisitor's job is not to kill you.

No, no, that would be too quick.

It's to get you to admit your liaisons with Satan,

and they can do this any way they see fit.

So they want to develop devices and types of torture

that are truly horrendous to endure.

- It's something one Dominican friar learns

in an excruciating way.

- Giordano Bruno is a Dominican friar

who is very much seen as a heretic

by the Catholic church and the Inquisitors.

For starters, he is someone

that believes in the Copernicus model.

A.K.A, the sun is what the Earth revolves around,

not the opposite direction,

not the sun revolves around the Earth.

The sun is the center, not the Earth.

And so, naturally, he must be brought in

to have his sins purged.

And they will proceed to torture the friar

using a very special tool in the Inquisitor's toolbox.

The Heretic's Fork.

[sinister music]

- It's a fork with prongs on this end

that press right against your soft palate

and prongs on this end, which poke right into your chest,

attached with a leather strap

to keep your head faced upward, as if in prayer.

[sinister music]

If you get tired and your head sags,

you stab yourself here or here or both.

As long as Bruno can keep his head

and jaw completely still, he's okay,

but that means not even swallowing your own spit.

- [Dan] It's a punishment meant to cause mental anguish

as well as physical suffering,

and there's no way out.

- How long can he keep this up for?

Bruno ultimately remains steadfast in his beliefs.

He never admits to heresy,

but his ordeal is far from over.

- If you survive the heretic's fork,

you get to be paraded

in front of a long Inquisitor's tribunal

where you will be found guilty of heresy

and burned at the stake,

which is exactly what happens to Friar Bruno.

- You could say the rights of the accused

have come a long way since the Middle Ages.

Nowadays, most get to make a phone call

and that's a good thing,

unless you're incarcerated at a certain prison in Arkansas.

[dark music]

- It's the 1960s in Arkansas

at the Tucker State Prison Farm.

Tucker State is not like the conventional prison

that you might think of.

This is a 4,500 acre farm.

It's a self-sufficient farm

and it is a for-profit farm,

that which has grown there is sold

to profit the state of Arkansas.

And these criminals are doing hard labor

in the sweltering Arkansas heat.

[dramatic music]

- The guards at this prison are remarkably brutal

and they're gonna use violence and even torture

to force these inmates into the field, into the hot sun.

- The worst of the guards jack money from prisoners,

the little amount of money that prisoners make

for their labor is pilfered as a kind of protection money.

You pay up or you can be beaten, tortured,

deprived of rations.

It's a system of terror and usury and extortion.

- [Dan] But by far the most brutal way

guards keep these prisoners in line

is something that comes from the mind

of a surprising source.

- Normally, a prison doctor is there to help inmates,

but not Dr. A. E. Rollins.

In cahoots with the superintendent, Jim Bruton,

he uses his knowledge of the body and anatomy

to develop a new monstrous torture device.

What is known as the Tucker Telephone.

[ominous music]

- The Tucker Telephone is a hand-crank telephone

with its insides hollowed out.

When you crank the handle,

you're delivering an electrical charge

to two dry cell batteries,

which in turn are hooked up to wires which send

the charge coursing through the body of the victim.

- [Dan] In the 1960s, the Tucker Telephone

is quietly put into service

and one unlucky prisoner

is about to become its first unfortunate victim.

[ominous music]

- It's the fall of 1964

and a 27-year-old inmate named Gordon Ray Ross Jr.

is at his breaking point

with the treatment at Tucker State Farm.

He can't handle the extortion, the torture,

so what he finally decides to do is rebel

and he attacks another inmate.

He figures, "If I kill him,

they have to transfer me to another prison."

- Gordon suffer some injuries in this incident

and is sent to the hospital,

so he thinks he's gonna get his wounds cared for,

but instead, he's taken to a back room

and he knows something's up.

- Gordon is in a state of terror, forced to strip,

laid down on a table as the guards attach electrodes

to bodily parts, including his genitals.

- [Dan] Gordon, now restrained,

and unable to escape his impending fate

braces what's to come. [eerie music]

- The guard starts to crank the crank on the telephone

and a surge of electricity pours into Gordon's body,

sending him into convulsions, causing him to scream,

to gasp for air, to shout for help.

He described it later as feeling like muscles

are being torn from the bones of his body.

- [Dan] This process would come to be known

among the inmates as a long distance call.

- These long distance calls bring the prisoner

to the brink of unconsciousness,

but they keep them conscious so that they can feel the pain.

