The StandDown Texas Project

An Update From Kirk Bloodsworth

Kirk Bloodsworth was the first person who had been sentenced to death and exonerated by DNA evidence.  Tim Junkin's book, Bloodsworth, written with Kirk's involvement, is the harrowing tale of Kirk's journey.  It was published in 2004.

Since then, Kirk has been an indefatigable fighter to expand DNA testing, an advocate for exonerees, and as exhibit one for the repeal of capital punishment.

Now, he's working with Gregory Bayne on the documentary, "Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man."  They have 14 days left in a KickStarter campaign to raise 

I hope you will take a moment to watch the trailer and help with this very worth project.

Earlier coverage of Kirk Bloodsworth begins at the links

Encore Presentation of PBS Frontline Documentary on Todd Willingham

The PBS documentary series Frontline will show an encore presentation of "Death by Fire," tonight.  Check your local PBS station for the time in your area.  You can also view the documentary oniline at the link.

At the center of the national death penalty debate today is the controversial case of Cameron Todd Willingham, put to death for the arson-murder of his three little girls. But was he guilty?

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

Earlier coverage of Todd Willingham's case begins at the link.  All related coverage is in the Todd Willingham category index.

Maurice Possley and Steve Mills first reported on the Willingham case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article, noted here, was also critical in bringing the case to the public's attention.

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Final Words Project Noted in the NYT Lens Blog

"Selfies Against the Death Penalty," is Rena Silverman's post at the New York Times' Lens blog.  There are images at the post.

Marc Asnin’s latest project follows in the tradition of documentary photographers crusading for social justice. He just happens to employ selfies in his mission.

Through crowdfunding and social media, he has initiated a campaign in conjunction with the VII association against the death penalty in which he asks photographers to upload self-portraits to a website with a caption of 140 characters or fewer describing why they oppose capital punishment.

“The selfie is a modern-day way of showing a story,” Mr. Asnin said. “It’s not my generation, it’s not how I was trained to confront social injustice. But I’m not going to be a 51-year-old photographer who says I’m not going embrace that. That’s like burying your head in the sand.”

The campaign, “Photographers Selfie Against the Death Penalty,” is part of a larger project, a book called “Final Words,” which compiles 517 final statements of Texas’ death row prisoners. Their final words are combined with mug shots, summaries of the crime for which they were convicted and other details about the prisoners. Mr. Asnin hopes to get the book into classrooms in the 32 states that still have the death penalty on the books. He also intends to mount a traveling exhibition by the fall of 2015 that will include a multimedia projection.

Earlier news of Final Words is at the link.  Related posts are in the books and culture category indexes.

A Preview of Sunday's Death Row Story on CNN

"Unique skill set helps save man from death row," is by Thom Patterson of CNN. It's a preview of this Sunday's episode of the CNN documentary series, "Death Row Stories," and looks at the Ohio exoneration of Joe D'Ambrosio.  It airs at 9:00 pm ET/8:00 pm CT, Sunday night.

Neil Kookoothe watched quietly as the state of Ohio killed James Filiaggi.

Kookoothe, a witness during Filiaggi's 2007 execution, saw the condemned man's face turn beet red as lethal fluid ran through his veins. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. Strapped to a table, his chest and stomach heaved three or four times, Kookoothe recalled. Then, at age 41, Filiaggi was gone.

"It's surreal when you know that the state is killing him," said Kookoothe, a Roman Catholic priest who counseled Filiaggi in the months before he was executed for killing his ex-wife. "Jimmy was ready to die."

And:

Kookoothe views capital punishment through a unique lens. He's seen it up close as a priest, but he also has the perspective of a nurse and attorney. After graduating with a communications degree in the early 1980s, Kookoothe felt drawn to the priesthood. Instead, he ended up at nursing school, later working as a licensed nurse at a Toledo, Ohio, hospital intensive care unit. "You saw traumas, gunshot wounds and stabbings," he said. While nursing during the day, he put himself through law school, eventually moving on to work briefly as an attorney in Indiana. But the priesthood kept calling. "It was always in the back of my mind," he said. He eventually settled on a life in the church, graduating from seminary school.

The three disciplines served Kookoothe well in the remarkable case of death row inmate Joe D'Ambrosio.

Earlier coverage of the CNN documentary series begins at the link.  Related posts are in the documentary and prosecutorial misconduct category indexes.

More From CNN - Death Row Stories

The new CNN original series, Death Row Stories, produced by Alex Gibney and Robert Redford and narrated by Susan Sarandon, premieres this Sunday evening.

CNN has posted, "Death row lawyer: 'If I throw in the towel, a client dies'," by Emanuella Grinberg .  It focuses on Edward Lee Elmore, whose case will be profiled Sunday.  Here's the beginning:

By the time Edward Lee Elmore won his freedom at age 53, he had spent 30 years -- most of them on death row -- imprisoned in South Carolina for a crime he says he did not commit.

Law enforcement planted evidence and prosecutors manipulated facts to cast Elmore as the only suspect in the 1982 murder of 75-year-old Dorothy Edwards, his lawyers claim.

Even with seemingly overwhelming evidence in Elmore's favor, it took nearly two decades to win his release, in what an appeals court called "one of those exceptional cases of 'extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems.' "

His experience raises nearly every issue that shapes America's capital punishment debate: DNA testing, mental retardation, a jailhouse snitch, incompetent defense lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct and "a strong claim of innocence," said author Raymond Bonner, who wrote about the case in "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong."

In other words, a prime example of when "innocence is not enough," Bonner said.

Elmore would probably still be on death row if not for Diana Holt, who began investigating his claims of innocence in 1993.

CNN also posts an opinion column by Kirk Bloodsworth, "I was on death row, and I was innocent."

Edward Lee Elmore's story, which is the focus of the first episode of CNN's documentary series, "Death Row Stories," shows that the capital punishment system does not always get it right. Like Edward, I know this first-hand.

I was the first person in the United States to be exonerated from death row because of DNA testing.

In 1984, I was 23 years old, newly married and living in Cambridge, Maryland. I had just served four years in the Marine Corps. I had never been arrested. This all changed on August 9, 1984, when the police knocked on my door at 3 a.m. and arrested me for the murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton.

In a matter of days I became the most hated man in Maryland.

Earlier coverage of the new CNN documentary series is at the link.  Also available, coverage of Ray Bonner's journalism.

Google+ Hangout Tonight for CNN's Death Row Stories

CNN's new, original series, "Death Row Stories," premieres Sunday night.  Tonight, it previews with a Google+ Hangout.  Click the link to join in the discussion.  The Google+ Hangout begins at 6:00 pm EST, 5:00 pm CST.

"Talk with us: America's death penalty under scrutiny," is by Thom Patterson at CNN.

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield will join Executive Producers Alex Gibney and Brad Hebert and other special guests to discuss the legal issues brought up in "Death Row Stories" in a special Google Hangout at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday. You can join the conversation by sharing questions in the comments below. For more, watch "Death Row Stories," a CNN Original Series, at 9 p.m. ET/PT Sunday. Follow us at facebook.com/cnn or Twitter @CNNorigSeries using #DeathRowStories

And, here's the beginning:

What does the United States have in common with Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia? Answer: the death penalty.

Together, the four nations killed 1,052 prisoners in 2012, accounting for 82% of the world's confirmed executions that year, according to Amnesty International. The world's most populous nation, China, won't release its execution stats.

State-sanctioned killing is a divisive issue for many reasons, not the least of which is an imperfect justice system. "Upwards of 10% of all death row prisoners are later exonerated for the crimes," writes author and historian Thomas Cahill. But as New York Law School Professor Robert Blecker writes, society kills some of its criminals intentionally "because they deserve it."

This is a topic worth discussing. That's why we're hosting a CNN Google Hangout video conversation about this issue with CNN's Ashleigh Banfield and top legal experts right here on this page at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday.

The Nation posts, "CNN Launches Important New Series vs. Death Penalty in USA," by Greg Mitchell.  Here's an extended excerpt:

CNN has just announced an upcoming eight-part original series starting this Sunday on the death penalty in America, with award-winning, and tireless, documentary film maker Alex Gibney and some guy named Robert Redford as executive producers, plus  Susan Sarandon (let's not forget her role as Sister Helen Prejean in the great Dead Man Walking) as narrator.  

Death Row Stories already boasts a full web site up and key details here. It will, they vow, "call into question various beliefs surrounding America's justice system and the death penalty." 

That sounds like a good thing, and echoes my two books on the subject, including this recent ebook, Dead Reckoning.

Gibney promises, “The series provides stark examples of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless. The stakes—life or death—couldn’t be higher.”

Each show will spotlight one particular controversial case with guilt and innocence at stake.

 Related posts are in the journalism and the webcast category indexes.

CNN Documentary on Michael Morton Thursday Night

"‘An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story’ Premieres as CNN FILMS Broadcast on Thursday, Dec. 5 at 9:00 PM (ET)/8:00 PM (CT)," is the announcement from CNN.  Here's the beginning:

Academy award-nominated filmmaker Al Reinert (Apollo 13 and For All Mankind) profiles a universal worst nightmare scenario of a man wrongly convicted of murdering his wife in the film AN UNREAL DREAM: THE MICHAEL MORTON STORY.  The film will air for the first time ever on television at 9:00pm ET and PT on Thursday, Dec. 5 on CNN/U.S.

“We’re thrilled to bring this story to CNN audiences, raising awareness that the price of wrongful convictions goes well beyond individual loss of freedom for the wrongfully incarcerated” said Al Reinert, director of AN UNREAL DREAM.

Reinert’s award-winning documentary explores the harrowing true tale of Michael Morton, who stood accused and was convicted of the brutal murder of his young wife, Christine, in front of their three-year-old son, in 1986.  Morton always maintained his innocence and was never connected to the horrific crime by either witnesses or physical evidence.  As Morton spent nearly 25 years in the Texas penal system, he eventually lost all contact with his son Eric, who was raised by his wife’s relatives. 

Throughout the film, Michael and Eric movingly describe their evolving estrangement.  Michael Morton and other inmates also detail the pain of incarceration that Morton suffered unjustly for more than two decades – the relentless indignities, hard labor, desperate loneliness, and ever-present danger from other inmates.  Morton describes the toughest blow as the day he learned his son had requested to be adopted by Christine Morton’s sister and her husband.

Related posts are in the documentary and Michael Morton category indexes.  Earlier coverage of Michael Morton and his exoneration, at the link.

Exonerees Speaking Out in Ohio

"Exonerated inmates push Ohio to scrap the death penalty," is by David Yonke of the Religion News Service.  It's via the Washington Post.

Three men who were sentenced to death only to be exonerated years later have a message for Ohio and the rest of America: Abolish the death penalty because the judicial system doesn’t work.

Delbert Tibbs, Joe D’Ambrosio and Damon Thibodeaux, who collectively spent almost 40 years on death row before being set free, are giving 10 talks in five days in Ohio this week in hopes of persuading people to oppose the death penalty.

“I do what I do,” Thibodeaux said, “because I don’t want to see this happen to somebody else. And I don’t want to see the next execution of an innocent man.”

A state task force is reviewing the administration of the death penalty in Ohio, and Thibodeaux said legislators “should not be looking at fixing the death penalty; they should be looking to get rid of it.”

Traveling with the trio are the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, a Cleveland Catholic priest whose efforts led to D’Ambrosio’s freedom, and two British filmmakers, Will Francome and Mark Pizzey, who have documented cases of exonerated death row inmates.

Francome and Pizzey said 142 people have been freed from death row, representing 10 percent of the number of prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s. They named their documentary series “One For Ten.”

Earlier coverage from Ohio includes a case-related editorial and  lethal injection issues.  Related posts are in the activism and exoneration category indexes.

Guardian Commentary

"Capital punishment is murder – especially for the wrongfully accused," is Lindsey Bever's post at the Guardian's comment is free.

So far this year, 23 death row inmates have been executed in the US. One was killed by electrocution, the others by lethal injection. A 24th committed suicide. Among these prisoners, they served a total of 335 years as they were waiting to die. And there are 14 more Americans slated for execution by their government before the end of the year.

We're told to believe they were guilty – of murder. What if they weren't? In fact, what if they were the victims – of prejudice, racism, corruption?

In 1976, Shujaa Graham was one of them – wrongly sentenced to die and shipped to San Quentin prison in California.

Recently, the 62-year-old death row exoneree invited me into the sunroom in the back of his Takoma Park, Maryland, home. It's a space only slightly larger than the prison cell in which he spent more than a decade, but he said he feels oddly at home there. That's where he opened up about his own death sentence – one meant to be carried out in a gas chamber.

I visited Graham to film a short documentary about his childhood in the racially segregated South, his adolescence in gangs in South Central Los Angeles – and in juvenile detention – and, ultimately, his young adulthood on San Quentin's death row where he served three years until a jury exonerated him in the murder of white California prison guard Jerry Sanders. Graham said he still dwells on it 40 years later. But despite his troubled past – or perhaps in spite of it – he has maintained character and appreciation for his life.

You can find related items in the documentary, exoneration, and innocence category indexes.

Duane Buck Case Featured on HuffPost Live Today

The Duane Buck case will be featured on Huffington Post Live today at 1:00 pm CDT (2:00 pm EDT).  NAACP LDF attorney Christina Swarns and former Texas Governor Mark White will discuss the case.

LDF has also released a new video on the case.  Here's more from the news release:

Today, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. released a new video highlighting the racial discrimination in the Texas death penalty system and the shocking case of death-sentenced prisoner, Duane Buck.  Mr. Buck was sentenced to death in Harris County (Houston), Texas, after his trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist indicating that Mr. Buck was more likely to be dangerous because he is Black. The video was produced by award-winning documentary filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler.

