USA – Death on Trial
27’ 35”
Rodeo. Bronco riders | Music | 00:00 |
| SIMKIN: Six seconds can feel like an eternity when your life is on the line. Twice a year, the United States’ biggest maximum-security prison opens its doors to the public. The convicts become cowboys. | 00:15 |
| They’re some of the toughest and meanest men in the country – armed robbers, rapists, murderers – and they’re providing family entertainment. | 00:36 |
Poker game | The most popular event is convict poker. | 00:52 |
Bronco gores poker players | The last man sitting wins the prize. Prisoners are often injured sometimes killed, but the rodeo ring isn’t the most dangerous place in the gaol. | 00:58 |
Execution room | That honour belongs to a small, non-descript room a kilometre away. | 01:12 |
| Music | 01:17 |
| SIMKIN: Lethal injection is the United States’ preferred mode of execution. The prisoner is strapped down, the tubes are attached and the chemicals injected. | 01:24 |
Simkin with Burl at gaol | BURL CAIN: They’re good citizens. They’ve just proven it’s good citizens is what it’s all about. | 01:43 |
| SIMKIN: The current warden participated in six executions. BURL CAIN: [Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary] One of those inmates asked me, well will you hold my hand, | 01:48 |
Burl. Super: | so I’ll be connected to this earth while I’m reaching up to Jesus you know, and going to heaven and I said well sure. So that’s how I went up holding four of them’s hand before they died, and then that’s a pretty profound thing to do, so. | 01:54 |
Execution room | SIMKIN: Is it personally difficult to be in that room and watch someone die? | 02:11 |
| BURL CAIN: No. It was the first time and I wouldn’t talk to the preacher the next day, because I realised I just killed that guy and I didn’t say anything to him about his soul and I just carried him in the room and we just laid him on the table and strapped him down. | 02:15 |
Burl | And two minutes later I looked there -- well actually about four and a half minutes later -- and there he was, dead. And I just said, man, you just killed that guy. You didn’t say nothing to him, you didn’t say anything to him, you just did it. | 02:28 |
Razor wire/Inmates exercise | Music | 02:38 |
Inmates in cells | SIMKIN: There are 88 inmates on the prison’s death row waiting for their date with the warden and the executioner. | 02:53 |
| BURL CAIN: I just get the warrant in the mail. When I get the warrant then I do the execution. If I don’t get the warrant I don’t do it. | 03:01 |
Burl | And the law of the land is that we do have executions, but then we have to be really, really, really cautious and careful that we really, really, really don’t execute an innocent person. | 03:07 |
Ernest with boats on trailers | SIMKIN: In some parts of the US the prosecutors aren’t cautious or careful enough. Ernest Willis spent seventeen years on death row waiting to die for a crime he didn’t commit. | 03:21 |
Ernest driving | He came within two days of being executed. | 03:40 |
| ERNEST WILLIS: Oh, they ask if you want a black suit or a blue suit. They ask you what you want for your last meal. When you come, I think it’s three days, | 03:42 |
Ernest. Super: | off your execution, they put you in what they call a death watch cell. | 03:54 |
Warden in gaol | They don’t want you to commit suicide or something like that and cheat them out of being able to kill you. That’s what it amounts to. | 03:59 |
| Music | 04:08 |
Ernest driving | SIMKIN: These days, Ernest Willis hauls boats from one side of the country to the other. It’s a chance to catch up with the world that passed him by. | 04:15 |
Ernest pulls into driveway | His journey to death row began twenty-two years ago when he arrived at his cousin’s house in West Texas. During the night the house caught fire, | 04:31 |
Burning house | Willis and his cousin got out, but two women didn’t. The police suspected arson and they charged Ernest Willis with murder. There was no witness, no motive and no forensic evidence, but the defendant was convicted and sent to death row. | 04:40 |
Newspaper article | ERNEST WILLIS: [Former death row prisoner] And the first two years I was there, I was a real angry person and | 04:57 |
Ernest. Super: | I knew that if I didn’t put the anger out you know it would just eat me alive. You know, there ain’t no way I could have spent seventeen years on Texas death row full of hate and hating everybody, you know? | 05:03 |
Boats | What good does it do to hate? You know, move on with your life. SIMKIN: He did move on with his life, finding romance in an unlikely place. | 05:20 |