[ominous music]

- These types of shocks delivered

to sensitive body parts like the genitals,

create irreparable damage.

It also leads to intense psychological damage.

[music ending]

- [Dan] Sadly, hundreds of inmates

are put through the ringer

before the Tucker Telephone is disconnected in 1968.

- One of the more sadistic devices used to torture inmates

by then superintendent Jim Bruton was the Tucker Telephone.

- The superintendent, Jim Bruton,

is sentenced to a year in prison

and fined for violating prisoners constitutional rights

against cruel and unusual punishment.

- And in fact, Gordon Ray Ross Jr. is one of the inmates

who takes the stand against the superintendent,

which I have to think felt almost as good

as hooking the superintendent up to the telephone himself.

- Thankfully, today, the Tucker Telephone

is officially out of service.

- The Salem Witch Trials

came at a peculiar time in American history.

It was a model of mass hysteria

where simply being accused was enough to ensure

any number of painful punishments.

[dark music]

- Salem Village, Massachusetts, circa 1692.

In this village you have a group of young girls

and women who claim that they are being bewitched.

[dramatic music]

We're talking about, of course,

the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

So during the course of these trials,

these young girls are being dragged into these courts

and being asked, "Who is doing this to you?

Who is making you act in this matter?"

[dramatic music]

- The allegations they level are usually against neighbors,

claiming that their neighbors are in league with the devil.

- [Dan] In need of a scapegoat,

the ladies point to a man already unpopular

within the village. [uneasy music]

- Giles Corey is a successful farmer.

He's done well for himself

and that can make people jealous,

but he's also extremely unpleasant.

He's a curmudgeon, the get-off-my-lawn type.

- He's managed to offend pretty much everyone

in his community.

He's on his third wife, Martha,

and she and he really don't get along

and are frequently seen arguing out in public,

which is a huge no-no in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts.

- They're not difficult people to dislike

and also they're not gonna have a lot of people

sticking up for them if they are accused,

which is exactly what happens,

the girls accuse Martha of witchcraft.

[dramatic sting]

- [Dan] And at Martha Cory's trial

even Giles doesn't come to her aid.

In fact, he does the opposite.

He takes the stand and testifies against her.

- Apparently ready for wife number four,

he sort of throws her under the bus,

tells people, "Yes, she won't say her prayers.

She whispers her prayers under her breath,"

which for some strange reason is evidence of witchcraft.

- But at some point in the trial,

the tables turn on Giles Corey.

[dramatic music]

It's not just Martha that's accused of witchcraft,

he's now being accused of being a wizard.

And so he has to plea, guilty or not guilty.

- The law at the time in Massachusetts declares

that you cannot have a trial if the accused does not

enter a plea one way or another.

Giles Corey knows that either way he is most likely dead,

so he refuses to say whether he is guilty or not guilty.

[tense music]

- [Dan] In order to get Giles to plead out,

the judge makes a fateful decision.

[gavel banging]

- There's only one way that the judge sees himself

getting a plea from Giles Corey,

and that's a procedure called "peine forte et dure"

which translates from Latin into strong and hard pain.

[dramatic music]

- Giles is made lay naked on the ground,

face up with a giant board pressed on his body.

- And then the sheriff, a man by the name of George Corwin,

takes these incredibly heavy stones

and places them one at a time

on top of the wooden plank on top of Giles Cory.

- [Dan] The torture goes on for days,

but Cory doesn't cave.

- During this time, the weight is so bad

that at one point apparently his tongue has been

forced out of his mouth,

and the sheriff who is trying to get him

to enter a plea actually comes up,

shoves the tongue back in his mouth

and then says, "Are you ready to plead one way or another?"

And according to legend,

in response Giles Corey says, "More weight."

[tense music]

- Some say, he also utters the words,

"Damn you, I curse you and Salem,"

to George Corwin before he passes,

but we will never truly know.

- [Dan] But would be the ending to the story

is merely the beginning of a curse

that would haunt Salem for centuries.

- Just three years later, in 1696,

the Sheriff suddenly dies of a massive heart attack

and it becomes part of a disturbing pattern.

All the sheriff's subsequently for years

die of heart disease.

- It isn't until 1991, almost 300 years later

when the sheriff's office is moved

from Salem to Middleton, Massachusetts

that this deadly trend finally stops.

- Talk about your afterlife sentence.

[eerie music]

From lawsuits to chicken suits, instruments of torture

or tortured for playing instruments poorly,

these are all punishments so peculiar

they can only be called unbelievable.