The video is “A Broken Promise in Texas: Race, the Death Penalty and the Duane Buck Case.”

“A Broken Promise in Texas” contains powerful, never-before-seen interviews with Texas civil rights leaders, elected politicians, the surviving victim in the Buck case, one of Mr. Buck’s trial prosecutors and Mr. Buck’s family members, among others, calling for a new, fair sentencing hearing.  The video’s release comes at a critical juncture, as Mr. Buck may soon be at risk of execution:  the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is currently considering Mr. Buck’s appeal for a new sentencing hearing free of racial bias and the Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks.
 
"Everyone who sees this powerful video will come away from it with the alarming realization that if Duane Buck can be sentenced to death - and possibly executed -- based on racial stereotypes, then our criminal justice system is broken not just for Mr. Buck, but for all of us," said Christina Swarns, Mr. Buck's attorney and Director of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.'s Criminal Justice Project.  "A properly functioning criminal justice system does not condone the flagrant exploitation of racial fears and stereotypes to secure a death sentence.  It cannot countenance a racially biased and unfair execution."
 
Former Texas Governor Mark White, who oversaw the executions of 19 individuals, narrates the video and urges citizens to take action: “It’s unfair to have someone on death row if they are not supposed to be there … Don’t wait until it is too late … Join me and more than 100 civil rights leaders, clergy, former prosecutors, and judges in calling for a new and fair sentencing hearing for Mr. Buck. Tell Texas to keep its promise.” 
 
Over 50,000 people from Texas and around the country have signed a petition calling on Texas officials to grant Mr. Buck a new sentencing hearing. The newly released video exposes the injustice of Duane Buck’s case and encourages support for the petition for a new, fair sentencing.

As the video shows, at Mr. Buck’s 1997 capital sentencing hearing in Harris County, the trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist that Mr. Buck posed a future danger because he is black. The prosecutor relied on this testimony in arguing in favor of a death sentence. The jury then found Mr. Buck would be a future danger and sentenced him to death. 
 
Three years after Mr. Buck’s capital trial, in 2000, then-Texas Attorney General (now U.S. Senator) John Cornyn identified seven cases, including Mr. Buck’s, in which the State of Texas impermissibly relied on testimony linking race and dangerousness to secure a death sentence. The Attorney General promised to support new sentencing hearings for the seven identified defendants and kept its promise as to six of them. But Texas reneged on its promise to Mr. Buck and is now aggressively pursuing his execution.
 
“It is virtually unprecedented for a state official to confess error in a capital case. And in this situation, [the Attorney General] confessed error in six capital cases,” said Kathryn Kase, Executive Director of Texas Defender Service, in the video. 
 
Mr. Buck’s life was saved by the U.S. Supreme Court before his September 2011 scheduled execution. Two U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed that Mr. Buck’s death sentence requires review because “our criminal justice system should not tolerate” a death sentence “marred by racial overtones.”
 
“When we apply the death penalty and we seek criminal sentences, we have to do so in a color-blind manner. Allowing this kind of racial testimony in any capital sentence proceeding undermines the entire justice process,” said Kate Black, Mr. Buck’s attorney, in the video. 

Earlier coverage of Duane Buck's case begins at the link.  Related posts are in the race category index.

The Death Penalty's Hidden Injustice

That's the title of commentary by Jeb Golinkin at the Week magazine.  It's subtitled, "I believe capital punishment is a just sentence in many cases. But it can also be used as a cudgel to hurt the innocent."

But this abstract debate ignores bigger and less explored dilemmas created by the death penalty. The first is obviously human fallibility. Put simply, innocent people have been convicted of capital crimes and put to death in the United States of America. In the vast majority of those cases, no one acted in bad faith. The jury just got it wrong. In a legal culture that adopted and embraced Blackstone's formulation — "better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" — the fact that we can get it wrong is deeply problematic, even if, like me, you believe there are crimes for which death is an appropriate sentence and that juries are neither cruel nor inhumane in imposing that sentence on the party they believe perpetrated such an offense.

Now, let's turn to the "Norfolk Four." Their story is long and complicated, but basically, four sailors in Virginia confessed to a rape/ murder that they had nothing to do with after extended questioning and repeated reminders that they could face the death penalty if they refused to admit to their alleged crimes. Later, the true killer came forward and basically said he had no idea who the four fellows the police were talking to him about were. I bring this up because one of those individuals, Eric C. Wilson, still has not been totally exonerated (he is out of prison but he still has to register as a sex offender) and last month filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States asking the high court to permit him a venue through which to clear his name, once and for all.

To borrow from a phrase uttered by one of the attorneys interviewed in the Frontline special on the Norfolk Four, death changes everything. In the coming months, we will see, up close, the upside and downsides of what the mere existence of the death penalty allows law enforcement to do in the stages before the trial even starts.

Earlier coverage of the Norfolk Four begins at the link.

Commentary From Delaware

Today's Wilmington News Journal publishes the OpEd, "'The Central Park Five' and a death penalty evolution," by Jan Ting.  He's a professor of law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.  Here's an extended excerpt:

I’ve been a holdout, declining to join the progressive movement to abolish the death penalty everywhere in the United States and the world. I’ve thought that in an open, democratic society with a fully developed modern legal system and lots of lawyers, there would be no risk of error in high-stakes, high-profile criminal cases.

The documentary “The Central Park Five,” by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, recently broadcast on PBS, has finally convinced me that I was wrong. Everyone should see this fine piece of filmmaking the next time it’s broadcast or appears again in a theater, or if it becomes available on the Internet.

And:

Prosecutors celebrated their victory in obtaining guilty verdicts against all the young men, tried as adults, based solely on their confessions, even though DNA evidence from the crime scene did not match any of them, and the defendants insisted their confessions had been coerced.

All the defendants served their full sentences of between 6 and 13 years before another man, a convicted rapist whose DNA had been in the possession of the NYPD, confessed to the attack on the Central Park jogger.

There was a definitive DNA match to this confessed and convicted rapist, and the convictions of the Central Park Five were finally vacated in 2002. Oops!

Throughout their ordeal, the Central Park Five insisted on their innocence. At their parole hearings when asked, as a condition for parole, to admit to the crime for which they had been convicted, they refused to do so, and so had to serve out their full prison sentences.

So much for my theory about developed, modern legal systems with plenty of lawyers. I doubt that any place has a more developed legal system, or a greater concentration of lawyers, than New York City.

More on Ken Burns' PBS documentary, "The Central Park Five," is at the link.

Earlier coverage from Delaware, at the link: also available, coverage of the documentary.

George Will on the Central Park Five Exoneration

Washington Post syndicated columnist George F. Will writes, "‘Central Park Five’: Recalling a gross injustice."

From Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” American history is replete with examples of printed words accelerating social justice. Still, from Mathew Brady’s 1862 photo exhibit of “The Dead of Antietam” to the televised fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 to the cameras that brought Vietnam into American living rooms, graphic journalism has exercised unique power to open minds and hence shape history. It may do so Tuesday evening when PBS broadcasts “The Central Park Five,” a meticulous narrative of a gross miscarriage of justice.

There were abundant dystopian aspects of New York City in the 1980s, when crime, crack and AIDS produced a perfect storm of anxiety about the fraying social fabric. This was the context — a city on edge — when on April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old white woman who worked on Wall Street went for a jog after dark in Central Park. She became a victim of what was immediately called “wilding,” a word probably unknown by the four blacks and one Hispanic, ages 14 to 16, who were arrested and charged with raping her and beating her nearly to death.

And:

Journalism, like almost every other profession relevant to this case, did not earn any honors. Until now. The only solace to be derived from this sad story is that it now is a story memorably told. A society’s justice system can improve as a result of lurches into officially administered injustice. The dialectic of injustice, then revulsion, then reform often requires the presentation of sympathetic victims to a large audience, which “The Central Park Five” does.

Finally, this recounting of a multifaceted but, fortunately, not fatal failure of the criminal justice system buttresses the conservative case against the death penalty: Its finality leaves no room for rectifying mistakes, but it is a government program, so . . .

More on Ken Burns' documentary, "Justice and the Central Park Five," at the PBS website.  It airs Tuesday evening, April 16. Check your local schedule for the time in your market.

Related posts are in the documentary index.

One For Ten

That's the name of documentary project that will be producing a series of documentaries about 10 American death row exonerees in April and May.  Here's more from One For Ten producer Laura Shacham.

I'm writing to tell you about a new interactive series of documentary films telling the stories of innocent people who were on death row in the US. The project is called One For Ten and is a first in live storytelling - all the films will be free to watch and free to share upon release. Over five weeks, a small team will be travelling the breadth of the States, producing two films a week for immediate distribution. All out of an RV, their mobile production office.

They're trying to raise £30,000 to get the project on the road so please take a look at their campaign and share far and wide. Some words from the filmmakers below if you're able to pass on.

One For Ten will be a series of short documentary films telling the stories of ten innocent people who spent an average of ten years each on death row in the USA. All of these people were locked up and facing death for crimes they did not commit. And they were all eventually exonerated and released.

Each of the films will look at a different failing in the American capital justice system that led to the wrongful conviction and incarceration of each of our contributors.

A “democratic” documentary – a brand new form of filmmaking.  Over 5 weeks in April and May this year, the One For Ten team will travel the breadth of the United States in an RV. We will film, edit and release two films online a week, “live” from the road. This is an entirely unprecedented form of documentary making and we’re doing it this way to make sure that YOU can come on the journey with us.

We want you to shape the films – ask the questions, give us feedback, get involved in the debate and help share the films far and wide.

Related posts are in the documentary index.

Damien Echols' Book, Life After Death

"After Jail and Release, New Fame as an Author," is a New York Times report by Dave Itzkoff.

On a Thursday afternoon walk along Canal Street, Damien Echols was reflecting on how this busy thoroughfare once nourished him in the first few months after his August 2011 release from a super-maximum-security prison in Arkansas.

Arriving from a life spent largely in solitary confinement and awaiting a death sentence, Mr. Echols was starved for human interaction and feasted on this downtown Manhattan smorgasbord teeming with awed tourists, stubborn natives and street peddlers hawking unfamiliar wares as if it were a five-course dinner.

Now, however, Mr. Echols compared this same block to a far less appetizing meal: “A sack full of McDonald’s hamburgers,” he called it.

It’s not that Mr. Echols, 37, one of the defendants in the notorious West Memphis Three murder case and the author of a new memoir, “Life After Death,” has become tired of a frantic, indifferent city or jaded by his own long-sought, hard-won freedom.

But after a year on the outside he finds himself an unlikely and uncomfortable celebrity. He is famous mostly because of things for which he does not want to be recognized, yet he is unable completely to shun the spotlight he says he needs to win himself a full exoneration.

“You can have all the evidence in the world, and that’s still only 50 percent of the fight,” said Mr. Echols, who speaks in a soft but resolute voice. “The other 50 percent is media. You have to get the media to pay attention. If not, they’ll sweep it under the rug and keep going.”

Tall and lean with long black hair, Mr. Echols is most widely known for having been convicted in 1994, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., for the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Ark., a crime the three men say they did not commit. Last year Mr. Echols, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Misskelley were released, after almost 20 years, in a deal that required them to plead guilty even though they continue to maintain their innocence.

Since then Mr. Echols has lived a bifurcated existence. He has become well known from the three “Paradise Lost” documentaries, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, that chronicled the West Memphis Three case, and he has spent time with several of the entertainment-world luminaries who fought for his release and have helped finance his exoneration efforts, including Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder and the “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson. (Mr. Jackson and Mr. Echols are also among the producers of a coming documentary, “West of Memphis.”)

But Mr. Echols says his private life is happily mundane. He and his wife, Lorri Davis, live in Salem, Mass., a city with long connections to magic and the dark arts that has become a modest mecca of New Age shops and meditation centers; he calls it “the only place on earth where I’m in the majority.”

"Freedom After Fire Ants and Tumult," is the Times' book review by Janet Maslin.

Eighteen and a half years after he was sentenced to death for participating in the murders of three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas, Damien Echols finds himself in Faireyland. Mr. Echols’s new book, “Life After Death,” has a Shepard Fairey-inspired cover design that’s as coolly lionizing as Mr. Fairey’s “Hope” poster for President Obama. The book has a champion in Johnny Depp, who has compared Mr. Echols’s writing to Dostoyevsky’s. And his story is the subject of a forthcoming documentary, “West of Memphis,” even though that story has been exhaustively told in the three “Paradise Lost” films that paved the path to Mr. Echols’s release from death row.

These are mind-bending new circumstances for a guy who grew up as an impoverished loner, sardonically described himself as white trash, and spent his years of incarceration noticing the most grotesque, dehumanizing aspects of prison life. Yet “Life After Death” tries to reconcile all these extremes into a single narrative, and to a great extent it accomplishes this magic trick. By the way, Mr. Echols spells that word “magick,” just as one of his favorite writers, the very spooky Aleister Crowley, did. It was Mr. Echols’s teenage taste for the occult, heavy metal and black clothing — a look inspired by Mr. Depp in “Edward Scissorhands,” he says — that initially made him a target for the vindictive and provincial police in West Memphis, Ark.

“Life After Death” does not discuss the details of that triple murder case and the long, botched investigation and trial that followed. For one thing, that story is not over. Last summer Mr. Echols, now 37, and his two cohorts in what became known as the West Memphis Three, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., were freed on an Alford plea, an unusual technicality whereby the defendants were released but not vindicated. The accumulated fan support, financial backing and legal muscle that have rallied around Mr. Echols suggest that his champions will continue to fight on his behalf.