Ernest and Verilyn walk in dock | As Willis waited to die, he met Verilyn Harbin, the sister of another man on death row. They fell in love and got married, although they weren’t allowed to touch. VERILYN WILLIS: I witnessed my brother being executed at six o’clock | 05:29 |
Verilyn. Super: | one evening and went back to the prison unit at eight o’clock the next morning to visit Ernie for four more hours, and it was very hard to walk back in that gate. | 05:43 |
New York Office building | Music | 05:57 |
Jim in office | SIMKIN: Another person entered Willis’ life and had an equally dramatic impact on it. Jim Blank was a first year solicitor at a big New York law firm. Even though he had no experience in criminal law, he took on the Willis appeals for free. | 06:03 |
| JIM BLANK: [Lawyer, Latham & Watkins] Well, I mean it was an unbelievable miscarriage of justice | 06:17 |
Jim. Super: | that was the result of a convergence of a lot of bad things happening all at once to a person who was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time. |
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Jim looks at files | SIMKIN: Blank discovered the prosecution suppressed evidence that would have helped the defence, and he found these shocking prison medical records. They revealed Willis was secretly drugged during the trial. He didn’t have a mental problem, but was repeatedly given powerful anti psychotic drugs. | 06:34 |
| JIM BLANK: He was being given massive, massive doses of these drugs, two or three times the recommended amount in the recommended daily | 06:51 |
Jim | dosage for someone who would be diagnosed as really psychotic. | 07:00 |
Ernest. Super: | ERNEST WILLIS: And I sat there, you know I didn’t even know what was going on. I couldn’t participate and help my attorneys or anything else. | 07:06 |
Pills superimposed over Ernest’s face | SIMKIN: The drugs turned the defendant into a zombie and the prosecutor played up the lack of emotion, telling the jury Willis was a cold-hearted satanic demon, a monster from a horror film with cold fish eyes and a dead pan, insensitive expressionless face. | 07:14 |
| JIM BLANK: My view is, is that it was deliberate, in that somebody knew what they were doing | 07:34 |
Jim | and that there was, on the part of the state, a recognition that they had a weak case. | 07:39 |
Photos of fire | SIMKIN: Blank found arson experts who repudiated the prosecution’s theories and he discovered an axe | 07:44 |
Police photos of David Long | murderer, David Long, had admitted starting the fire. JIM BLANK: David Long had a motive for the fire. He knew Billie Willis, Ernest Willis’ cousin who was one of the inhabitants of the house. He had a grudge out for him. They were doing | 07:50 |
Jim | drug deals together. He knew exactly how to get there. He described how he got there, how he drove there, how long it took him, the exact roads that he took to get there. | 07:04 |
Ernest smoking on porch | SIMKIN: Despite all the evidence of innocence, the top Texas court refused to release Ernest Willis. Finally a Federal Judge said enough. | 08:17 |
Ernest and Verilyn watch video | REPORTER: [Archive footage of release] Did you think this day would ever come? | 08:26 |
| ERNEST: [Archive footage of release] I knew it would come eventually. SIMKIN: Willis walked | 08:28 |
| free and into the arms of his wife. It was the first time they’d touched. | 08:30 |
| REPORTER: [Archive footage of release] Are you angry? Are you bitter? ERNEST: [Archive footage of release] No, I’m not bitter. I think what goes around comes around to people that knew I was innocent to start with, but they’ll get theirs. | 08:37 |
Verilyn and Ernest | VERILYN WILLIS: He got out on our wedding anniversary. | 08:50 |
Video footage of release | ERNEST: There was a car coming, she ran across the highway and I was coming down the stairs and we met and someone said that we embraced for like fifty, fifty seven seconds or something like that. | 08:53 |
Simkin driving to Virginia | Music | 09:08 |
| SIMKIN: Texas executes more people than any other state. Virginia is second. I drove there to get a very different, but equally personal perspective on the death penalty. | 09:13 |
Jerry at basketball game | <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | 09:23 |
| In the State capital Richmond, Jerry Givens is indulging his love of sport. Like Ernest Willis, he spent seventeen years on death row – but not as a prisoner – as an executioner. He killed sixty-two people. | 09:31 |
