Jack, Seigen, and a Federal Execution

WFIU has a new podcast out, developed with NPR's Storylab. Rush to Kill is about what happened at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute from July 2020 to January 2021. Those were the final months of the Trump presidency, when his administration decided not only to resume executions, but to get through as many as possible. The show examines the legal arguments that made that possible, and specific cases of some of the inmates who were executed. In conjunction with the show's release, I wanted to go back to a classic Inner States episode. Jack was a grad student in music at IU when he met a man named Seigen at the local Zen center. Seigen was decades older, but in spite of the age gap, they became good friends. They took lots of walks. “This is a sassafras,” Seigen would say. They would look at that for a while. Once they’d seen one sassafras, it wasn’t as if they’d seen them all. They stopped to look at every tree. Then, one day, Seigen asked Jack to drive him to an execution. The man being executed was Wesley Purkey, for whom Seigen was a spiritual advisor. Purkey was the second person to be killed in the Trump administration's "rush to kill." This is mainly about Jack and Seigen's friendship. It’s also, in part, about a secondhand experience of a federal execution. There’s nothing graphic, but if that’s something you or someone you’re listening with might be sensitive to, you might keep the topic in mind. Credits Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers, with Violet Baron, Jillian Blackburn, and Avi Forrest. Our theme song is from Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. I continue to be deeply appreciate of airport people for sharing their music, which I’ve used to score a number of episodes. You can purchase their music here. The music in this episode is a version of “okay ohio part 1.” We also have music from Ramón Monrás-Sender..