But he is sick of that story anyway. So “Life After Death” is a dual memoir, partly about Mr. Echols’s boyhood and partly about his prison life.

Tonight, Echols will be signing copies of his book in Tempe, Arizona.  "9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe," is by Randy Cordova for the Arizona Republic, features a Q&A with the author.

As one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols spent nearly two decades on death row for the murders of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in 1993, a crime he says he didn't commit. Last year, due to a lack of evidence, the men were released amid a flood of publicity.

And:

Q: It must also be a shock because people see you in magazines with people like Johnny Depp and think, "Oh, he's living the life."

A: People see the glamour angle or some red-carpet thing with Johnny, but they don't know for the past month I've been homeless, and we've (he and wife, Lorri Davis) been struggling to get a place to stay. Tomorrow, we move to Massachusetts, but we've been moving from hotel to hotel or staying with friends. When we left Arkansas, we literally felt like refugees. I did not have one single penny in my pocket or a change of clothes. If it wasn't for people helping us and trying to get us on our feet, we would have been screwed.

Blue Rider Press, the book's publisher, has distributed a list of author events.

September 21 – New York, NY | Barnes & Noble, Union Square – 7:00 PM

September 24 – Tempe, AZ | Changing Hands Bookstore – 7:00 PM

September 26 – Los Angeles, CA | UCLA Freud Playhouse (Book Soup presents) – 7:00 PM

September 28 – Seattle, WA | Seattle Town Hall – 7:30 PM

October 11 – Minneapolis, MN | Innocence Project Minnesota – 7:00 PM

October 12 – Kansas City, MO | Rainy Day Books at Unity Temple – 7:00 PM

October 14 – Nashville, TN  | Southern Festival of Books

October 26 – Denver, CO | Tattered Cover LoDo – 7:30 PM

October 27-8 – Austin, TX | Texas Book Festival

October 29 – Tulsa, OK | All Souls Unitarian Church (Booksmart presents) – 8:00 PM

Earlier coverage of Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three case begins at the link; more on Life After Death, also available.

In This Timeless Time

In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America is the title of a new book by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian.  It's published by the University of North Carolina Press.  The book is also available from Amazon.

In this stark and powerful book, Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian explore life on Death Row in Texas and in other states, as well as the convoluted and arbitrary judicial processes that populate all Death Rows. They document the capriciousness of capital punishment and capture the day-to-day experiences of Death Row inmates in the official "nonperiod" between sentencing and execution.

In the first section, "Pictures," ninety-two photographs taken during their fieldwork for the book and documentary film Death Row illustrate life on cell block J in Ellis Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. The second section, "Words," further reveals the world of Death Row prisoners and offers an unflinching commentary on the judicial system and the fates of the men they met on the Row. The third section, "Working," addresses profound moral and ethical issues the authors have encountered throughout their careers documenting the Row.

Included is a DVD of Jackson and Christian's 1979 documentary film, "Death Row."

Publishers Weekly provides a review of In This Timeless Time. 

In this comprehensive, well-crafted book, published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, SUNY-Buffalo professors Jackson and Christian build upon the photographs and interviews from death row in Texas that yielded their 1979 book and documentary Death Row (DVD included). Here, photos and text reveal inmate life, discuss capital punishment, and share the fate of each man: execution, a commuted sentence, parole, or after more than two decades, an innocent verdict. Organized into three sections (“Pictures,” “Words,” “Working”), 113 duotone photos form the bulk of the book: Jackson’s original black-and-white images from the 1970s show mealtime, exercise rituals, and inmates socializing in the dayroom and passing time in their cells, with detailed captions about the procedures and inmates’ lives.

The University at Buffalo, where Jackson and Christian teach, has issued a press release, "After 32 Years, Buffalo Authors Revisit the Tragic World of Death Row."  Here's an excerpt:

In its pages, Jackson and Christian also discuss how they completed the book, the access problems they encountered more recently with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and their stance on ethical issues and studies related to the death penalty, prison reform and relevant Supreme Court decisions.

The couple describes the treatment of the prisoners as "remedial torture." They recount dehumanizing conditions death row inmates were -- and often are -- forced to endure, in a state proud of the number of people it executes every year. The replacement of the cells' glass windows with frosted glass illuminates this treatment. It not only prevented prisoners from seeing the outside world, but caused the development of chronic optical myopia because they could not exercise their distance vision

Jackson's and Christian's work has been influential in many quarters. An investigating officer in the notorious Gary Gilmore case was pleased to witness his execution, for instance, but changed his mind after seeing the film "Death Row." The late French President Francois Mitterand used it to explain and justify his abolition of the death penalty in France, and it has been praised by many other scholars, legislators and political activists for decades.

Related posts are in the books and documentary indexes.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory - Tonight on HBO

The third and final installment of the documentary on the West Memphis Three case premieres on HBO tonight.  Check your local listing for times. Here's the trailer:

 

A discussion with the directors:

 

And a panel discussion involving lawyers in the case:

 

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert writes, "West Memphis 3 finally go free in latest ‘Paradise Lost’ documentary."

When the documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” played on HBO in 1996, it left little doubt that the three young men convicted of the crimes were innocent. When “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” came out in 2000, it left less doubt. Now it is 2011 and a third film, “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” shows them being set free in August 2011 after 17 years in jail. One of them was on Death Row.

The case of the West Memphis 3 became famous worldwide. The Dixie Chicks held a fund-raising concert to help pay for the accused’s defense. The original conviction was based on flawed circumstantial evidence and a confession obtained from Jessie Misskelley, one of the defendants, who had an IQ of 72 and was questioned by police for 12 hours without a parent or attorney present, and then tape-recorded only long enough to recite a statement he later retracted. A police transcript shows Jessie shifting the time of the crimes from morning to noon to after school to evening (when they actually occurred) under leading suggestions by police.

This latest documentary is the culmination of years of extraordinary persistence by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, whose work helped to free the three men. So flawed was the evidence against the WM3 that the state of Arkansas decided to avoid a court hearing on their appeal by offering this unique deal: They could go free and could even state their innocence if they would sign an admission of guilt — a technicality shielding Arkansas from lawsuits for wrongful imprisonment.

“Lost 3” does a smooth job of retelling the entire story, so you needn’t have seen the first two films.

"How 'Paradise Lost' became a fight for justice," is by Lisa Rose for the Newark Star-Ledger.

Chronicling a controversial 1993 Arkansas murder case, filmmakers Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger evolved from observers into advocates.

Based in Montclair and New York respectively, they were dispatched by HBO to cover the trials of three teenagers accused of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, a working class suburb.

The prosecution lacked eyewitnesses and physical evidence, so they built a case around a tale of teen rebellion curdled into devil worship and pedophilia. The alleged ringleader, Damien Echols, got the death penalty, while Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. were sentenced to life without parole.

The team's 1996 documentary, "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" raised questions about the convictions and in the process, spurred a protest movement to "Free the West Memphis Three."

Earlier coverage of the documentary begins at the link.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

The final installment of the Paradise Lost documentaries on the case of the West Memphis Three is set to premiere on HBO January 12.  "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory," tells the entire story, from the 1993 murder of three young boys in Arkansas to the release and partial exoneration of Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley in August.

Here's the trailer:

This is from a press release on the long-running documentary project:

The award-winning HBO documentary series “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” (1996) and “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” (2000) spawned a worldwide movement to free the West Memphis 3 for wrongful murder convictions. Set to debut on HBO in Jan. 2012, “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” will have its theatrical premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with a number of prestigious festival dates to follow this fall. This film tells the entire story, from the arrests in 1993 to the growing movement, through the entire appeals process and the uncovering of new evidence, concluding with their release.

As Damien Echols notes in the film, if not for the “Paradise Lost” documentaries, “…these people would have murdered me, swept this under the rug, and I wouldn't be anything but a memory right now.”

On May 5, 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were found next to a muddy creek in the wooded Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Ark. A month later, three teenagers, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley, were arrested, accused and convicted of brutally raping, mutilating and killing the boys. Fraught with innuendoes of devil worship, allegations of coerced confessions and emotionally charged statements, the case was one of the most sensational in state history. The films sparked a national debate regarding the innocence or guilt of the West Memphis 3.

With the support of HBO, the filmmakers have stuck with the story over an 18-year period, making these compelling films in order to continue to shed light, raise awareness and spur debate about the events that transpired at that time and in subsequent years after the convictions.

“Eighteen years and three films ago, we started this journey to document the terrible murders of three innocent boys and the subsequent circus that followed the arrests and convictions of Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley,” said director and producer Joe Berlinger. “To see our work culminate in the righting of this tragic miscarriage of justice is more than a filmmaker could ask for.”

And:

Premiering at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” went on to win many accolades after its HBO presentation, receiving Emmy® and Peabody Awards, and a DGA nomination, among other honors, and was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review.

“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” is directed and produced by Joe Berlinger; codirected and produced by Bruce Sinofsky; edited by Alyse Ardell Spiegel; director of photography, Bob Richman; producer/second unit director; Jonathan Silberberg; featuring songs by Metallica. For HBO: supervising producer, Nancy Abraham; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

Earlier coverage of the West Memphis Three and their release begins at the link.  Mark your calendar for Januray 12.

Randall Dale Adams, 1949 - 2010

The New York Times obituary is titled, "Randall Adams, 61, Dies; Freed With Help of Film.  It's written by Douglas Martin.

Randall Dale Adams, who spent 12 years in prison before his conviction in the murder of a Dallas police officer was thrown out largely on the basis of evidence uncovered by a filmmaker, died in obscurity in October in Washington Court House, Ohio. He was 61.

Mr. Adams had chosen to live a quiet life divorced from his past, and when he died on Oct. 30, 2010, of a brain tumor, the death was reported only locally, said his lawyer, Randy Schaffer. The death was first widely reported on Friday.

The film that proved so crucial to Mr. Adams was “The Thin Blue Line,” directed by Errol Morris and released in 1988. It told a harrowing story, and it had the effect of helping to bring about Mr. Adams’s release the following year.

“We’re not talking about a cop killer who’s getting out on a technicality,” Mr. Morris said when Mr. Adams was set free. “We’re talking about an unbelievable nightmare.”

And:

In March 1989, the Texas appeals court ruled Mr. Adams was entitled to a new trial because of the perjured testimony. Three weeks later, he was released on his own recognizance, and two days after that the Dallas district attorney dropped all charges.

Mr. Adams lived a peripatetic life afterward, first returning to his native Ohio, then moving to upstate New York, later returning to Texas, in the Houston area, and finally settling again in Ohio. Mr. Schaffer said Mr. Adams gave speeches against the death penalty and married the sister of a man on death row. He did not know if they were still married at his death.

Diane Jennings wrote, "Early Dallas exoneree Randall Dale Adams died in Ohio last year," for the Dallas Morning News.

Mr. Adams was “an ordinary guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances,” said Randy Schaffer of Houston, Mr. Adams’ former attorney. “I’m sure he never bargained for the role he played in American criminal justice.”

Mr. Schaffer said he didn’t hear about Mr. Adams’ passing until several months later, though they usually talked about once a year.

An Adams relative confirmed his death from a brain tumor, Mr. Schaffer said.

“The reason there was no publicity was he had moved to some small town in Ohio where nobody knew who he was, and he liked it that way,” Mr. Schaffer said.

Adams received no compensation from the state.  He did receive apologies from Texas lawmakers.  He testified at several legislative hearings in Texas, speaking on behalf of reform measures.  Related posts are in the exoneration index.

New Documentary Premieres at SxSW Film - Incendiary

"The Case That Wouldn't Stay Closed," is the title of Jordan Smith's article in the Austin Chronicle.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, tried and executed for a 1991 fire in Corsicana, Texas, that claimed the lives of his three young children, has been a long and circuitous one, full of political intrigue, scientific inquiry, and sadness. The story is not yet finished: Over the past four years it has actually heated up to a near fever pitch, starting when lawyers with the Innocence Project requested the nascent Texas Forensic Science Commission reinvestigate the case to determine whether the arson science used to convict Willingham was outdated and inaccurate. When the panel was on the eve of questioning fire scientists about that issue in 2009, Gov. Rick Perry quickly shuffled the panel, taking off several well-respected members – including the group-selected chair, attorney Sam Bassett, and replacing him with a hand-picked chair, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, a man not known for his even-handedness.

We sat down with Austin filmmakers Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr. for a chat about making Incendiary: The Willingham Case, which explores at length the case that has sparked debate about the use of junk science in criminal cases, brought up issues about Perry's duty to carefully review death cases, and raised questions about whether a local judge can hear evidence that may open the door to having Willingham declared innocent. It's a story still far from having its final chapter written.

---

Austin Chronicle: This is such a huge case – it's been going on since 1991, basically – and it's still kind of a moving target. How do you go about conceiving of this big story?

Joe Bailey Jr.: I guess the thing we always go back to, the thing we were most intrigued by, is the way that the science and the politics and the legal understanding were all kind of woven into the story. ... And we were really lucky in a sense to come to the project right when [Perry's panel shuffle] happened – that was just provenance. I don't really know how that happened. But that was really just a gift from the governor. [laughs]

AC: Is there anybody that you wanted to interview that you didn't get to interview?

Bailey: Yeah, well, I mean of course. It was a really sensitive time for the governor.

AC: That's putting it mildly.

Bailey: I did contact his press office. And I might've been more oblique than I should have, because I was hoping there was some chance of something. And it wasn't going to be a confrontational-type thing; I wasn't going to blindside him; I just wanted a chance – I think I was just really naive starting out. ... Even after law school, you would think I would've come out a hardened cynic, but I hadn't.