Jerry. Super: | JERRY GIVENS: [Former executioner] I had to transform myself from a correctional officer or a churchgoer, and become an executioner on the day of an execution. Sometimes it takes weeks to prepare, and some time it takes weeks and months to come down off that. I never put on a hood to disguise myself. I never felt that I could do that because that’s being a coward to put on a hood and don’t nobody know exactly who you was. | 09:50 |
Church coir | Music | 10:27 |
Jerry singing | SIMKIN: Jerry Givens defies the stereotypes. | 10:32 |
| Singing | 10:34 |
| SIMKIN: He’s warm and gentle and sings in the church choir on Sundays. | 10:41 |
| Singing | 10:45 |
| SIMKIN: He prays he didn’t execute someone like Ernest Willis. JERRY GIVENS: If I come to find | 10:50 |
Jerry. Super: | out that some of them people were really innocent, I don’t think I’d never forget and I think they would come back and really, really put a deep scar on me. | 10:54 |
Gaol interior. Death row cells | Music | 11:04 |
| SIMKIN: More than ninety wrongly convicted people have been released from death row over the last two decades. In some states exonerations are outnumbering executions, shaking America’s confidence in the death penalty. | 11:07 |
Protestors at Supreme Court | Protestor sings | 11:21 |
SIMKIN: A small group of protestors is outside the Supreme Court in Washington. | 11:26 | |
| Protestor sings | 11:31 |
| SIMKIN: A former warden says the men he helped kill haunt his dreams. RON McANDREW: [Former warden] The death penalty | 11:39 |
Ron at microphone. Super: | is the dirtiest, filthiest thing that we do in this country today. It’s got to be stopped. | 11:44 |
| SIMKIN: Most Americans still support capital punishment. | 11:53 |
Woman handing out flyers | WOMAN PROTESTOR: [Handing out flyers to people walking on street] If we’re to see the end of the death penalty would you like some information? WOMAN WALKING DOWN STREET: No, I believe in it. | 11:56 |
| SIMKIN: The number of death sentences and executions have fallen dramatically. | 12:02 |
Jonathan scrubs up | Music | 12:08 |
Jonathan in surgery | SIMKIN: The exonerations aren’t the only factor. Serious questions are being raised about the method of execution and a new group of unlikely activists is emerging – doctors. | 12:18 |
| JONATHAN GRONER: [Surgeon] Well, lethal injection is a charade. It is not humane. It may look civilised, but it’s not civilised. | 12:30 |
| SIMKIN: Lethal injection is usually portrayed as being like an operation. The prisoner is put to sleep in the same way a patient is anaesthetised. | 12:40 |
| Jonathan Groner disputes that. He’s a surgeon in Ohio, although his views don’t necessarily reflect his hospital’s. The doctor thinks some prisoners are being tortured to death. | 12:50 |
Jonathan. Super: | JONATHAN GRONER: If the drugs don’t go in correctly, it is possible that they can suffer excruciating pain. | 13:04 |
| SIMKIN: These are people convicted of terrible crimes, they’ve often inflicted terrible pain on their victims, why should they be entitled to a painless death? | 13:10 |
Jonathan. Super: | JONATHAN GRONER: It’s a great question and certainly, I mean the people who founded our country decided that we would not have the retributive or retaliation sort of justice system. That was actually fairly common at the time our country was formed. The standard that had to be met is the cruel and unusual standard, and it doesn’t matter how heinous the crime committed by the inmate or the defendant is, you still have to meet that standard in terms of punishment. | 13:19 |
Jonathan with lethal injection kit | SIMKIN: The States keep the machinery of death secret but some details are known. Dr Groner explained the process. | 13:49 |
| JONATHON GRONER: They actually insert this into the vein and once the blood fills this, they then slide this in. | 13:57 |
| SIMKIN: Once the needle is inserted, a three drug cocktail is used to kill the prisoner. | 14:04 |
| JONATHAN GRONER: The first drug is supposed to -- supposed to -- render the inmate comatose. The second drug paralyses all muscle and that includes breathing muscles and then the third drug, potassium chloride, in a high concentration, causes cardiac arrest. | 14:09 |
Execution room | SIMKIN: The second drug is medically unnecessary, but it stops the prisoner thrashing about and upsetting onlookers. Paralysed prisoners can’t show their suffering though -- the so-called silent scream. And if the anaesthetic is too weak or wears off, the suffering is intense. | 14:23 |
