00:04
Hank Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas for 19 years. There are still doubts over his guilt.
00:16
Hank Skinner (Death Row Inmate)
(English) I am very tired. This has taken a lot out of me. I've spent 19 years here for something I didn't do and there's no way in hell I can explain to you in one hour what I've been through.
00:24
Patrick Bearup has spent the last 11 years on death row in Arizona.
00:38
Patrick Bearup (Death Row Inmate)
(English) Just sadness. I mean, It's not anger. It's just... you know. I hate to be blunt but it sucks. I mean, like, that's the best analogy I could say.
00:54
Anthony Graves was held on death row in Texas for 18 years before finally being found innocent.
1:03
Antony Graves (Former Death Row Inmate)
(English) So if you think hell is your worst of your worst nightmares, then that's what I lived. Your worst of worst nightmares. For 6,640 days.
1:13
They have an expression around here: "Don't mess with Texas". More people are executed each year in the Lone Star State than any other in the USA, with as many as 70% of Texans avowing support for capital punishment. It's an eye for an eye in the Deep South.
1:31
This is death row in Livingston. Those imprisoned here wait an average of 10 years before they can appeal their sentence. It costs the taxpayer in the region of 2 million dollars per convict - far more costly than life imprisonment.
1:44
Hank Skinner is alleged to have killed three people. For 19 years he has lived in isolation in a cell measuring 7 square meters. In Switzerland, solitary confinement is permitted only as a disciplinary measure. Many inmates end up committing suicide, others die while still inside. According to Hank, it's torture in slow motion.
2:11
Hank Skinner (Death Row Inmate)
(English) You can hear people crying in the night here - guys cry here all the time. It's... It's difficult to watch people die over and over and over without having some kind of feeling about it. You know what I'm saying? And it's hard on you. And... and then sometimes you get selfish and you think, ‘Well, it was better him than me', and then you feel guilty for thinking something like that about somebody that you cared something about.
2:32
So why is the death penalty still used? In the US, a convicted murderer may be imprisoned until their death, without chance of parole.
2:40
The spokeswoman for the Houston Prosecutor's Office says that for most victims' relatives, a life sentence would not be sufficient punishment. Sentences, they say, should be harsher.
2:53
Sara Marie Kinney, Spokeswoman, Houston Prosecutor's Office
(English) They enjoy taking a deep breath. They enjoy, you know, being allowed to read, being allowed to go outside for an hour a day and exercise. There are plenty of people who think that the death row - in itself - shouldn't exist; that if you are found guilty of murder, you should be taken out back and hung at the, you know, closest tree.
3:12
The Huntsville Unit. On this gurney, the state disposes of those deemed incurable monsters in the eyes of the law by means of lethal injection. Behind the glass on the right: the relatives of the victim. On the left: those of the condemned.
3:23
Three years ago, Hank Skinner sat in this cell just minutes from death.
3:38
Hank Skinner (Death Row Inmate)
(English) So I'm thinking, ‘That's it, it's a wrap, it's over with, I'm dead', you know? And so I told my daughter, I said, ‘After they kill me', I said, ‘I want you to go to the bar and get drunk, and every other shot of tequila - ‘this one's for dad'.
3:50
13 minutes before the lethal injection was to be administered, the warden received a phone call from the Supreme Court. There was to be no execution. Insufficient DNA evidence had let Hank off the hook, 17 years after the crime he is supposed to have perpetrated.
4:05
It was on New Year's Eve 1993: Hank's girlfriend and her two sons were found brutally murdered at home, with Hank passed-out drunk on the sofa. He has always maintained his innocence, but a neighbour claims he confessed to the crime. The Jury was unanimous, and Hank was sentenced to death.
4:33
Hank Skinner (Death Row Inmate)
(English) She has recanted her testimony fully and said that he forced her to lie. He told her that if she didn't say that, he was going to charge her as being an accessory, take her kids away from her, and put her in a penitentiary for the rest of her life. He's under enormous pressure, and so he's thinking about getting elected next year - ‘I gotta convict somebody, it might as well be him.'
4:50
Allegations of blackmail and witness interference are vehemently denied by the U.S. Department of Justice. But, as a renowned legal expert on capital punishment explains, this is the sad reality in the south of the country.
5:08
Mike Kimerer (lawyer)
(English) What you have are some prosecutors that basically just cheat, lie, and steal. They'll hide evidence. They'll know it's there, but they know if that evidence comes out they're not gonna win their case. They just assume everybody's guilty. We have a system where you're supposed to be presumed innocent. Quite frankly, when somebody gets charged here, they're pretty presumed guilty.
5:25
In Phoenix, Arizona, death row inmate number 136226 no longer wants to live. His wife has filed for divorce.
5:41
Patrick Bearup, death row prisoner
(English) There's a stigma to, uh... her being married to me. And there's a lot of people who give her grief over it. And that's why I chose to give up, because it made more sense to me to just get executed.
6:04
Patrick is not innocent. A former neo-Nazi, he has committed serious acts of violence.
6:09
 Lower Trailing scene 6:09 to 6:17
He watched as two fellow skinheads killed another gang-member, before cutting off the victim's finger. The prosecutor made a deal with the two murderers before the case was tried: in exchange for information, they were given long prison sentences. Of the three, only one ended up on death row: Patrick.
6:31
(Reporter) Were you offered a deal by the prosecutor?
6:34
Patrick Bearup, death row prisoner
(English) Never.
6:36
Mike Kimerer (lawyer)
(English) Yeah, that's totally the prosecutor's discretion to make that decision.
6:40
What do you think of that?
6:46
I think it gives too much power to the prosecutors. You've diminished the power of the judges because they don't have control over sentencing. Prosecutors control it by plea-bargaining. And in many ways that's what our system's evolved into: the prosecutor has become the judge.
7:00
Today is Patrick's sanity hearing. The court will decide whether he can still be held accountable for his decisions, having elected not to appeal against the death penalty. His parents have traveled for six days by car from Alaska in order to attend.
7:19
 Lower Adele and Tom Bearup, parents of condemned inmate, 7.20
7:20
(English) This is the closest I've been to my son in ten years, in a room... To almost touch... They didn't even let us touch him when he got sentenced. They... So it's been ten years since I put my hand on him and said, ‘Son, I love you, I'm praying for you and I'm there for you'. Today was, like, joy to be in the same room with him.
7:37
(Reporter) Miss Blomo, I'm wondering - how can it be that Patrick Bearup, who didn't commit the murder, gets the death penalty, and the murderers get prison sentences? And one will be free in three years?
7:49
Susanne Blomo representing the prosecution.
(English) I can't discuss a pending case, I'm sorry.
(Reporter) But that has already been decided, right?
I can't discuss a pending case.
(Reporter) Is the death penalty a lethal lottery?
8:07
  Lower, Sara Marie Kinney. Spokeswoman, Houston Prosecutor's Office 8:07 to 8:11
(Reporter) Do you see the danger that the death penalty can be a lethal lottery?
Uh, certainly it can be. Somebody could make that argument, yes.
(Reporter) But then it's, I mean... It should be abolished, then, if you...
Well I, I, I don't agree with that argument. I don't agree with it, and the majority of Texans don't agree with it. I feel it's just. I do.
8:25
Anthony Graves, an innocent civilian, was imprisoned for 18 years awaiting execution. Is this American justice?
8:38
  Lower Anthony Graves, Free Spoken, 8:40 to 8:45
8:40
(English) The State of Texas' intentions were to kill me. You know, not only just to take two thirds of my life, but to kill me. So yeah, uh, the whole punishment was to take something. And what the eye could see, they took from me. But there was a part of me that they just could never touch: that was my dignity, my soul, my spirit.
8:59
Graves's was another gruesome murder case. Three children, a teenager, and a grandmother were beaten to within an inch of their lives, and then shot. A man named Robert Carter was identified as the perpetrator, but the prosecutor suspected he had had an accomplice. Under pressure to name names, Carter accused a distant relative of Graves. Anthony was then arrested, and taken into custody.
9:27
(Police station footage of Anthony Graves) (English) Accomplice to murder? Me? Man, this... This a big mistake. Accomplice to murder!? I've never even shot a gun in my life! God! Am I dreaming or what, man?
9:41
Carter later admitted, several times, that Graves was innocent. The prosecutor was informed, but not the defence. And, critically, neither were the jury.
They went on to condemn Anthony Graves to death.
 