AC: In what way?

Bailey: I felt like the governor had to understand his duty and how important his job is as a fail-safe in that system. And I don't think that he did. And in his defense, I think that most people who are lawyers don't understand how the Texas system relies upon the governor so heavily in that respect. Because the fact-finder, the jury, once they make up their mind about that evidence, the appeals court [doesn't] look at that evidence again. And the governor ... took the position that, well, the courts have all looked at this. So it's fine. And that's a real problem.

Steve Mims: It's a real problem. The Innocence Project [has identified] 750 people in Texas who are in jail for arson, and there may be a lot of them who are guilty, but there are probably some of them who are not and were convicted on the same [kind of] evidence. And they've offered to help – to go methodically through all of those cases and say, "These are worthy of taking another look; these aren't."

Smith has posted more of the interview online, "sxswf: Even More 'Incendiary'."

"Texas-related SXSW films 'Incendiary' & 'Better This World' probe high-profile cases," is the report in today's Austin American-Statesman.  It's by Charles Ealy.

Amid dozens of powerhouse documentaries, two stand out at this year's South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival, which starts today. And both of them "Incendiary" and "Better This World" raise questions about two high-profile legal cases involving Texans.

"Incendiary," directed by Austin's Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr., explores the science behind the arson investigation that led to the conviction and eventual execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004. It also looks at the increasing controversy over the Texas Forensic Science Commission, where disputes about the Willingham case have erupted.

And:

Steve Mims, a documentary filmmaker and lecturer at the University of Texas, was teaching a class in 2009 when a discussion began about a New Yorker article titled "Trial by Fire." The article basically asked whether Texas had executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, in 2004, for a 1991 fire that killed his three Corsicana children.

Among Mims' students was Joe Bailey Jr., a law school student and an aspiring filmmaker.

"Afterward, Joe wrote me in an e-mail that someone should make a film about the case," Mims says. "I e-mailed him back, and at first I said this would be a whole lot of work. But by the end of the e-mail, I was saying 'Let's do it.' "

Mims and Bailey say that they see the case as raising serious questions about the legal system, especially since jurors and citizens believe that the evidence of arson in a murder case will be scientifically based.

Earlier coverage of Incendiary is at the link.  The Willingham case was also the subject of a Frontline documentary, Death by Fire; more on the Frontline report, at the link.

More on SxSW, Austin's renowned music, film, and interactive festival, at the link.  It begins today.

Earlier coverage of the case begins at the link.

All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Tonight on PBS

"Post Mortem: Death Investigation in America," is the title of a Frontline documentary that airs tonight on PBS.  Check your local PBS station for time.

The New York Times review, "Bumbling in the Morgue: Blind, Drunk or Merely Incompetent Coroners," is written by Ginia Bellafante.

Let’s imagine that an intruder entered your home one night and fatally poisoned you. Let’s say that during the previous weeks or months you had evinced signs of emotional volatility. Perhaps you were even depressed. Let’s go further and presume that you lived in one of the many places in America experiencing state and municipal budget crises. The police suspect suicide, but because the coroner’s office is underfinanced and understaffed — maybe there isn’t even a place to refrigerate your body until someone can get around to dissecting your corpse — no autopsy is performed to confirm or invalidate those suspicions. A murderer is free and on to the next house and victim.

“Post Mortem,” a documentary on PBS on Tuesday, compellingly demonstrates just how often a situation like this one actually occurs. A joint production of “Frontline,” ProPublica and NPR, the film illuminates the egregious lapses in the American system of death investigation by highlighting the widespread incompetence of poorly trained coroners and the failure of local governments to pay sufficient attention to the need for sound forensic pathology.

If its own DNA had any less gravitas, “Post Mortem” might have been called “CSI: Miami — What a Big Bunch of Hooey.” Apparently autopsies are performed with far more precision and rigor on fictionalized television than they are in the real world, where some medical examiners aren’t even doctors. The film introduces us to the bizarre obfuscations of Frank Minyard, who has served for more than 30 years as coroner in New Orleans, where he has been elected to the position 10 times. Before becoming the medical examiner he had been an obstetrician, and during his tenure he has overseen a team whose work has repeatedly come under question for gross inaccuracy.

Coroners elsewhere have been blind or drunk, limited to a single refrigerator held together by a belt, or forced to perform their duties without X-ray machines. As Marcella Fierro, the retired chief medical examiner of Virginia and the inspiration for Patricia Cornwell’s character Kay Scarpetta puts it, the work done by forensic pathologists in this country “varies from excellent to really, really lousy.” One issue is that there is no central registry for the profession, so it is easy, as the film explores, for a forensic pathologist doing lousy work in Northern California, say, to go and find work in Kansas City.

Related posts are in the forensics index. 

Some notable posts on medical examiners include, "The Continuing Saga of Steven Hayne," and:

• El Paso Fires County's Medical Examiner
• Autopsy Errors One More Troubling Trend
• Yamil Berard's Five-Part Medical Examiner Series Concludes
• Yamil Berard on Texas Autopsy Controversies
• The Case of Cynthia Case - More Bad Forensics

Willingham Filmmakers Will Speak for the Dead

That's the title of an item in today's New York Times.  It's written by John Pierson, who lectures on film at the University of Texas at Austin.

Yes, this is West 11th Street, Corsicana, Texas. It’s about 10 o’clock in the morning. Those are the arson investigators, and they’ll soon decide that I set this house on fire and burned my three young children to death just before Christmas 1991. But before you hear it all distorted or blown out of proportion, maybe you’d like to hear the facts, the whole truth. The governor likes to quote my own defense attorney about how I am — or should I say: was — “a monster.” Because, you see, I was executed six years ago when he wouldn’t grant a stay.

With apologies to Billy Wilder and William Holden as Joe Gillis in “Sunset Boulevard,” that is how Cameron Todd Willingham’s voice-over might begin “Incendiary,” a wildly and broadly appealing, nearly completed documentary about his controversial conviction and eventual execution in Texas.

When I asked Steve Mims, the co-director of “Incendiary” and my colleague in the University of Texas at Austin’s radio, television and film department, if such an opening would be disrespectful to Mr. Willingham’s memory, he was reassuring.

“I love ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ so I don’t think you can go wrong with that,” Mr. Mims said.

Then, showing his movie-maven credentials, he added, “Did you know they shot and edited a whole scene with many corpses talking in the county morgue, but cut it because it was unintentionally funny?” So the Hollywood feature ended up with just one dead man talking, while the Texas documentary, tragically, has none.

Mr. Mims has shot, edited and taught film in all lengths, genres and formats for decades in Austin, training a generation of young filmmakers. One day in the fall of 2009, Joe Bailey Jr., a postdoctoral fellow from the University of Texas School of Law, showed up in Mr. Mims’s class at the urging of his wife, Alice, a Travis County prosecutor. Mr. Bailey was a music aficionado and a frustrated writer who had plans to make a documentary about Doug Sahm, the legendary Texas troubadour.

And:

When it comes to films about justice gone wrong in Texas, Errol Morris’s “Thin Blue Line” casts a long shadow. It got out of jail a man, Randall D. Adams, who had been falsely convicted of gunning down a Dallas policeman, and it did it in style, with flying milkshakes, hypnotic watches, B-movie-obsessed eyewitnesses and a fatalistic Philip Glass score. Mr. Mims and Mr. Bailey love the film and certainly don’t mind any comparisons.

But Mr. Morris had a live prisoner to save, while Mr. Mims and Mr. Bailey could rescue only a dead man’s reputation. They started shooting in October 2009, just after Gov. Rick Perry had replaced the chairman of the state’s Forensic Science Commission, which was about to release a report on the Willingham case. As such, “Incendiary” depicts a surprisingly dramatic series of procedural events and political obstacles in the middle of Mr. Perry’s re-election campaign, ending in an exoneration trial.

“Our agenda was always in three parts: science, the law and politics,” Mr. Mims said.

He and Mr. Bailey did not set out to make a death penalty film, and they succeeded.

Earlier coverage begins with this post. All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index. 

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Judge Sarokin on False Confessions - Norfolk Four, Tonight on Frontline

Retired Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin posts, "Why Do Innocent People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit?," at Huffington Post.

The answer all too often is coercion, intimidation, deceit and trickery. All of those techniques were employed to obtain the conviction of four innocent sailors for the rape and murder of a woman in Norfolk, Virginia. Danial Williams after only 11 days of marriage was arrested and charged with the crime. After relentless questioning and threats for 11 hours, he confessed. When the confession did not fit the actual facts, he was again questioned and convinced to alter his confession to jibe with those facts.

Because Williams' DNA failed to match any at the crime scene, the police next interrogated his roommate, Joe Dick. Subjected to the same harassment, Dick likewise confessed. For reasons too complicated to recount here, a total of eight men were charged with the gang rape and murder of Michelle Bosko, including two other sailors, Eric Wilson and Derek Tice.

And:

In the 261 exonerations based upon DNA evidence, clear evidence of innocence, approximately 20 percent of the convictions set aside were based upon false confessions. There is no more powerful evidence in a criminal trial than a confession by the defendant himself. There is no greater injustice than when those confessions are obtained through threats and intimidation and result in the conviction of innocent persons.

A reminder that PBS Frontline tonight examines the Norfolk Four in, "The Confessions."  Earlier coverage begins here.

PBS Frontline to Examine Norfolk Four Case

The PBS documentary, which premiered this season with an examination of the Todd Willingham case, takes up another controversial case, that of the Norfolk Four in Virginia.

Tomorrow night's program is, "The Confessions."  Check your local PBS affiliate for the time in your locale.

Why would four innocent men confess to a brutal crime they didn’t commit? FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (Innocence Lost, An Ordinary Crime) investigates the conviction of four Navy sailors for the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Va., woman in 1997. In interviews with the sailors, Bikel learns of some of the high-pressure police interrogation techniques -- including the threat of the death penalty, sleep deprivation, and intimidation -- that led each of the “Norfolk Four” to confess, despite a lack of evidence linking them to the crime. All four sailors are now out of prison -- one served his sentence and the other three were granted conditional pardons last summer -- but the men were not exonerated as felons or sex offenders. The case raises disturbing questions about the actions of the police and prosecutors, who relied on the sailors’ often contradictory confessions for their convictions, and disregarded DNA evidence that pointed to a lone assailant who would later confess to the crime himself while serving prison time for another rape.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported, "Officer’s Extortion Conviction Prompts Calls for Full Exoneration of ‘Norfolk Four’," by Sabrina Tavernise.

The recent conviction of a Virginia police officer supports the case for full exoneration of the “Norfolk Four,” former sailors convicted of rape and murder, who received conditional pardons from Virginia’s governor last year, lawyers for the men said.

In legal briefs filed in Virginia this week, the lawyers argued that last week’s conviction of Robert Glenn Ford, a police officer in Norfolk, Va., and the main investigator in the case of the Norfolk Four, raises new evidence showing the men were wrongly convicted. The men received partial pardons in 2009, but their convictions still stand, and the lawyers argue that they should now be overturned.

The men were convicted in the 1997 murder case of Michelle Moore-Bosko in Norfolk. None of the four sailors had prior criminal records, and the case against them was based almost entirely on confessions they gave to Mr. Ford, who pursued the investigation despite DNA evidence linking the crime to another man, Omar Ballard.

But Mr. Ford’s conviction — for extortion and lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation — covered a period that began in 2003, long after the Norfolk Four were convicted, and in a letter last month, Judge Everett A. Martin Jr., expressed skepticism that the conviction was relevant for the Norfolk Four case.

But Donald P. Salzman, a lawyer for Danial J. Williams, one of the former sailors, argued in a response filed this week that Mr. Ford’s indictment and conviction was new information that substantially changed the facts of his client’s case.

Specifically, Mr. Salzman said, a source has come forward asserting that Mr. Ford had stated he believed the men were not guilty of the crime. But in Mr. Salzman’s view, Mr. Ford did not back off the case because he was trying to protect his position. Earlier in his career, Mr. Salzman said, Mr. Ford was caught in what prosecutors said was an effort to elicit false confessions from juveniles, and Mr. Salzman argued that another instance could have endangered his job.

“A detective who was the driving force behind these convictions has now been convicted for manipulating the justice system,” said Mr. Salzman, of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. “He had a motive to continue to pursue these cases.”

Margaret Edds posts, "The crumbling case against the 'Norfolk Four'," the Voices blog of the Washington Post.

A “PBS Frontline” documentary on the Norfolk Four case, scheduled to air Tuesday, makes it chillingly clear that the concept of multiple false confessions is no more preposterous than Ford’s and the prosecutors’ ever-shifting theory of the case.

Initially satisfied with one confession, police backtracked after the first DNA test failed to match evidence. Over time, faced with one disappointing DNA result after another, Ford extracted more and more confessions and more and more names of purported co-conspirators. Eventually, seven men, including two with solid alibis, stood implicated.

No evidence existed against any of them, save the confessions.

Then, out of the blue, an eighth man serving time for rape, also confessed. Omar Ballard, who did not know the others, was the only suspect without ties to the armed services, the only one with a history of attacking women, the only one who knew precisely how the crime occurred, and the only one whose DNA fit.

As he tells “Frontline”: “I alone committed the murders. . . . No one ever had anything to say or do with the case besides me.”

By the time Ballard appeared, police and prosecutors were too invested to admit their mistake. They simply inserted Ballard into a ludicrous, eight-man conspiracy. Aside from Ballard, now serving a life sentence, the three men conditionally pardoned by Kaine each served about 11 years of life sentences; the fourth man, Wilson, was convicted of rape only and had completed an 8½-year sentence at the time of the partial pardons.

