In the Executioner's Shadow - by Meaghan Sweeney

Earlier this month I attended the talk back surrounding the documentary “In the Executioner’s Shadow”, made by Maggie Stogner and American University, School of Communication Professor, Richard Stack. The documentary was about the injustices surrounding the death penalty in the United States. At this talk back, the audience got to see a small snippet of the official documentary and then we got to engage in conversation about the documentary. In this conversation we got to speak with four people who are featured in the documentary. The first person was Jerry Givens. He was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia. Givens had conducted 62 executions throughout his career. He could no longer have a career in this field when he found out that he had executed a man on death row that was later exonerated.

We then heard from a woman who was hospitalized with her husband and daughter after the terrorist attacks at the Boston Marathon, and a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered in her apartment while attending graduate school in Philadelphia. Finally, Diann Rust-Tierney was on the talk back panel. Rust-Tierney was the Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in 2004, the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project and has a lot of experience in criminal justice lobbying.

Each person on the panel went into detail about why they do not believe in the death penalty as a punishment. Each person spoke from their own personal experience with the death penalty. The most shocking was Vicki Schieber who chose not to put the killer of her daughter on death row. She shared that she did not put him on death row because he came from a good family and just got lost on the way. She put herself in the position of the killer’s family members and thought about how it could have easily been her son who was the one killing people. Karen Brassard shared that she didn’t want to put the Boston Bomber on death row because he was only nineteen years old. She said that although she believed he should pay for what he did, he was just a nineteen-year-old child.

This event used storytelling to its advantage. Like we have discussed in class, storytelling is one of the most beneficial ways to get people to believe in your movement or cause. It also adds credibility when you speak from experience, as everyone in the documentary and on the discussion panel did. Story telling in this case was used to raise support and awareness for the reasons why America should have a death penalty free justice system. By getting the general public on the cause, there is a better chance that future elections will include the topic of the death penalty on the ballot. This event created a strong argument for people who are anti-death penalty.

To find out more and watch the trailer for the documentary visit: http://intheexecutionersshadow.com