prison

At The Death House Door (2008, Directors: Steve James and Peter Gilbert): Directors Steve James and Peter Gilbert won were nom­in­ated for an Oscar for their work together on Hoop Dreams in 1995, and I wouldn’t be at all sur­prised if their latest col­lab­or­a­tion isn’t recog­nized with at least a nom­in­a­tion at Oscar time next year. At the Death House Door intro­duces us to Reverend Carroll “Bud” Pickett, a retired Presbyterian min­ister in Huntsville, Texas. As he recounts, Huntsville used to be known for the rodeo, but over the past forty years or so, it’s become famous for all of its prisons. Reverend Pickett never intended to become a prison chap­lain, but that’s what he ended up doing. For 15 years during the 80s and 90s, he served as the “death house” chap­lain, the man with whom con­demned pris­oners spent their last day on earth. He would sit with them during the day, listen to whatever they wanted to say, eat their last meal with them, and, when the time came, just after mid­night, accom­pany them the short walk into the room where they would be strapped down and leth­ally injected. Reverend Pickett did this 95 times, and after each exe­cu­tion, he came home and recorded an audio cas­sette with his thoughts. Unable to share the pain of this min­istry with his family, and pre­vented by his hard Texas upbringing from crying freely, he poured his heart out for the tape recorder instead. Remarkably, with a few excep­tions, he had never listened to these tapes again after making them.

Meanwhile, Maury Possley and Steve Mills, a pair of invest­ig­ative reporters from the Chicago Tribune had begun writing a series about pos­sible cases of wrongful exe­cu­tion. One of the stories they uncovered was that of Carlos DeLuna, a young man from Corpus Christi, Texas, who was con­victed of the 1982 stabbing death of a gas sta­tion attendant. The police found him hiding under a truck shortly after the stabbing, and although he had no blood on him at all, and claimed inno­cence, he was arrested, tried, and con­victed. DeLuna main­tained his inno­cence and claimed that an acquaint­ance, Carlos Hernandez, was respons­ible for the killing, although no one, even his law­yers, listened. In 1989, he was executed at the young age of 27. Reverend Pickett was with him when he died, and des­pite claims that lethal injec­tion is quick and pain­less, he reported that DeLuna didn’t respond to the first drug, a sed­ative, and took 11 long minutes to die.

Possley and Mills visit with Pickett and dis­cover his archive of tapes. He tells them that of all the pris­oners he knew, DeLuna was the one that he was con­vinced was com­pletely inno­cent. Over the years, the strain of the job had nagged him, but espe­cially the notion that he was party to the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent man. Although he had been a strong pro­ponent of the death pen­alty when he started the job, after accom­pa­nying so many men to the death chamber, his opinion had com­pletely changed. Whether they were guilty or inno­cent, Pickett cher­ished the time spent with the men, even as it strained him to be so power­less over their fates.

We spend the majority of the film with Reverend Pickett, cer­tainly a fas­cin­ating char­acter, but there are some other char­ac­ters, including DeLuna’s sister Rose, who still lives with the guilt that she should have done more. Pickett also intro­duces us to a younger col­league who worked as a death house guard until the strain of working in an insti­tu­tional death factory drove him to a break­down. Texas has executed more pris­oners than any other state and it’s clear that cap­ital pun­ish­ment is not deter­ring anyone. Not only that, it’s cre­ating more vic­tims as we see the fam­ilies of pris­oners suffer. Worse, it dehu­man­izes everyone involved in the pro­cess, from the pris­oner him­self to the prison guards and chap­lains who work for the state.

In one chilling scene, the camera floats around the prison as Texas executes its 400th pris­oner. We watch from a dis­tance as the man’s family are allowed access into the prison for their last visit, and then we see the guards bringing out the man’s per­sonal effects in bags and dumping them out­side the gates like so much garbage. Soon the man’s body will be taken out in much the same way. It’s heartbreaking.

Even as he came to strongly dis­agree with cap­ital pun­ish­ment, Reverend Pickett con­tinued his min­istry to these con­demned men, firstly because he “wasn’t a quitter,” but more import­antly, because they needed a friend at this moment, someone who would be there right until the end, even as their fam­ilies were ban­ished. Sadly, he informs us that the Texas prison system recently changed the system. Instead of having 18 hours with the pris­oner, now they’re brought into the death house at 4:00pm, showered, fed, and then executed at 6:00pm. The chap­lain barely has time to say a few words. One won­ders if this change is meant to inflict even more pain on the pris­oner, denying them any mean­ingful human con­tact at all.

At the Death House Door is deeply med­it­ative, due in major part to the char­acter of Reverend Pickett, a man who has been indelibly marked by his work. It has made him ques­tion his politics, his opin­ions, even his faith. It has estranged him at times from his wife and his chil­dren. But he made these sac­ri­fices because he truly believes no one should die alone. Wherever you stand on the ques­tion of cap­ital pun­ish­ment, this film will make you think about the people we ask to do the unthinkable.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ectors Steve James and Peter Gilbert from after the screening:

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Duration: 16:25

Offical site of the film
IFC’s Screening Party Kit
Trailer

(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs08, capitalpunishment, christianity, deathpenalty, prison, texas

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