As registered sex offenders, all four live in a hellish limbo, dictated by the laws of their individual states. In Michigan, Williams wears an electronic ankle bracelet 24 hours a day. He cannot even work in the yard without permission. In Texas, Wilson was denied admission to a school for electricians and cannot adopt his wife’s son because of his criminal record. In North Carolina, Tice washes windows for a living, his dream of becoming a nurse forever barred. And in Maryland, Dick fears taking his parents’ dogs for a walk because a school backs up to their property.

The Virginian-Pilot reports, "'Frontline' show dissects case of the Norfolk Four," by Tim McGlone.

Frontline producers also obtained, for the first time publicly, an interview with Ballard. He told Frontline that police pressured him to say the other men participated in the crime with him, a statement that he said was not true.

"It was made clear from the jump that unless I said somebody else was with me, that it wasn't going to be the truth," Ballard said. "The only truth they wanted to hear (was) that I did it with someone else."

The recent corruption conviction in federal court here of retired Norfolk Detective Robert Glenn Ford is also part of the show.

The Norfolk Four lawyers said the guilty verdict in the Ford case is directly relevant to the innocence claims the men have pending.

Federal authorities here have said they do not believe there is a link between Ford's corruption case and his history of obtaining a number of false confessions.

The Norfolk Four case has already been written about in a book called "The Wrong Guys." Popular author John Grisham is also working on a screenplay about the case.

Earlier coverage of the Norfolk Four, begins at the link; related posts are in the documentary and false confessions index.

PBS Frontline to Spotlight Willingham Case

The season premiere of Frontline is tomorrow night,"Death by Fire."

The documentary will broadcast Tuesday, October 19th at 9 pm (EDT) / 8 pm (CDT.) 

"Did Texas execute an innocent man?," is the press release.

Several controversial death penalty cases are currently under examination in Texas and in other states, but it’s the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham -- convicted for the arson deaths of his three young children -- that’s now at the center of the national debate.

In Death by Fire, FRONTLINE’s season premiere, airing Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE gains unique access to those closest to the Willingham case -- meticulously examining the evidence used to convict Willingham, offering an in-depth portrait of those most impacted by the case, and exploring the explosive implications of the execution of a possibly innocent man.

“The state of Texas executed a man for a crime that they couldn’t prove was really a crime,” nationally renowned fire scientist John Lentini tells FRONTLINE.

The re-examination of the case turns on a critical finding that came only weeks before Willingham’s scheduled execution: The investigators who had determined that Willingham had set the fire that killed his three daughters had relied on an outdated understanding of arson evidence. “Todd Willingham’s case falls into that category where there is not one iota of evidence that the fire was arson,” forensic scientist Gerald Hurst tells FRONTLINE of the results of his review of the evidence. “Fundamentally, this was a classic accidental fire.”

But even with a central pillar of the state’s case against Willingham in doubt, Texas Gov. Rick Perry refused to delay Willingham’s execution. Last year a report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission backed up the findings of Dr. Hurst, finding that the arson evidence against Willingham did not have “any basis in modern fire science.” Perry publicly defended his handling of the case and quickly replaced the commission’s chairman, Sam Bassett.

“If we make a mistake, are we going to learn from it?” Bassett asks FRONTLINE. “Or are we going to try to sweep it under the rug and act like nothing happened?”

Experts tell FRONTLINE there could be hundreds of innocent people in prison for arson cases where the evidence was misinterpreted by investigators. But not everyone is convinced that Willingham was innocent. Despite the evidence the fire was not an arson, in the town of Corsicana, Tex., where the deaths occurred, many say Willingham was guilty. Even Willingham’s own defense attorney, David Martin, still insists his client started the deadly fire. “Of course I thought he was guilty,” Martin says. “The real fact of the matter is that Willingham was guilty. He wasn't innocent. He really set that fire and killed those kids.”

Through interviews with Willingham’s friends and family, FRONTLINE tells the story of a troubled young man with a history of domestic violence who quickly became the prime suspect in his children’s deaths. The discovery by fire investigators of more than 20 indicators of arson at the scene of the fire pointed directly to Willingham’s guilt.

At the trial, jurors heard evidence that Willingham had confessed to a fellow inmate; that he was a sociopath; and that he had posted satanic images on the walls of his house. “He was an individual with essentially no redeeming value,” former prosecutor John Jackson tells FRONTLINE. “This was his crowning achievement as a psychopath: the murder of his three children.”

Death by Fire tells the story a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert who first began to question Willingham’s conviction and to draw attention to the possible miscarriage of justice after corresponding with Willingham as part of a prison pen pal program. As Gilbert dug into Willingham’s case, she found problems with the alleged jailhouse confession and the evidence that Willingham was a sociopath or Satanist. In fact, the satanic images prosecutors had introduced at trial were posters for the rock bands Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin. “They never established a motive,” Gilbert tells FRONTLINE. “So then their motive shifted to Todd just being an evil person.”

Death by Fire is a FRONTLINE production with Kirk Documentary Group in association with StartBox Films. The producer and director is Jessie Deeter. The co-producer is Mike Wiser. The writers are Mike Wiser and Michael Kirk. The senior producer is Michael Kirk. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Reva and David Logan. Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and described for people who are blind or visually impaired by the Media Access Group at WGBH. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The senior producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath. The executive producer of FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

In the next post, I'll link coverage of Friday's meeting of the Forensic Science Commission.

Earlier coverage begins with this post.  All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Willingham Case on Forensic Science Commission Agenda

The Forensic Science Commission's next meeting is September 17, and the Todd Willingham case is on the agenda.

In today's Austin American-Statesman, Chuck Lindell reports, "Fire marshal backs arson finding in man's execution."  Here's an extended excerpt:

The State Fire Marshal's Office stands behind its controversial conclusion that Cameron Todd Willingham started the house fire that killed his three children in 1991, contradicting arson experts and scientists who insist the agency relied on bad science in its investigation.

In a pointed letter to the Texas Forensic Science Commission , which is nearing the end of a contentious review of the Willingham arson investigation, Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado defended his agency's handling of the case that led to Willingham's execution in 2004.

In July, the commission announced a tentative finding that investigators employed "flawed science" — including now-debunked beliefs that certain fire behaviors point to arson — to conclude that Willingham intentionally set fire to his Corsicana home.

But Maldonado said his agency's investigation remains valid, even after modern, scientific arson standards are applied.

"We stand by the original investigator's report and conclusions," Maldonado said in his Aug. 20 letter to the commission. "Should any subsequent analysis be performed to test other theories and possibilities of the cause and origin of the fire, we will of course re-examine the report again."

Maldonado's letter was among 11 received last month after the commission solicited final comments before members prepare to write their report on the Willingham investigation at a specially called meeting Sept. 17 in Dallas. The four-member Willingham subcommittee will have draft language for the rest of the seven-member panel to consider, but much of the discussion on final wording will take place during the open meeting, Chairman John Bradley said Wednesday.

Some letter writers criticized the State Fire Marshal's Office, which provides arson investigation help to communities across Texas, for declining to acknowledge shortcomings in the Willingham case.

"For the fire marshal's office to permit (Willingham) to remain imprisoned during all those years leading up to his execution, in spite of knowing for most of those years that the compelling testimony \u2026 provided at trial was solidly wrong, is to partake in unethical scientific behavior of the most extreme kind," wrote Thomas Bohan, a 35-year forensic physicist from Maine.

The fire marshal's office compounded its "unethical, negligent behavior" by failing to review similar arson cases that may have been influenced by false or misleading arson indicators, Bohan said.

"Willingham case on science panel agenda for Sept. 17," is the title of Janet Jacobs's preview in the Corsicana Daily Sun. 

A special meeting of the Texas Forensics Science Commission will take place at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 17 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Dallas near Love Field specifically to address the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, according to director Leigh Tomlin.

Last week, the city issued its final response to the case of the Corsicana man convicted of killing his three daughters in a house fire in December 1991. Willingham was tried in 1992 and died by lethal injection in 2004.

In 2005, the state created a forensics commission to oversee the professionalism of law-enforcement crime laboratories. At the request of the Innocence Project, the commission agreed to look at the Willingham case.

John Bradley, who heads up the commission, said the hope is to finish up the topic at the September meeting.

“We’re going to meet to discuss and deal with the report for the Willingham case,” Bradley said. “Obviously, the goal is to see if we can complete it and vote on it.”

The Innocence Project has webcast past FSC meeting dealing with arson investigations.  I'll check to see if it will be providing a feed for this meeting and, if so, provide the link.

The Willingham case will be the subject of a PBS Frontline investigation this fall.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, "Ken Burns leads PBS fall lineup," by TV writer Mark Dawidziak.

"Frontline" (10 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 19): Did Texas execute an innocent man? "Death by Fire" looks at the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted for the arson deaths of his three young children. With access to those closest to the case, the PBS series examines the Willingham conviction in light of new science that raises doubts about whether the fire at the center of the case was really arson.

Earlier coverage begins here.  All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

More on the David Powell Case

Sally Norvell has posted new video at the Let David Live website and on YouTube.  Forensic Psychiatrist Dr Seth Silverman explains why David Powell is not a danger to society, and what would be lost by executing him. 

The second is of David's mother Marjorie & her friend Mike. Marjorie Powell has helped dozens of people in trouble - Mike is one of them.

The Austin American-Statesman takes a long look at the case and what it means today in, "After 32 years, has Powell's execution lost its meaning?"  It's written by Chuck Lindell and Tony Plohetski. Here's the beginning of the article:

Heavily armed, deeply paranoid and strung out on drugs, David Lee Powell was a nightmare personified in 1978.

Sitting in a car that had been pulled over on a dark Austin side street, Powell sighted his AK-47 through the rear window. Police radios caught officer Ralph Ablanedo's scream as the first bullet penetrated his bulletproof vest. Nine more shots found their mark.

The well-liked father of two young sons died shortly after the 12:30 a.m. attack .

Barring the unexpected, Powell will be executed for that crime on June 15 — 32 years, three weeks and five days after Ablanedo was buried with honors.

Texas has never executed a man after so much time has passed, giving rise to a question that speaks to a basic concept of punishment and justice: Has Powell's execution been robbed of its meaning and purpose?

The clean-cut 59-year-old man who will be strapped to the Huntsville gurney to receive a trio of lethal drugs is nothing like the nightmare from another era. Powell's time in prison long ago removed the methamphetamine taint that helped turn a promising honors student into a jittery, lank-haired killer, and a fiercely loyal group of supporters insists that putting him to death now would be a travesty.

"He's the old David Powell" — intelligent, compassionate, articulate and thoughtful — and no longer poses a danger to society, said attorney David Van Os, who befriended Powell in 1968. "This is not how the death penalty was intended to be used."

But for those most touched by Ablanedo's murder, Powell's execution remains a meaningful — and desired — goal.

Irene Ablanedo, Ralph's sister, plans to stand at the window in the Huntsville death chamber to watch Powell die from five feet away. She will be thinking about her brother, what he meant to his family and how he was taken away too early. The pain of loss still burns.

"I can't wait for that bastard to take his last breath," she said. "That is what he deserves."

For some officers, Powell's death is a matter of fairness — an eye for an eye — that validates their service in a dangerous profession and adds a measure of protection by sending a clear message: If you kill a cop, you die.

More than 100 current and retired Austin police officers — including Ablanedo's friends and some who weren't even born when he died — will drive or take a chartered bus for an execution-day trip to Huntsville, which they're calling the Journey to Justice. Those who can't make it will toast Ablanedo in a downtown Austin bar at 6 p.m., the time set for Powell's execution.

"It is a matter of unfinished business," said retired police Lt. George Vanderhule, who helped Ablanedo's widow plan his funeral. "This has gone on for 32 years, and he has managed to evade justice."

But defense lawyer Richard Burr argues another perspective. Powell, he said, has led an exemplary life in the harsh conditions of death row — teaching illiterate inmates to read, defusing guard-prisoner tensions and offering true friendship to many in the "free world."

"Powell is someone who contributes much more to life than his execution would contribute to the symbolic goal of retribution 32 years after the murder of Ralph Ablanedo," Burr wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles in hopes of getting Powell's sentence reduced to life in prison.

Earlier coverage of the case begins with this post.

More on the David Powell Case

Robert Leleux has posted, "Fourteen Days to Live," at his Texas Observer blog.  It includes this video:

It's a heart-rending clip of David Powell's mother, Marjorie Powell, talking about her son's life.

David's execution date is set for June 15th, 2010.  That's two weeks from today.  So, unless the clemency board decides otherwise, David has fourteen days left on this earth.

You know, we're all Texans here, folks.  The death penalty is something we all live with, and like anything you live with, you become more or less accustomed to it. But if you allow your mind to reboot for a moment, stop and consider the strangeness of knowing that a man will (most likely) be killed, in Huntsville, by the state of
Texas, two weeks from today.  I mean, how weird is that?  To know when and how a person named David Powell will be killed.

Last week, Leleux posted, "Sissy Farenthold Talks About the Death Penalty."

I'd like to suggest a clip from an upcoming documentary featuring my idol SISSY FARENTHOLD called "Saving David Powell." You can watch it in the upper right-hand corner or click on this link:

David Powell is currently awaiting execution in Huntsville, and Sissy's been visiting him for twenty years!  As you might imagine, the footage is very moving and elegant and tragic--and was created by a mondo-talented film-maker named Sally Norvell.

Here's a link to a great interview with Sally.