Jonathan. Super: | JONATHAN GRONER: Some either suffocate awake, because the second drug paralyses the breathing muscles or, you know, basically feels the burning sensation of the potassium going through the veins until the heart stops, which is also extremely painful. | 14:41 |
Execution room | So I mean killing someone it turns out to be a fairly painful proposition unless it’s done in some way that instantaneously, you know, severs the nerves to the brain and of course we haven’t used that since the French Revolution. | 14:53 |
Simkin driving to Ohio | [Radio] | 15:06 |
| SIMKIN: We drove south to the place where theory becomes reality. Ohio’s death house is an hour and a half from the hospital. At least two executions were horribly botched here. | 15:12 |
Prison | The most recent one involved Christopher Newton who killed a cellmate after a game of chess. | 15:27 |
Simkin to camera | The execution team took so long to get a needle into one of Newton’s veins, he was allowed to get up and go to the toilet. A typical execution lasts about fifteen minutes, this one took two hours. A year earlier there’d been a similar problem here, during the execution of Joseph Clark. | 15:34 |
Joseph Clark | Then it took twenty minutes to find a vein and when the chemicals finally started flowing, Clark lifted his head and said, ‘It don’t work, it don’t work’. | 15:49 |
Execution room. Curtain pulled across | The officials closed the curtain while they reinserted the tubes and reinjected the chemicals. MICHAEL MANNING: [Execution witness] Then we started hearing moaning and groaning real bad | 16:01 |
Michael. Super: | like somebody’s back there doing something to him that we don’t know. I mean this was real bad moaning and groaning. You could tell he was in pain and this happened for a good twenty, twenty five, maybe even thirty minutes. | 16:10 |
Local TV archive report | SIMKIN: For Michael Manning the execution was personal. Joseph Clark murdered his brother. It happened during a petrol station hold up in 1984. Clark took sixty dollars and David Manning’s life. | 16:25 |
Clark. Super: | JOSEPH CLARK: I just pulled the trigger and it shot and it hit him in the chest and I seen him fall backwards and that was the last thing I seen. I ran out. | 16:42 |
Michael Manning by river | SIMKIN: The victim’s brother still supports the death penalty. He wanted to see the killer killed, but not like this. It took an hour and a half for Clark to die. | 16:51 |
Michael Manning. Super: Michael Manning | MICHAEL MANNING: His head would come up, tongue out, back down, tongue back in…. like he was gasping for air. | 17:02 |
Simkin | SIMKIN: So what were you thinking and feeling as you watched this happening to the man who killed your brother? | 17:09 |
Michael Manning | MICHAEL MANNING: I was thinking you know there has to be a better way, there has to be definitely a better way because I’m watching this man get tortured and our 8th, our 8th Amendment says that there’s no cruel and unusual punishment and I’m watching it before me. | 17:14 |
Lawyer with court document | LAWYER: This is a copy of the law suit. SIMKIN: The execution affected Michael Manning so much | 17:29 |
Michael with lawyer | he’s now helping a local lawyer get compensation for Joseph Clark’s family. | 17:34 |
Manning by lake | Manning’s decision outraged his family. MICHAEL MANNING: Even my wife, who is not totally against me but she says, you know, this is what he deserved | 17:44 |
Michael Manning. Super: Michael Manning | and no, a terrible death is not what somebody deserves. I feel strongly on that and I’ll take that to my grave. | 17:53 |
Parade | Music | 18:04 |
| SIMKIN: The debacles aren’t limited to Ohio. It’s a national problem and an international embarrassment. In Florida, the city of Gainesville is honouring its football team, the Gators. The State’s death chamber isn’t far from here. Eduardo Arenas witnessed an execution there, an execution where the prisoner wouldn’t die. | 18:14 |
Eduardo. Super: | EDUARDO ARENAS: [Execution witness] I mean it was difficult. It still is you know? It’s something that you carry with you. There’s no getting rid of that moment in your life. | 18:47 |
Eduardo playing guitar | SIMKIN: When he’s not playing in a band, Eduardo Arenas is an interpreter. | 19:01 |
Photo of Angel Diaz | He was summoned to the gaol to translate the death warrant of Angel Diaz a Spanish speaker. EDUARDO ARENAS: He was smoking his last cigarettes, very calm, very kind of resigned to his fate. | 19:07 |
