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A recent statistical study of American capital appeals reveals a death penalty system `collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes.
The 1987 documentary, `Fourteen Days in May', was the result of an extraordinary permission that gave the BBC access to the last fourteen days in the life of a young black death row inmate, Edward Earl Johnson. Johnson was twenty-eight and had been sent to Parchman Penitentiary, Mississippi, at the age of eighteen to await death by lethal gas. He was a devout Christian. Don Cabana, governor of the prison, experienced a deep sense of conflict about his role in the execution and tried to make Johnson's final days more humane. The documentary begins with his powerfully worded warning to prison staff not to taunt the prisoner. Another early scene shows the execution team testing the gas chamber out on a rabbit. The rabbit leaps in violent contortions before expiring. An unhandcuffed Johnson is filmed helpfully assisting prison staff move his belongings closer to the place of execution. The documentary reveals how much many of the inmates and guards liked him.
Members of the prison staff appear doubtful about whether Johnson is guilty. On the day of the execution, the prison chaplain responds to the dreadful question, `You're saying that, in your opinion, an innocent man is going to go to the gas chamber tonight?' with the words, 'I believe that, yes sir'. The television crew were deeply moved by Johnson's selflessness and calm. Increasingly, they were appalled by the conviction that they were filming the last hours of an innocent man. Thirty minutes before the execution took place, they were obliged to leave. As they did so, the producer embraced Johnson on film.
Johnson asserts on the documentary, as he had always done, that his confession to the murder of a white police officer in 1979 was forced from him in deserted woodland where police threatened to shoot him. (Research conducted by Amnesty International indicates that confessions have been coerced by police officers in the United States.) The only eye-witness to the shooting initially cleared Johnson but later changed her statement to agree with his confession. Johnson came from a poor family and his representation at the trial was inadequate. Late...