There's more information on the case at Let David Live.  Earlier coverage begins with this post.

Execution Date Set for David Lee Powell

Tony Plohetski reports, " Execution date set for police killer," in today's Austin American-Statesman.

A state district judge has set an execution date for David Lee Powell, convicted and sentenced to die by three separate juries in the fatal shooting of an Austin police officer more than 30 years ago.

Powell, who is one of the state's longest-serving death row inmates, is scheduled to be executed June 15 "after the hour of 6 p.m.," according to an order that Judge Mike Lynch issued late Monday.

Lynch ordered that Powell, who shot officer Ralph Ablanedo 10 times with an AK-47, "die by intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death."

The order was met with mixed emotions Tuesday.

Ablanedo's son, David Mills, said, "It's been a long time. I think the process has been more than fair to him, and I think he's had an opportunity to make his case."

However, he said, "I'm not going to go there and have all this closure I've never had. It's not going to do it for me."

Powell's longtime attorney, Richard Burr of Houston, expressed anger and sadness.

He said Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg could have "stood tall" and not sought for Lynch to set the execution date. He said she also could seek to have Lynch's order withdrawn — a move he said would mirror the will of her constituents.

And:

Lehmberg would say only, "It is a sad day for everyone when an execution date is set, but three juries have heard this case over the years and in each instance have determined this is a proper sentence."

Burr said that in three decades behind bars, Powell has been a model prisoner, teaching other inmates to read and counseling other death row prisoners.

Powell graduated a year early from high school, where he was valedictorian, and went into the honors program at the University of Texas, where court records said he turned to drugs.

Powell's May 1978 crime occurred after Ablanedo pulled over Sheila Meinert, Powell's girlfriend at the time, for a routine traffic stop. Powell, who also was accused of trying to shoot other officers when they closed in on him, was found guilty and sentenced to death within months of the shooting.

He appealed his conviction, saying that he had talked to a psychiatrist without being warned of his rights, and received a new trial in 1991. Powell also appealed that guilty verdict, saying he had been improperly sentenced, and was given a new sentencing trial in 1999. He was again given the death penalty.

Sally Norvell's documentary, "Saving David Powell," is online.  More information on Powell is at the website Let David Live.  Earlier coverage begins with this post.

Love Lived on Death Row

That's the title of a new documentary by North Carolina filmmaker Linda Booker.  It's also the title of her guest post  on Michael Landauer's Dallas Morning News blog.  Here's the beginning of this compelling post:

If you had told me four years ago on the day I received my Certificate in Documentary Studies from Duke University that my first major project would feature the death penalty issue, I probably would have smiled politely and said, "I doubt that." It wasn't an issue I had extreme feelings about one way or the other. But several weeks later as I was checking the weather on our local TV station's website, a headline caught my eye: "Family Forgives Father For A Mother's Death." I immediately felt inexplicably compelled to make a documentary about this family's amazing story of forgiveness. What I didn't know then is that checking the weather that day would change my life and some of my beliefs as I went on to produce a feature length film about the Syriani sibling's story and their experience with North Carolina's system of justice and the media as they faced their father's impending execution.

Much more is at the Love Lived on Death Row website.  Related posts are in the documentary index.

A Chaplain's Take on Capital Punishment

That's the title of Bob Lively's religion column which will appear in tomorrow's Austin American-Statesman.  LINK

The last time I checked, seven out of 10 Texans approved of the death penalty, and not surprisingly, Texas executes more people than any other state (and for that matter, most foreign countries). Hence, it should surprise no one that our current governor has sat by while 200 fellow human beings have been executed over in Huntsville. If he commuted death sentences, he'd never be re-elected.

But I wonder about those pro-death penalty Texans. Don't they know that Jesus was a victim of the same state-sanctioned murder to which we've become so tragically inured here in the Lone Star State? The Jewish Sanhedrin did not kill Jesus. Rome did! And from the very beginning of his brief three-year ministry, Jesus opposed any and all expressions of violence.

By far, the most authoritative book I've read on the subject of the death penalty was "Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain," written by a fellow Presbyterian minister, Carroll Pickett. The Rev. Pickett begrudgingly began assisting with executions back in the '70s when capital punishment was once more ruled legal. Today Carroll Pickett travels coast to coast, advocating passionately and effectively against the death penalty, but more importantly he witnesses to the life and to the radical love of Jesus.

I think Pickett's book is a must-read for every human being who, like me, believes that all human life is sacred. Pickett has come to understand that Caesar's kind of justice all too often looks and smells a whole lot like vengeance, while for God justice is quite simply always the same thing — an incomprehensible love made public.

Boston's Phoenix has new musings on the documentary, "At the Death House Door," written by Peter Keough.

What with the crashing economy, the North Koreans having a nutty and Iran melting down - to name just a few of the crises spinning at the moment - the status of the death penalty would seem to be near the bottom of President Obama's list of priorities. Nonetheless, he'll have no choice but to take a stand on the issue pretty soon, since the cases of six federal death row inmates will probably see their stays of executions expire in the next few months.

Then Obama, who has the authority to pardon them or not, will have to decide whether they live or die.

"The death penalty in the abstract is one thing," says Dianne Rust-Tierney of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty to "Politico." "The reality of the death penalty and all of its nasty details is a very different thing."

Perhaps the president might want to prep himself for this decision by watching Steve James and Peter Gilbert's ("Hoop Dreams") wrenching, sublimely restrained and expertly crafted documentary, "At the Death House Door,"  which will be released by Facets Video tomorrow. It concerns, in part, the strange career of Rev. Carroll Pickett, who served as the Death Row chaplain at the Huntsville, Texas prison, ushering condemned prisoners through the last 12 hours of their lives.

Pickett's first experience at the prison traumatized him. In 1974, inmates took several civilian workers hostage. Among them were two of his parishioners. He watched them get gunned down in a bloody shootout.

In 1982, six years after the Supreme Court had reinstated the death penalty, Huntsville Prison was in the business of executing people. Pickett, then the prison chaplain and a compelling force for good who had already changed the lives of many prisoners through his ministry and his choir, was enlisted into the "Lethal Injection Team" as the person who would accompany the condemned through his (or her; one victim was a woman) last day, offering them comfort and consolation and, as the warden put it, "seduce" their emotions so they wouldn't "fight" when they had to walk that last 8 feet to be strapped to a gurney and put to death.

Given the murders of his parishioners in 1974, Pickett initially, if abstractly - had no problem with the death penalty. His leather-tough Texas dad used to say "hang them fast and hang them high." But he discovered, as Rust-Tierney noted above, that the reality is different. He was so shaken by the experience that he made a tape recording of his feelings and impressions after each execution. Thirteen years and 95 executions later, including that of one man, Carlos DeLuna, whom he was certain was innocent, Pickett was no longer in favor of capital punishment. Anyone who watches this film will be hard-pressed to support it, either.

Today's Arkansas Online carries Philip Martin's, "ON FILM: Death House Door puts penalty on trial."

Watching At the Death House Door (Facets, $29.95), a 2008 documentary by Peter Gilbert and Steve James (best known for Hoop Dreams) released this week on DVD, I was reminded of the story of Albert Pierrepoint.

Pierrepoint - portrayed by Timothy Spall in the 2005 film The Last Hangman (also known as Pierrepoint) - served as the United Kingdom’s official hangman from 1932 to 1956 and presided at the executions of more than 400 people (including some 200 Nazi war criminals hanged after World War II).

By all accounts, he was extremely precise and methodical, a true professional who dispatched his “clients” with as little ado as possible. He was a mercifully swift worker - rarely did more than 30 seconds elapse between the condemned’s arrival on his gallows and execution. (Having done some work for the U.S. Army during World War II, he hated the way the Americans dithered around for six or seven minutes reading lengthy charges while the condemned waited on the trap door.)

Dealing in officially sanctioned homicide gave Pierrepoint a unique perspective on capital punishment. In the end, he became if not an abolitionist at least convinced that the policy had no deterrent effect.

“I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing,” he wrote in his autobiography, “and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people.”

Pierrepoint’s opinion is unlikely to change the minds of capital-punishment advocates - the issue is an emotional one, highly resistant to any evidence and all testimony. It may take something more dramatic than cold numbers to change anyone’s mind about whether the state should have the power of life and death over its citizens.

At the Death House Door starts out as a cinematic portrait of the Rev. Carroll Pickett, a Presbyterian minister whose views on capital punishment were shaped by a “hang ’em high” father, the absence of his murdered grandfather and, years before he worked at the prison, the killing of two of his parishioners - civilian library workers - during a 1974 prison siege. Pickett, once described by a Texas newspaper as “27 degrees right of Rush Limbaugh,” thought the death penalty was appropriate and effective.

During his 16 years as prison chaplain of the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, Pickett witnessed 95 executions by lethal injection. Like Pierrepoint, he was changed by his experience from capital punishment advocate to opponent.

Earlier coverage of the documentary and Carroll Pickett begins with this post.  His book is in the right-column Books section.

'Dallas DNA' Premieres Tomorrow

Jennifer Emily writes, "'Dallas DNA' spotlights county's conviction integrity unit," for today's Dallas Morning News.

Some Dallas County courtroom dramas are going prime time.

A new television show, Dallas DNA, focuses on the work of local prosecutors to free the wrongly convicted and ensure convictions are fair. It premieres Tuesday night on Investigation Discovery.

The program features men exonerated for crimes they did not commit, the trial of a man linked to a rape and murder by DNA two decades later and people who claim innocence but are shown through genetic testing to have committed crimes. It also features Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins' ambivalence about capital punishment even as he participated in a death penalty case.

"I think a lot of people thought we were just concerned with the innocence side," Watkins said. "But you get to see the integrity side where we see how we're concerned with how our convictions are obtained."

Investigation Discovery will air six episodes of Dallas DNA on consecutive Tuesdays. Depending on response to the show, more episodes could be ordered.

The conviction integrity unit was formed after Watkins took office in January 2007 in response to the county's DNA exonerations. So far 19 men have been exonerated. That's more than any other county in the nation since 2001, when Texas began allowing post-conviction DNA testing.

Christo Doyle, executive producer of Dallas DNA, said Investigation Discovery was drawn to the "revolutionary" work of the conviction integrity unit.

"What I like most about this series is that every case is very unique," Doyle said. "The strength of the series is the variety."

Doyle said although he cannot pick a favorite episode, he is most drawn to the first, called "Sweet Justice." That episode features Johnnie Lindsey, who spent 26 years in prison for a sexual assault he did not commit.

"After you see him exonerated after 26 years, you literally see him coming to life," Doyle said.

The program's website is here.  Earlier coverage of the program is here.

Dallas DNA

Kevin Johnson writes, "Reality show on DNA exoneration stirs ethics issues," for USA Today.

For the first time, reality TV will explore the growing use of DNA evidence to exonerate the wrongly convicted, in a series that is raising ethical questions before its first episode airs this month.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has assisted in the release of 10 wrongly convicted men since taking office in 2007, says the goal of Dallas DNA, scheduled for launch on Investigation Discovery on cable April 28, is to "make justice better by showing the good, the bad and the ugly."

Some legal analysts say the series could exploit the suffering of victims — including the wrongly convicted — in the name of entertainment.

"I'd find that very troubling," says Rob Warden, executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions. "I wholeheartedly favor calling attention to the innocence movement, and I'm delighted with what Craig Watkins has done while in office, but there are ethical obstacles that have to be negotiated very carefully."

Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel to the Innocence Project of Texas, says the show is a vehicle to boost Watkins' political career.

Watkins denies that the series poses ethical risks or that he was motivated by politics. He says the public needs to see how the process works. "At the end of the day, it will build better trust," he says.

Investigation Discovery, part of Discovery Communications, focused on Texas because Dallas County has had more convicts exonerated after DNA testing than any county in the nation.

Since 2001, 19 people there have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, including some who served more than two decades in prison. Nationally, there have been 235 post-conviction DNA exonerations since 1989, according to the Innocence Project, a New York City-based group that uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted.

"When you are talking about a person's personal freedom, there are no higher stakes," says Clark Bunting, president of Discovery's emerging networks. "This is shining a light in a dark corner."

Bunting and Christo Doyle, Dallas DNA's executive producer, say the series avoided ethical problems by letting Watkins view "rough cuts" of the six-part series in advance. If he felt the content breached attorney-client privilege, jeopardized pending cases or violated other legal rules, that material was cut, Bunting says.

Watkins says cameras and network employees were barred from meetings in which the district attorney and staffers decide whether to pursue the death penalty. Watkins has been reviewing about 40 death penalty convictions.

The first episode features the September exoneration of Johnnie Lindsey, 56, who was convicted in a 1981 rape case and spent 26 years in prison.

'Blecker' Deftly Stands Alone On Both Sides Of Death Penalty

That's the title of Hank Stuever's review of, "Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead," in the Washington Post.  LINK

"Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead" wants to be a documentary about the vast amount of wiggle room between being for the death penalty and being against it. And it fascinatingly is that. But on a deeper level (and a skillfully conscious one on the part of filmmaker Ted Schillinger) it's a portrait of two men's utter loneliness in their thoughts.

Blecker, a New York Law School professor, supports the death penalty on such a contrary and nuanced level -- he calls himself an "emotional retributivist" -- that it has set him apart from both sides of the debate and a large swath of the legal realm. Blecker's work has turned him into a lovably raving, single-minded gadfly who has the sole consolation of knowing he's right. Even his teaching assistant seems baffled by him.