Eduardo | I guess one of the things that really struck me is how catered the event was. As soon as I showed up there was a conference room full of sandwich platters and shrimp cocktails and sodas and cookies and, you know, general hors d’oeuvres for everyone. | 19:20 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: The warden made Eduardo Arenas stay for the execution. He watched in horror as Angel Diaz took more than half an hour to die. The executioners had to inject the drugs twice and the sedative didn’t work. EDUARDO ARENAS: He was definitely grimacing and gasping for air. First he’s calm | 19:38 |
Eduardo. Super: | looking up and then he’s like, you could hear him say something like you know what’s happening? What’s wrong? What’s wrong? And gasping for air. | 19:56 |
| SIMKIN: Did it look like he was in pain? | 20:04 |
| EDUARDO ARENAS: Yeah, yeah there were several incidents there was definitely pain in his expression. | 20:07 |
Simkin with Jonathan in office | JONATHAN GRONER: I this man was tortured to death. | 20:15 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: Dr Groner. Obtained the Diaz autopsy results. | 20:17 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | They reveal large chemical burns on the prisoner’s arms. JONATHAN GRONER: Well, when you look at this on the right arm he describes, you know, a twelve by five inch area and it’s skin blistering and swelling. | 20:20 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: The execution team inserted the needles incorrectly. The drugs flowed into the prisoner’s flesh, not his bloodstream, ensuring a long and probably agonising death. JONATHAN GRONER: Sodium Panthenol under the skin is very basic alkaline and apparently is extremely painful. | 20:35 |
Jonathan. Super: | So one can only imagine this highly concentrated dose, how much it would burn if the patient wasn’t deeply unconscious. So I mean the irony is that, you know, we no longer burn people at the stake and here we are sort of, you know, burning someone at the stake again, you know? I mean he basically had a Joan of Arc style execution. | 20:49 |
Jonathan in operating theatre | SIMKIN: It’s not surprising mistakes are made. Even medical professionals sometimes struggle to get needles into veins. Doctor Groner and his team are highly qualified and experienced but execution teams aren’t. They usually don’t include a doctor or a nurse, so people with no medical training perform complex procedures. | 21:08 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | JONATHAN GRONER: You know, many of the prison guards are burdened with the responsibility of doing some of these medical things and it’s really not fair to them. I mean if they were charged with doing the execution, they’d probably have a better success rate if they just formed a firing squad. | 21:30 |
Washington protestors | <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | 21:45 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: Those concerns about the efficacy and legality of lethal injection made their way all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s preparing to rule on the issue and all executions are on hold until it does. | 21:54 |
Rushford. Super: | MICHAEL RUSHFORD: I think that it’s to our advantage to be as humane as possible but frankly, as Charlie Bronson said, when you’ve got rats in the cellar you kill them, and there’s just no reason for the American public not to be able to see its worst murderers put down. | 22:07 |
Rushford puts out American flag | SIMKIN: Michael Rushford heads the legal lobby group dedicated to victim’s rights. He wrote a brief for the Supreme Court case arguing in favour of lethal injection. | 22:23 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | MICHAEL RUSHFORD: You know, the idea that you get ten times the amount of panthenol that I got to have my wisdom teeth pulled out and you’re not going to be pain free for | 22:32 |
Rushford. Super: | half an hour is just facetious and that’s what we’re giving these murderers, ten times the pain reliever needed for open heart surgery. They’re going to be asleep if the needle goes into the vein. | 22:39 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: If it’s done properly. | 22:51 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | MICHAEL RUSHFORD: Yeah and that’s the real hang up here, is that it is a quasi medical procedure and so maybe we ought to have retired nurses or military medics who put the needles in all day long, maybe we ought to have them do it. | 22:52 |
Warden pulls curtain on injection room | SIMKIN: Executions are usually shrouded in secrecy but a recent court case gave a chilling glimpse of what really goes on behind the curtain. Missouri’s executioner testified anonymously. | 23:05 |
