In the Executioner's Shadow - by Annalise Cruz

For my event selection I chose to attend the film screening of “In The Executioners Shadow” on April 11, which also was followed by a discussion. I actually attended the event with a friend, who was going because of one of her professors in SOC, Maggie Stogner, who is also one of the filmmakers. It ended being a lot more interesting than I anticipated, and I found it useful to discuss for this assignment. The film tells the story of death row and other stories of people who have been affected by this. One story follows Jerry Givens, who conducted 60+ executions in the state of Virginia and discusses how he’s truly haunted by how close he came to executing an innocent man. The film also follows a Boston marathon bombing survivor, Karen Brassard, who was severely injured from the event and shows her deep moral conflict while she attends the trial.

The film was followed by a discussion Q&A with the the panelists being the main characters from the film, along with Dian Rust-Tierney, who is the executive director at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The panel and film were very enlightening, and it definitely challenged you as a viewer and listener to put yourself in their positions. For example, Karen Brassard, the woman who was a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombings, explained her reasoning for not wanting to put the bomber on death row was because he was merely a nineteen-year-old child. Which I thought was very brave of her to say and to view the situation in such an empathetic way. The film told this story very well, as it didn’t harp so much on the actual bombing itself, but rather gave the focus and the attention to the survivor and not the person on trial. Most people wouldn’t go as far to consider seeing past the ‘bad’ thing that they had done, but her strength was very inspiring. The same goes for the final story of the film, which told the story of Vicki and Syl Scheiber, who ultimately decided to not put the man responsible of raping and murdering their daughter on death row. Vicki Scheiber also took the empathetic route as Karen did, and she spoke about how she imagined being the family member of that man, and how they must feel about their son having done this. I thought panel discussion was a great addition to the film because we got to hear straight from them after the fact and they were very open to all questions and being open with their stories.

Overall this film did an excellent job of using storytelling to share and stress the importance of death row and the effects it can have. The film used storytelling to also educate, raise awareness and garner support for an issue that the filmmakers were passionate about.