Deadline Reviews

Structured as a chronicle of the weeks leading up to Illinois Governor George Ryan's controversial decision to commute the sentences of 167 death row inmates, just two days before he was scheduled to leave office in January, 2003, this passionate documentary is really a coherent argument in favor of abolishing capitol punishment. Gov. Ryan was a long-time supporter of the death penalty — he even voted in 1977 in favor of having it reinstated in Illinois — but his confidence in the system was seriously shaken by a shocking incident. A group of Northwestern University journalism students working on a school project proved that mentally-challenged convicted murderer Anthony Porter could not have committed the crime for which he was sentenced to die. Porter's sentence was commuted just 50 hours before he was to be executed. The fact was that he was the third inmate proven innocent by students begged a very serious question: How many innocent women and men had already been executed? Startling reports in the Chicago Tribune by investigative journalists Maurice Possley and Steve Mills offered a disquieting conclusion: There was no way to ensure that no innocent person would ever be sentenced to die. Increasingly convinced not only that the system was inherently flawed, but that it was especially likely to disserve poor minorities whose fates where placed in the hands of lawyers ill-equipped to fight for their clients' lives, Ryan called a moratorium on all executions and assembled a non-partisan, blue-ribbon committee of prosecutors, defense attorneys and business people to help him decide what to do about the 167 inmates currently on Illinois' death row. Filmmakers Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson use this historic moment as an opportunity to revisit the reasoning behind the abolition of capital punishment, beginning with Furman vs. the State of Georgia, the landmark 1972 case that ended in the Supreme Court's decision that capital punishment was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore violated the U.S. Constitution. Interviews with activists, attorneys and correctional officers present a convincing case, but it's the testimonies of those most directly affected by death-penalty legislation that make the most convincing arguments. The voices of convicts whose lives were saved by Furman join the testimonies of other former death-row inmates exonerated of their crimes and members of victims' families who have organized to abolish capital punishment. The reasoning on both sides of the debate is by now all too familiar, but rarely has the argument against the death penalty been made so articulately, or so poignantly.