The death penalty in the United States is as old as the country itself, with roots to the original European settlements. During this time over 15,000 men and women have been executed, eventually spurring a heated debate about this ultimate punishment. Featuring interviews and commentary from leading criminal and sociology experts, this documentary takes an inside look at the origins of America's capital punishment laws, the methods of execution, and the faces of evil who have received the death sentence including Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and John Wayne Gacy. Also get a glimpse into the prison cells and lives of those who await their fate on Death Row.
This documentary takes the "Innocent Man on Texas Death Row" tale to a dark corner feared by all - - proving that an innocent man has been executed by the State. A clash between good and evil strikes up on the High Plains of Texas when Johnny Frank Garrett, a 17 year old retarded boy is arrested, convicted and ultimately executed for the Halloween night rape, mutilation and murder of Sister Tadea Benz. The 76 year old nun was attacked while she slept in her room at the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo, Texas. Garrett claimed his innocence from the time of his arrest until his dying breath. Sixteen years after Garrett's execution new evidence rose up from the cold case grave of the Amarillo Police Department proving they executed the wrong man! During interviews with key players the case of Johnny Frank Garrett unfolds like a recipe for executing the innocent.
A lonely Singaporean death row guard tries to help a young Australian convicted of drug trafficking accept her fate despite a bizarre contradiction - he is her executioner.
"Satanism Unmasked" investigates the supernatural influence Satanism, witchcraft, and Dungeons & Dragons.
Devil worship? Could it be real?
Follow up to Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground.
Jeffrey Ferguson has been on death row for 26 years. Now he has just one hour left before he is put to death. Would you forgive the man who killed your daughter?
Documentary covering the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black nationalist and journalist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer and sentenced to death in a trial marked by controversial prosecutorial and defense tactics and charges of racism.
Look into the personal lives of women currently awaiting execution on Death Row. Though each woman is convicted of committing society's ultimate crime, there is often another side of the story.
American composer Jake Heggie’s compelling masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, arrives in cinemas in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Tony and Emmy Award–winner Terrence McNally. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Helen Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother.
Melissa Lucio was the first Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas. For ten years she has been awaiting her fate, and now faces her last appeal.
In China more people are on death row than the rest of the world combined. The children of the convicts are often left alone, stigmatized and living in the streets. Grandma Zhang, as the kids call her, is a former prison guard who has founded an orphanage in Nanzhao.
Sonny and Dub once shared a cell. Now Sonny is a free man, but Dub is on death row and sentenced to be executed in a matter of days. As Sonny comes to visit Dub one last time, Dub has one last dying request for Sonny.
Today's the day the Missouri madman Otis Boyle finally gets executed. The Warden and his Captain of the Guards, York, have been looking forward to this for years, but they could never have prepared themselves for his last request. As Warden insists upon fulfilling their most notorious inmate's twisted demand in the name of "tradition" and "protocol," York struggles to keep up in order to keep his job -- no matter how much it asks of him.
The film chronicles the life and revolutionary times of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Explores the realities of death-row inmates inside Huntsville (Texas) Unit, a prison with the highest number of executions in 1997. Features interviews with prisoners, guards, officials, lawyers and victims' family members.
After interviewing a convicted killer, a reporter becomes obsessed with his mesmerizing subject. When his life is threatened, he comes to his senses, but it may be too late to save his family.
Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
Geraldo Rivera investigates allegations of a widespread Satanic underground in the United States.