This might be the only YouTube video of its kind. "The Last 24 Hours on Death Row" It's about the day leading up to a Death Row inmate's execution, and about the last guy to get executed in 2024 (USA). We posted it *the day* of his execution. Here's how I wrote the script:

@LeroyterBraak M7 Ultra Promega Max and all you end up using is google docs

Couldn't end this without mentioning @RhysWong56 & @0xCarnival. I wrote the words, but they're the geniuses behind Cipher (the channel) who made everything else possible. We made something truly special here. And expect even crazier videos soon. We're cooking!

Some others:

Going from feeling empathy for a dying man to finding out that he killed a 10-year-old and planned to eat her seems to have done a number on the viewers. They had a lot to say. Here are some of the best comments:

And so we end the video with a question: "What Underwood did was wrong beyond description. Perhaps you believe he deserves to die. But do we as a society, deserve to kill him?" (Or a more advertiser-friendly version of it)

The thing about the death penalty is that it's actually not very common. If you get it, it's probably because you did something *truly* horrible. But somehow, I didn't realize that until I looked into WHY Underwood was sentenced. Here's what he did:

In the script, I did my best to put the viewer in Underwood's shoes. We've seen him say goodbye to his loved ones. We've seen him eat his last meal. We've seen him die. That's enough for you to start feeling... empathy. But you don't know WHY he's in Death Row. Not yet.

And just like that, Underwood is dead. But that's when I reveal the twist: Depending on the time, the events of this video may have happened years ago, or if you were watching on upload day (December 19th), you were watching a LIVE execution.

In my scripts, I like to go DEEP. For the execution sequence, I could have just listed out the 3 ingredients of a lethal injection. Instead, I describe EXACTLY what the chemicals in do once they're inside the human body. This is the final one – the lethal one:

One BIG challenge came up: Once I pivoted to following Underwood's execution. There would be some details we could only confirm AFTER the fact (e.g. his last meal and final statement). The execution may even be canceled. Here's how I handled that:

Underwood was the last Death Row inmate scheduled for execution in 2024 – on Dec. 19th. We had just enough time, and that gave me an idea... What if I made him the centerpiece of the video? What if we released it on the day of his execution? And so the video became this:

After a short execution sequence, that could have been it – just a regular explainer about how executions work. But during the research stage, I got curious. Is anyone going to get executed soon? That's when I found this guy: Kevin Ray Underwood.

The first 75% of this video is counting down the hours until the execution happens. It's where I talk about the whole protocol: * Visitations * The last meal * Final statement * Safety measures * Execution witnesses 3 of my favorite moments:

Not every state in the US uses the death penalty. And the 27 that do all have different protocols. Threading this story together with all that information was going to be particularly challenging, but there's a general timeline of events you can follow:

Kevin Ray Underwood was executed at around 10am on December 19th, 2024. I started writing this script WAY before that, and at first I didn't plan to make it about him. It was just supposed to be a video about well... "The Last 24 Hours on Death Row"

@0xCarnival Thanks for the shoutout! One of the craziest documentaries I’ve ever written