The other person in the film, Daryl Holton, is lonely in a much more direct and despicable way: He was on death row in Tennessee, for shooting and killing his four young children in 1997. From the night of his arrest up to his final appeal, he expressed no remorse for the murders, and steadfastly insisted that he killed his children because he feared his ex-wife was bringing them up in an environment that would ruin their futures (a housing project). Holton tried to represent himself at trial, the film tells us, and resisted his public defenders' attempts to overturn his death sentence and stay his execution. (Spoiler alert: These are past-tense verbs, which should not prevent enjoyment of this film. Which is to say Holton was executed in September 2007.)

To better hone his argument that the death penalty is appropriate for "the worst of the worst," Blecker has a habit of visiting and interviewing death row inmates in various state pens, engaging them on their own feelings of remorse to search for what he feels is a subjective yet reliable way to administer the death penalty. No surprise, these convicted murderers can't really hold up their end of an academic inquiry.

Then Blecker met Holton in January 2006. The two began an impassioned and highly intellectual exchange (in person and in letters) about Holton's exact rationale for killing his children. Schillinger's camera comes along midway through what appears to be a deeply frustrating friendship. (Blecker refuses to call Holton a friend. "What can I say, I want you dead," he tells Holton on one visit. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Holton responds.)

For all his evil, Holton is God's gift to Blecker -- articulate, humorous, an arch correspondent, and all too willing to die. (Willing, it seems, until he files his own 13-page appeal to the Supreme Court at the 11th hour; Blecker reacts to this with a heartbroken sense of betrayal.)

Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

An Advocate of Killing Killers Learns From One

That's the title of Jeremy Peters' article on the new documentary, "Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead."  LINK

A LEFTY, bleeding-heart academic Robert Blecker is not. His writings include “Vote No!,” a play that suggests the ratification of the Constitution was not quite the proud moment in American history that we are taught to believe. But Mr. Blecker is best known for his loud and passionate defense of the death penalty, in legal meditations like “Killing Them Softly,” a stance that has made him something of an outlier in the academy.

A new documentary that opened on Friday at Cinema Village in Greenwich Village, “Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead,” is something of an outlier as well. It devotes itself to probing Mr. Blecker and his deeply held view that society has an obligation to execute its most coldblooded killers if it truly aspires to carry out justice. By examining the case for capital punishment, Ted Schillinger, the film’s director, wades into territory largely ignored in the documentaries and feature films that have examined the subject.

That Mr. Schillinger, a former producer of the “American Justice” series on A&E and avowed opponent of capital punishment, does not try to knock down Mr. Blecker’s arguments makes the film all the more of an anomaly in a field that includes recent indictments of the death penalty like “The Execution of Wanda Jean” and “Deadline.” This film’s unconventional approach is the product of two most unconventional relationships: one between Mr. Blecker and Mr. Schillinger and another between Mr. Blecker and Daryl Holton, a man executed by Tennessee in 2007 for killing four young children.

Initially Mr. Blecker asked the company that produced the film, Atlas Media, to help him make a documentary about punishment in the American criminal justice system. Atlas, which concentrates on documentaries for cable television networks including History and Discovery, declined, telling Mr. Blecker that it would rather make a film about him. Atlas then introduced Mr. Blecker to Mr. Schillinger, with whom it had made a History documentary called “American Eats,” a history of American cuisine. “Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead,” which is also scheduled to open in Washington on March 13, is Mr. Schillinger’s first theatrical release.

When the two men first met, Mr. Schillinger said, he assumed he had found a subject for the film who would allow him to examine the death penalty in fairly cut-and-dried terms. But Mr. Schillinger quickly discovered that the issue is far too emotionally fraught for any quick, clean explanation.

Mr. Holton, who gathered his three sons, ages 6 to 12, and their 4-year-old half sister in a garage and shot them at close range in 1997, is the type of murderer who capital punishment advocates feel makes their case. He confessed to the crime, which prosecutors described as an act of revenge on his former wife for not allowing him to see the children. His doubtless guilt and the monstrous nature of the killings seemed to rebut even the most thoughtful arguments against capital punishment. Mr. Holton said himself that he should be executed and largely resisted his lawyers’ attempts to file appeals.

“I told him I wanted him to die, and do — that he deserved it,” Mr. Blecker says at one point in the film. “It’s overtly emotional. That is, I want him dead. That comes from my gut. I want him dead.”

But that gut reaction ended up inverting itself during the two-year period that Mr. Blecker and Mr. Holton came to know each other. And that gave Mr. Schillinger a remarkable opportunity to examine the death penalty in all its emotional complexity.

Execution Chronicles

Renu Nahata contacted me about the Execution Chronicles website, promoting a new documentary with the same name.  Execution Chronicles examines hate crimes around the globe.  It focuses on the case of Texas death row inmate Mark Stroman.  In the wake of 9/11, Stroman committed a string of hate crimes against people he believed to be "Arabs."

Texas was home to one of the most horrific hate crimes in modern times, the dragging death of James Byrd a decade ago in Jasper; more, here.

At the Death House Door an Oscar Contender

The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, entertainment industry journals, are reporting today that the acclaimed IFC documentary is on the short list of documentaries that will be considered for an Academy Award.  "Oscar Watch: Documentary, " is THR's report.

Of the 15 features the Academy's documentary branch members are now being asked to screen over the holiday season, approximately 10 could be described as social-issue films, with varying degrees of didactic intent. Even within that category, there's tremendous variety: "Fuel" (Greenlight Theatrical/Intention Media) a grassroots-marketed film about the biodiesel movement, has little in common with "Standard Operating Procedure," 2004 Oscar winner Errol Morris' ruminative exploration for Sony Pictures Classics of the Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse photographs. (Whatever one makes of Morris' films, they certainly don't lack for artisanship.) Neither of those bears any similarity to Zeitgeist Films' "Trouble the Water," a rip-roaring, rough-and-ready Sundance Award winner about a poor African-American couple surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.

One can further divide the issue-oriented flicks into those that seem especially geared to the moment, in the vein of a recent Oscar winner featuring a former vice president, and those that tackle documentary perennials like the death penalty (IFC's "At the Death House Door" from the "Hoop Dreams" (1994) team of Peter Gilbert and Steve James) or the Holocaust (Balcony Releasing's "Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh").

Variety looks at six of the short-listed films, including this profile of At the Death House Door.

DIRECTORS: Peter Gilbert and Steve James previously collaborated on "Hoop Dreams" and "Stevie."

SUBJECT: Texas death-row chaplain Carroll Pickett, who presided over 95 executions, questions his belief in capital punishment after ministering to Carlos De Luna, one of his charges who was put to death for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.

FINANCING: Approximately $850,000 funded by IFC.

DISTRIB: Doc played in Los Angeles and New York in March and ran on IFC in May.

HELMER COMMENTS: "We were first approached about doing a film about Carlos De Luna ... but when we heard about Pastor Pickett's life journey, we felt that's where the true heart of the story lay," James says. "Pickett's transformation from a death-penalty supporter to being against it was a long, complicated and compelling story."

Says Gilbert, "What helped us decide to move forward was that we had extremely compelling personal stories to tell. We also felt strongly that we could expose the audience to a different view of the death penalty through the eyes of the people who truly witnessed and participated in them."

Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

Rev. Carroll Pickett: The Evolution of a Death Penalty Opponent

That's the title of an interview with Carroll Pickett on the Dallas Morning News editorial page.  LINK

For 15 years, the Rev. Carroll Pickett was a witness to state-sanctioned death. As a prison chaplain in Hunstville, he presided over 95 executions. After each one, Mr. Pickett recorded his thoughts on tape. The documentary At the Death House Door chronicles his anguish as he eventually concludes that some of the men he led to death were innocent.    

Dallas Morning News editorial writer Colleen McCain Nelson interviewed Mr. Pickett via e-mail this week:

After each execution, you recorded a tape about what you had seen.  What purpose did that serve?    

Living alone at the time that I started executions in 1982, I came home after the first, and I had to talk. ... I decided to talk to a machine and get it all out. It helped make a traumatic experience a little more bearable.

You spent time with inmates during their final hours. Did they confess their crimes? Proclaim their innocence?    

Yes, and more. There were many who did not commit the crime, and their innocence was the basic topic for the entire day and night. These were difficult since I knew some of them were not the people who pulled the triggers. Some were victims of the law of parties. Some were fully innocent.

When did doubts about capital punishment begin to creep into your thoughts?    

Maybe it was the first [execution]. But it became very real with one of the first [executions of someone who] did not pull the trigger. ...Then, I began to visit with families of the victims who found no closure. ... It was not a deterrent to anyone except the one who was executed.

Was there a pivotal moment that changed your mind about the death penalty?    

No, it was a period of growth. But I watched a young man die who called me "Daddy." I knew that he was innocent, and another inmate in another unit bragged about doing the murder. My inmate took the fall. That was a strong factor.

Do you believe that you saw innocent men executed?    

Absolutely. If a man is killed for just being [at the scene of a crime], to me, he was innocent. And others did not commit the crimes. Others just didn't have the means, the money, or the legal system to help them.

Earlier coverage of Carroll Pickett and his appearance in the documentary, "At the Death House Door," begins with this post.

Death Penalty Denies Sacredness of Life

That's the title of an essay by Kendra McKinney posted at the United Methodist Church's United Board of Church & Society website.  LINK  Here are two brief excerpts.  The post also references the documentary, "At the Death House Door."

By taking another’s life, what message do we send about the value of life?

When I think about the death penalty and everything that surrounds it, I am reminded of the Genesis story of Cain and Abel. Out of anger, Cain murders his brother, Abel. After this fatal act, God asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And Cain answers, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

I ask a similar question today: Have we kept our brothers, our sisters?

By allowing the death penalty in our judicial system, are we doing our best in being responsible for those in our community? Are we holding them to be accountable in such a way that fosters life enhancement and spiritual and physical rehabilitation? I say no.

And:

My question is before you: Will we keep our brothers, our sisters? It still remains to be answered.

If we do not keep them, they will not be kept. Will we seek to abolish a system that disables humans from being reconciled unto God and achieving rehabilitation?

The United Methodist Church places a high value on life. It is sacred. The denomination’s Social Principles states: We believe all human life is sacred and created by God and therefore, we must see all human life as significant and valuable. When governments implement the death penalty (capital punishment), then the life of the convicted person is devalued and all possibility of change in that person’s life ends. (¶164 [G]).

As a faith community we must educate ourselves and join in the movement to reclaim the sacredness of life.

At the Death House Door

The highly acclaimed documentary, "At the Death House Door," premieres tonight on cable channel IFC at 9:00 pm (EDT), 8:00 pm (CDT.)  There are lots of reviews today.

In the Houston Chronicle, Eric Harrison reports, "Quiet death penalty activist goes public."

Carroll Pickett is an unlikely activist against the death penalty. The retired Presbyterian pastor is 74, soft-spoken and gentle of spirit. A native Texan, he grew up in a conservative household, the grandson of a murder victim.

He grew up believing in the death penalty. The deaths of two of his parishioners in a 1974 riot at the state prison in Huntsville did nothing to soften his disposition toward criminals. Pickett, then the pastor of a church in Huntsville, said yes when he was asked in 1979 to become chaplain at the Walls Unit, ministering to death row inmates in their final hours.

That was the beginning of what Pickett, who retired from the prison in 1995 and now lives outside Houston, calls the "process." Gradually, he came to believe the system is unfair and that innocent people have died, sometimes painfully, in "botched executions."

We get to know Pickett in At the Death House Door, a sobering documentary that airs tonight on IFC.

The Boston Globe has, "Documentary listens in 'At the Death House Door'."

The Los Angeles Times has, "'At the Death House Door' on Independent Film Channel."

The New York Daily News has, "Chaplain found grave issues on death row."

The Philadelphia Inquirer has, "Jonathan Storm: Witness to death sentences."

The Washington Post has, "The Convicted and Conflicted 'At the Death House Door'."

Variety has, "At the Death House Door."

Earlier coverage is here.  Carroll Pickett's memoir, Within These Walls, is available in the right-colum Books section.

NYT on 'At the Death House Door'

"His Life With the Deaths That the State Carried Out," is the title of Felicia Lee's review of the documentary, "At the Death House Door," in Tuesday's New York Times.  The documentary premieres Thursday on cable channel IFC. 

A lonely field of concrete crosses, engraved with dates and numbers and surrounded by weeds, is the first thing a viewer sees in the film “At the Death House Door.” Some of the graves in that field belong to inmates who were executed by the state at the prison in Huntsville, Tex.

Walking tenderly among those crosses is the Rev. Carroll Pickett, the laconic, soft-spoken prison chaplain for 15 years and witness to 95 executions. The documentary, which will be shown Thursday night on the Independent Film Channel, reveals that Mr. Pickett, a 74-year-old Presbyterian minister, was anguished by his job, and that he finally concluded that the death penalty served neither justice nor morality. He says he believes that some of the men he helped lead to death were innocent.

“After each execution I made a tape on everybody that I walked with to the death chamber,” Mr. Pickett says early in the film as the camera trains on his office, full of boxes of cassette tapes. “I knew I had to talk to somebody, and the only thing in my house at that time was a tape recorder.”

Of all those executions, he was most haunted by that of Carlos De Luna, convicted of stabbing to death a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi, Tex., in 1983. Mr. De Luna asked if he could call the minister Daddy on the day in 1989 when, at 27, he was executed despite his protestations of innocence. Two reporters for The Chicago Tribune wrote a series of articles in 2006 that made a case that Mr. De Luna was wrongfully convicted. Mr. Pickett said he believes that Mr. De Luna was innocent, and the minister’s relationship with the condemned man is a focus of the film.

Steve James and Peter Gilbert, the director and cinematographer of the 1994 high school basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” are the co-directors of “At the Death House Door,” which they hope will renew debate about the death penalty.

Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

 

At IFC

Next Thursday, May 29th, the documentary "At the Death House Door" premieres on the cable channel IFC.  You can view the trailer and clips from the documentary at the link.

At IFC.com you can view a somewhat satirical examination of the death penalty.  It's part of a series of UnCut 2008 Political Panels IFC is posting.

Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

Fresh Air Interview With Carroll Pickett

Yesterday, while I was traveling from Albany, Terry Gross interviewed Carroll Pickett on her WHYY program Fresh Air.  You can listen to the interview here.

Reverend Carroll Pickett was the death-house chaplain at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas for 13 years. During his tenure, he ministered to 95 inmates executed by lethal injection.

Because he was employed by the state, Pickett was unable to voice his disapproval of capitol punishment while performing his ministry. But he has become an opponent of the death penalty since leaving the prison system.

Carroll Pickett's memoir, Within These Walls, is available in the left-column Books section.  He is featured in the documentary, "At the Death House Door."  More on the documentary is here.

More Coverage of 'At the Death House Door'

At the Washington Post's On God blog, Claire Hoffman interviews Steve James, one of the filmmakers behind the documentary, "The Struggles of a Minister of Death."                

I had breakfast a few weeks ago with acclaimed documentary filmmaker Steve James whose work includes "Hoop Dreams" and one of my favorites, "Stevie". James and Peter Gilbert have a new film out, "At the Death House Door" that examines the journey of a Presbyterian minister Carroll Pickett who spent 15 years as chaplain at the infamous Huntsville, Texas, prison where he bore witness to 95 executions.

After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of that fateful day.  (Here's a review in the Chicago Tribune). The film sort of sneaks under your skin as it follows Pickett's struggles and transformation from a pro-death penalty preacher to a very isolated being trying to reconcile his faith and feelings to his role in these deaths.

It opens this week and actually there's a screening in D.C. tonight at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theater with a discussion afterward with the filmmakers as well as Rev. Pickett so this is nicely if a bit belatedly timed. Check it out.

In North Carolina, the Raleigh News & Observer's Titan Barksdale reports, "Death penalty documentary drives pleas for more scrutiny."

Rep. Rick Glazier and others called on leaders across the country Wednesday to scrutinize the death penalty and its application to help prevent executing innocent inmates.

Glazier, a Cumberland Democrat, spoke in the legislative auditorium as part of a panel that included legal scholars, a filmmaker, a minister and a Chicago Tribune investigative journalist. The discussion stemmed from the national premiere of a documentary, "At the Death House Door."

The film, co-directed by Peter Gilbert and Steve James, is set in Texas and explores the effects of the death penalty on those closest to the process -- mainly the condemned inmates and a death row chaplain who was responsible for comforting them before the execution.

"Many victims are created when one man is put to death," Gilbert said.

Two themes quickly emerged during the discussion: the effect of race on criminal cases and wrongful convictions.

On Wednesday, Glazier wore a button encouraging people to "Support the Racial Justice Act." Co-sponsor for that legislation, he said that race can not be ignored as factor in convictions.

Carroll Picket's memoir, Within These Walls, is available under Books in the right-column.  Earlier coverage is in the documentary index.

I had breakfast a few weeks ago with acclaimed documentary filmmaker Steve James whose work includes "Hoop Dreams" and one of my favorites, "Stevie". James and Peter Gilbert have a new film out, "At the Death House Door" that examines the journey of a Presbyterian minister Carroll Pickett who spent 15 years as chaplain at the infamous Huntsville, Texas, prison where he bore witness to 95 executions.

After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of that fateful day.  (Here's a review in the Chicago Tribune). The film sort of sneaks under your skin as it follows Pickett's struggles and transformation from a pro-death penalty preacher to a very isolated being trying to reconcile his faith and feelings to his role in these deaths.

It opens this week and actually there's a screening in D.C. tonight at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theater with a discussion afterward with the filmmakers as well as Rev. Pickett so this is nicely if a bit belatedly timed. Check it out.

In North Carolina, the Raleigh News & Observer's Titan Barksdale reports, "Death penalty documentary drives pleas for more scrutiny."

Rep. Rick Glazier and others called on leaders across the country Wednesday to scrutinize the death penalty and its application to help prevent executing innocent inmates.

Glazier, a Cumberland Democrat, spoke in the legislative auditorium as part of a panel that included legal scholars, a filmmaker, a minister and a Chicago Tribune investigative journalist. The discussion stemmed from the national premiere of a documentary, "At the Death House Door."

The film, co-directed by Peter Gilbert and Steve James, is set in Texas and explores the effects of the death penalty on those closest to the process -- mainly the condemned inmates and a death row chaplain who was responsible for comforting them before the execution.

"Many victims are created when one man is put to death," Gilbert said.

Two themes quickly emerged during the discussion: the effect of race on criminal cases and wrongful convictions.

On Wednesday, Glazier wore a button encouraging people to "Support the Racial Justice Act." Co-sponsor for that legislation, he said that race can not be ignored as factor in convictions.

Carroll Picket's memoir, Within These Walls, is available under Books in the right-column.  Earlier coverage is in the documentary index.

Another Outstanding Review of 'At the Death House Door'

Cathleen Falsani writes, "The Most Spiritually Film You'll See This Year," about the IFC-produced documentary, At the Death House Door.  Thanks to the always observant Scott Taylor for forwarding this.

Some conversions take a lifetime.

For the Rev. Carroll "Bud" Pickett, it took 95.

Pickett, a Presbyterian minister, was the death house chaplain at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, where, from 1982 to 1995, he accompanied 95 inmates to their executions.

"Even to this day, I don't understand how I got where I am," Pickett says in the first moments "At the Death House Door," a feature-length documentary that premiered at the South By Southwest Film festival in Austin, Texas in March. "I never intended to do 95. In fact, I never intended to do one. But it happened."

"At the Death House Door," directed by Chicago filmmakers Steven James and Peter Gilbert (part of the team that made 1994's award-winning "Hoop Dreams"), tells Pickett's journey from staunch death-penalty supporter to passionate advocate against capital punishment.

At the Death House Door airs Thursday, May 29 on (cable channel) IFC at 9 p.m. (EDT), 8 p.m. (CDT.)

Coverage of a special hearing held at the Texas State Capitol in connection with the documentary is here.  The documentary index includes a number of posts about the film.

Carroll Pickett's memoir Within These Walls is available in the right-column Books section.

TCADP is hosting a series of Texas screenings.  More information is here.

May 6 at 7 pm 
Austin
First Unitarian Universalist Church, Howson Hall
4700 Grover Ave

May 8 at 7 pm
Austin - Cedar Park
Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church
3315 El Salido Parkway, Cedar Park

May 9 at 7 pm
Wimberley
Wimberley Community Center, RR 12 and River Road

May 9 at 7 pm
Houston
Rice University Media Center

May 13 at 6:30 pm
Austin
St. Austin's Catholic Church, Hecker Hall
2026 Guadalupe

May 16 at 7 pm
Austin
Friends Meeting of Austin
3701 E Martin Luther King

Death and the Chaplain

That's the title of a Q and A with Carroll Pickett, the retired TDCJ Chaplain featured in the documentary At the Death House Door.  The interview was conducted by Kiko Martinez.  LINK

The year after you retired, rules were changed at the prison to allow close friends and family of the victim to witness the execution. What were your thoughts on this new policy?

  Before they started legally, there were many times when I had the family of the inmate that was going to be executed in one place and the family of the victim in another place. We would have to sneak one family in one way and the other family another. I think if they’re looking for closure, they’re not going to get it. Watching somebody get killed isn’t pleasant.

His memoir, Within These Walls, is available under Books in the right-column.  Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

More on Carroll Pickett and 'At the Death House Door'

John Moritz reports, "Minister decries death penalty as 'unjust'," in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

On nearly 100 occasions spanning 15 years, it fell to the Rev. Carroll Pickett to provide whatever comfort he could summon to Texas prison inmates in the hours before their death.

He did not visit them on their sickbeds or after traumatic injury. Instead, he met them in the holding cell just 10 steps from the execution chamber in Huntsville and stayed by their side while they were given the drugs that would end their lives.

At the outset, when Pickett walked alongside Fort Worth killer Charlie Brooks to the first-ever execution by lethal injection in 1982, the Presbyterian minister believed he would witness the proper administration of justice. But by the time he accompanied Ronald Keith Allridge, another condemned inmate from Fort Worth, to the executioner's gurney a decade and a half later, Carroll was dispirited, disillusioned and convinced he was playing a part in a series of state-sanctioned murders.

"In the beginning, I favored the death penalty," said Carroll, 75, in a telephone interview from his home near Lake Conroe. "I'm from Texas, and Texans are supposed to be in favor of it. But the more I saw of it, the more I began to see it as unjust and dishonest. I came to believe that we were executing people who were innocent and other people who really didn't need to be executed."

Pickett, who retired as chaplain of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 1995 but still preaches and performs weddings, said he was chagrined by Wednesday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that lethal injection did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

And he is the central figure in the upcoming film At the Death House Door. The documentary will be telecast by the Independent Film Channel on May 29, but has been shown at several recent film festivals, including South by Southwest in Austin where it premiered last month.

His memoir, Within These Walls, is available under Books in the right-column.  Earlier coverage of the documentary is here.

A Special Invitation to Screen At the Death House Door

I participated in the planning of last week's Perspectives at the Death House Door held at the Texas State Capitol.  IFC, the producer of the documentary, has asked me to let readers know of a special invitation to hold a screening of the documentary for your organization or for colleagues.  Here's more on their offer:

We have developed free “Screening in a Box” kits which have all the tools necessary to organize a screening in your area.  Kits contain: Invitations for the screening including postage

Promotional posters Event planning/discussion guide Snack voucher Customizable press release Sample letter to the editor Postcard to promote tune-in for the film premiere on IFC in May 

We designed the kits to help make the events turn-key and easy for you to plan and host.  We hope the kits will help you generate further discussion and debate about the death penalty in your area, and we invite you to use the screenings as educational tools to expand your membership, grow your organization, generate media attention, or accomplish any other organizational goal you have. 

While the kits are free, they are very valuable, and we want to ensure we find partners who will be motivated and responsible hosts.  We are seeking partners who will promote the screening to their membership and community, and will organize events for 50 or more people.  If you are interested, please complete the attached request form and return it to us no later than March 14th.  We have a limited number of kits available.

If you would like to take advantage of this offer, e-mail me, and I will put you in contact with IFC.

 

At the Death House Door

The Chicago Sun-Times examines the IFC documentary and the journey of Carroll Pickett in, "Filmmakers follow chaplain's journey on death penalty."  It's written by the paper's religion columnist, Cathleen Falsani.

Some conversions take a lifetime.    For the Rev. Carroll "Bud" Pickett, it took 95.

Pickett, a Presbyterian minister, was the death-house chaplain at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, where, from 1982 to 1995, he accompanied 95 inmates to their executions.

"Even to this day, I don't understand how I got where I am," Pickett says in "At the Death House Door," a documentary that premiered this week at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. "I never intended to do 95. In fact, I never intended to do one. But it happened."

"At the Death House Door," directed by Chicago filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert (part of the team that made 1994's award-winning "Hoop Dreams"), tells Pickett's journey from staunch death-penalty supporter to passionate advocate against capital punishment.

The first turning point in Pickett's spiritual evolution came in December 1989, when 27-year-old Carlos De Luna was put to death for the 1983 stabbing death of Wanda Lopez, a gas-station attendant in Corpus Christi, Texas. Pickett says he was disturbed by De Luna's execution at the time and believes the state of Texas killed an innocent man.

"At the Death House Door" also follows an investigation of the De Luna case by two Chicago Tribune reporters, Steve Mills and Maurice Possley (who is my husband). In a June 2006 series, the Tribune concluded that a preponderance of new evidence indicated another man -- Carlos Hernandez -- killed Lopez and that De Luna was innocent, a claim he maintained until his last breath.

Earlier coverage is here.

At the Death House Door

The new documentary will be showcased in a special hearing at the Texas State Capitol on Wednesday, March 5, from 1:00 - 2:45 p.m.  It's being sponsored by UT Law's Capital Punishment Clinic and IFC, producer of the documentary.  The event will be held in E1.016, one of the Senate hearing rooms in the Capitol Extension.

The public is invited.  Here more from the announcement:

Legal experts, elected officials and religious leaders will convene at the State Capitol to discuss the issues surrounding the death penalty including wrongful convictions, lethal injection, the role of religion in the death penalty, and the impact of executions on those closest to the process.   

Exclusive clips from the Independent Film Channel’s new documentary At the Death House Door will frame each discussion.  Slated to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, At the Death House Door tells the story of Carroll Pickett who served as chaplain for the Texas Department of Corrections from 1982-1995 and counseled 95 inmates on their way to execution by lethal injection.  The film’s Directors, Steve James and Peter Gilbert, also directed the highly acclaimed films Hoop Dreams and Stevie.

Panelists will include:

Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis
Craig Watkins, Dallas County District Attorney
Carroll Pickett¸ Texas Death Row chaplain, featured in “At the Death House Door”
Award Winning Filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, Kartemquin Films
Award winning Chicago Tribune Journalists Maurice Possley and Steve Mills
Ginger Anders, Co-Counsel in the Supreme Court case addressing the legality of lethal injection
David Oshinsky, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and UT Professor
Rob Owen, Clinical Professor, UT School of Law; Counsel in Supreme Court cases Tennard, Cole, & Brewer

An earlier post, with more of the documentary, is here.  I'll update as more details become available.