 Lower Anthony Graves, Free Spoken 09:58
9:57
(English) I've seen people stereotyping who see I'm a black man. I've seen eleven white Jews and one black man sit there and be convinced that this young black man - because of who he is in their minds - probably did this. Even though we don't have the evidence, he probably did this. That's how they convicted me.
10:13
Poor, and black: a twofold disadvantage in the American justice system. On a number of occasions, Graves's case was reviewed without considering any additional evidence. Only the Supreme Court noticed the blatant miscarriage of justice.
10:34
(Reporter) If somebody could have afforded to pay for a lawyer for you, it would have been different?
Graves
(English) Oh, of course! Money rules over here. Yeah. You know, we got a thing called ‘paid justice'.
10:43
And Anthony Graves is not an isolated case. Since 1976, 142 death sentences have been lifted. Combined with the number of prisoners executed, this amounts to a rate of error of 10%: one in every ten adjudged by the state to be punishable by death, is innocent.
11:00
  Lower, Sara Marie Kinney. Spokeswoman, Houston Prosecutor's Office 11:02 to 11:07
(Reporter) Doesn't that put the whole system into question?
I don't think so. I think it validates the system. I think it says, ‘We've got checks and balances in place, and they're working.
(Reporter) You took away, like, 20 years of the lives of death row inmates.
And if you can find a perfect system, we'll use it.
11:26
(Interview with Hank Skinner (Death Row Inmate))
(Reporter) How many percent chance do you give yourself to get out of here?
(English) I don't even think about that. If I... That would be what would drive me crazy.
11:31
For the parents of inmate Patrick Bearup, it was not enough that they should have to live in dread of their son's extermination by the state. They must now mourn the death of his younger brother, who recently committed suicide. The death penalty never simply ends one life.
11:51
Anthony Graves has received approximately one million dollars from the State of Texas in compensation, but no-one has officially apologised.
12:10
What happened to him could happen to anybody. And he has vowed to fight to the death against the draconian practice.



 Credit: 12:02 to 12:10
Report: Karin Bauer
Camera: Ben Shepherd
Editing: Ben Shepherd

Dur: 12:10

First Photo: TT barbed wire fence
Last photo: Man with Dog TT from behind while walking
Last words: "fight against the death penalty."
Freeze: from 12:25
Image to 12:35