User Reviews

Capital Punishment is such a primitive and savage activity, it's a wonder any practitioner or supporter is considered house-trained.

To say that I'd been 'looking forward' to Werner Hertzog's film would give the wrong impression. I can say that I'd been anticipating watching it with interest for several months and it, so far, has been excellent, if disturbing.

The cruel and unusual torture involved in Death Row is made very clear in the first episode. It's, to me, evident, that, even if the man being interviewed had committed the murders, and done them in cold blood, rather than when out of his mind, the 17 years of torture he has been forced to suffer has more than covered any punishment he deserved.

Jeremy Bentham observed that punishment should always be in proportion to the suffering that the crime caused, it is hugely unjust, and wicked to punish with many times over the amount of pain and suffering caused. It is criminally uncivilised that the authorities have been unable to see this and have persisted in treating this man in such an ghastly, horrific and savage manner, for such an interminably long time.

Of course, Herzog is not naïve. He's chosen a very unusual inmate to make the case. Not only is the inmate articulate, sensitive, mainly rational, and intelligent (though not always sensible, as is made clear!), but he's white (most people executed in the US are black), and was convicted as an adult - and there's some doubt (supported by the Supreme Court) of his guilt. I supposed Herzog looked for a similarly white, articulate, possibly guiltless, murderess, but was unable to find one. I think that this is all quite fair - if people are such moral imbeciles as to think such torture and execution acceptable, then any means of persuasion is legitimate (even if, ultimately, unlikely to succeed). After all, it is wrong to execute anybody, not just wrong to murder, judicially, people like us... Alhough one wonders a bit about mass-murderers of the Mao, Pol Pot, Tony Blair, George Bush, Stalin variety - the question of punishment for causing such massive pain, suffering, mutilation and death is more difficult in the cases of such extreme monsters, it is still true that it would be wrong to torture and execute them - after all, stringing Mussolini from a lamppost hasn't done anything to deter murderous fascists since then..

The film also makes a good case for the profound depth of the depravity of executioners. Is it possible to imagine any human activity more depraved than operating a human slaughter- house? Particularly one attached to torture chambers that mete out incessant, cruel treatment, over decades, against human beings. Even soldiers have the merit of arguing that their victims can, sometimes, fight back. At least DIY home murderers can argue that they seldom, even prolific serial killers, manage to kill 200+ people a year, and that they do it for passion, or serious money - not just 'extra pay'.

Most of the individuals interviewed claim their innocence in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Being locked up in Death Row, you have so much time on your hands that you begin to believe it. I felt zero sympathy for any of the prisoners, but I do t believe in the death penalty.

Texas seems to think it's got to keep a steady flow of executions going though I don't see where it is a deterrent to a crime.

Lastly, I watched this in May of 2023. I won't reveal names, but a couple of them were executed just recently as well as another died following an illness.

All in all there are to winners.