Simkin to camera | This is a transcript. It reveals that in Missouri, prison guards and wardens inject the deadly chemicals in the dark, working by flashlight. It’s probably the first time any of them have picked up a syringe, the executioner says. Now the executioner does have a medical background, but he doesn’t follow any written guidelines during the execution, he improvises and routinely gives the prisoners a lower than recommended dose of sedative. He acknowledges having problems with some of the drugs. ‘I’m dyslexic’, the executioner says ‘so it’s not unusual for me to make mistakes.’ | 23:16 |
Jerry at basketball game | Each state with the death penalty keeps its executioner’s identity secret. You could sit next to Jerry Givens at the basketball and never know he was a state sanctioned killer. Jerry Givens no longer works in a prison and no longer believes in the death penalty, but he doesn’t understand the debate over painless executions. JERRY GIVENS: Why are you worrying about whether | 23:49 |
Jerry. Super: | he’s suffering or not? You know how much pain are they going through is irrelevant. The death itself is the issue. | 24:18 |
Jerry shows photo of electric chair | SIMKIN: Jerry Givens used both lethal injection and the electric chair to execute inmates. | 24:32 |
Jerry with photo | JERRY GIVENS: With that much electricity going through your body, it’s going to fry the inside, your body tissues. It should cook. | 24:37 |
Jerry shows photo of electric chair | SIMKIN: Sometimes prisoners caught fire. These days Virginia only uses lethal injection. | 24:47 |
Simkin | What do you think is more humane, the electric chair or lethal injection? JERRY GIVENS: I say the electric chair. | 24:53 |
Jerry | It’s faster and just like I always say, it’s just like cutting a light off and on. SIMKIN: Even though people’s heads can catch fire and blood can burst from the bodies. | 24:59 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | JERRY GIVENS: Yeah but with that amount of electricity going through your body, you’re not going to feel nothing. | 25:11 |
Electric chair | Music | 25:15 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: There’s no doubt most of the condemned committed horrible crimes, but are | 25:20 |
Inmates walk | they entitled to a painless death? | 25:24 |
Burl driving past inmates working | For warden Burl Cain they’re not academic questions, they’re personal and professional. Louisiana’s State Penitentiary is nicknamed ‘the farm’. It used to be a plantation and some vestiges remain. | 25:32 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | BURL CAIN: Ninety per cent of the inmates here have life sentences. Ninety per cent is going to die here. All I have is murderers, rapists, armed robbers or habitual felons, so one out of every two you see here has killed somebody. | 25:51 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | SIMKIN: One of those killers threw a little boy into a boiling bath. | 26:01 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | BURL CAIN: And every time he’d try to stick his head up out of that scalding water, he hit him on the head | 26:06 |
Burl. Super: | with a screwdriver and he pushed him under that water and he kept that till he killed him, till he drowned him in the scalding water. He turned red like he was bald and he lay him out and then, and he’s an animal but then he goes to church and he wants to say I’m religious and then don’t execute me. And you have to think if that was your little boy, what do you want to happen to that man? | 26:09 |
Burl with Simkin in gaol | SIMKIN: Burl Cain hasn’t executed anyone for six years. In that time, three of his death row inmates have been exonerated and released. | 26:31 |
‘Bishop’ Tanniehill | BURL CAIN: This is ‘Bishop’ Tanniehill he’s probably the longest inmate that’s been here. He’s been here over fifty years. SIMKIN: Eugene Tanniehill beat a man to death. | 26:43 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | He received a life sentence and found God. Louisiana Pardon Board just recommended his release. ‘Bishop’ as he’s known, is going to New York to work with street kids. | 26:51 |
Execution room | 27:02 | |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | 27:05 | |
Rodeo | Death is on trial and more than three thousand condemned prisoners have an intimate stake in the verdict. | 27:19 |
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> | Music | 27:26 |
Credits | Reporter: Mark Simkin Camera: Dan Sweetapple Tim Bates Research: Janet E Silver | 27:35 |
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