[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[soft twangy music]
♪ ♪
- In 2003, Texas was about to execute
its 300th inmate, Delma Banks.
- Texas is about to kill an innocent man.
- Many of us who'd followed his case
thought he was very likely innocent.
- Now, at this point, only the governor
or the United States Supreme Court
can stop that from happening
and stop Banks from becoming the 300th inmate
to be executed within the state of Texas.
- What I saw as an unfolding tragedy
created a kind of panic in me.
This was all happening just down the hill
from where I went to high school,
and I felt compelled to try to do something,
however likely futile.
I ended up just going there
and trying to capture the moment on film.
In the one spot designated for media and protesters,
I found myself talking to some people
and slowly realized it was his family.
- As much as I love him,
if I knew in my heart that he had done this,
you know what I would have told him?
I would've said, "Delma, I'm against the death penalty.
"But, you know, you're here.
"You're just gonna have to pay the price
'cause you took somebody else's life."
But that's not the case.
I'm saying what I'm saying because I know he's innocent.
- There were a lot of problems with this case.
No evidence really, no motive, guy with a clean record...
- Banks was tried and convicted
by an all-white jury.
- The jailhouse informant who testified that Delma
had privately confessed to the crime--
all the trappings of a wrongful conviction.
I'd always thought that if it were ever proven
that we'd executed an innocent person,
the public outcry would be so great
that it would probably mean the end of the death penalty
in our country.
When I lived here from 1970 to 1981,
the state of Texas did not execute a single prisoner.
Capital punishment was a thing of the past.
Now every execution I read or heard about
felt sort of personal to me.
[soft twangy music]
♪ ♪
What is it about hometowns
and the American consciousness,
stories of people coming to grips with hidden truths
or darker undercurrents they've come to realize
about the town they grew up in?
- I didn't do anything differently.
♪ ♪
- But this can't be one of those stories,
because Huntsville's darkest element
is right out in the open in the middle of town
emanating from the state's largest agency.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
The only question is to what degree
you even want to think about the nearly 1,000 people
that have been put to death behind these walls.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Rock and roll, hoochie koo ♪
- ♪ Rock and roll... ♪
- I've made three or four films
inspired by my time here-- mostly comedies.
[indistinct shouting]
- This is where the South begins.
This is life behind the pine curtain.
- I've touched on the East Texasness
of towns like Huntsville.
But outside a brief reference here or there,
I'd never directly taken on the notion
of criminal justice or prisons,
even though it looms large in my life.
In 2002, I went pretty far down the road in trying
to make a movie about two high-school football players
that end up on opposite sides of the prison bars
a year out of high school.
But it never got financed.
And then the next year, I found myself here,
just trying to record what was happening on this day
and not sure where it might lead to.
- No eyewitness.
Gun wasn't his.
The car they said he had stolen wasn't his.
And they took an ex-convict word
against my son, who had never been in trouble.
And the burden of proof was on the state's shoulder,
and they didn't prove it.
They fixing to execute my son.
- If they kill my father or if they let my father go,
you cannot take nothing away from him.
You see what I'm saying?
He is happy,
whether you lay him down and put him sleep--
'cause all you're doing, you're putting him to sleep.
He gonna wake up again.
You see what I'm saying?
So for all those who need to do what they need to do,
do what you need to do, and we pray for you all.
- It soon felt like one of the most intense
and dramatic things I'd ever been around,
a real-life version of the silent-movie scene
where someone is tied to the railroad tracks
as the locomotive approaches in the distance.
But in this case, the rescue could only come
from the Supreme Court.
But no one had heard anything.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
The executions are scheduled for 6:00,
and if there were to be a stay,
it would usually come in around 5:00 at the latest,
but it was now approaching 6:00,
and the pressure felt like it was doubling every minute.
- Robert Sparks, if you can hear us,
there's a bunch of us out here supporting you.
We know that what is happening tonight
is wrong.
We know that the state of Texas
has no right to execute anybody.
- God is the only one that can take our lives away.
[mellow country music]
♪ ♪
- When Larry Wright, my friend of almost three decades,
asked me to work on this, I agreed because I thought
it might be an opportunity to finally try to explore
and articulate some of my mixed feelings
about how the criminal justice system looms over my hometown.
I'm used to framing stories in fictional contexts,
but this one would be Larry dragging me
through my own life and history.
On the other hand, it would put me in closer contact
with the modern and growing Huntsville of the present,
allow me to see some folks I haven't seen in a while,
and introduce me to a number of other wonderful characters
that typify different aspects of life here.
We just kind of jumped in,
not knowing what we might find.
- One of the reasons we're here is that Texas,
you know, leads the nation in prisons, prisoners,
and growth of prisons and executions.
There's no other state that even comes close to that.
And the heart of the prison society
that Texas represents is Huntsville.
- It weighs over the town, for sure.
You know, like, if a fourth of the town's population
are incarcerated people who aren't free...
- Yeah. - That's a big chunk
of the population. - Right.
[upbeat country music]
- How many prisons are there in the Huntsville area?
- I think there are seven.
♪ ♪
On the left here, Goree Unit,
where my sister had her senior prom.
- Oh, your sister had her prom in the prison?
- At Goree Unit, yeah, at the women's prison.
When I first moved here, the vast majority
of the Texas prison system was in the area.
- There are so many prisons. - Yeah, everywhere you go.
At some point, you don't really even see it.
So, in the '90s, I think Huntsville was trying
to rebrand themselves... - Yeah.
- As not just the prison town but home of Sam Houston,
the George Washington of Texas.
If you look closely, it looks like
he's stepping out onto the highway here.
The scale of this thing is crazy.
- Well, it is crazy,
but on the other hand,
it's totally appropriate in some ways,
because Sam Houston really was the father of Texas.
♪ ♪
- In my movie "Dazed and Confused,"
that was where the Emporium was right there.
- Oh, really?
- The nightly cruise on Friday and Saturday nights
as a teenager was through the Sonic
and then the Emporium.
♪ ♪
I think the Texas tradition,
we accept eccentrics
and people doing-- - Yeah.
- You know, expressing their own freedom.
Speaking of, look at this house right there.
It's a boot. - Oh, my God.
[laughs] - The great Dan Phillips.
The first thing they see in Huntsville
is the hat and the boot.
The old Huntsville High School--
big, red old brick building.
Practice fields on the left,
all just up the hill from the prison.
Even though my family weren't members
of the First Baptist Church,
when I had a particularly nasty bout with mono
my sophomore year in high school,
they prayed for my recovery.
I'm forever touched by the kindness and decency
of the people here,
this tight-knit community that is Huntsville.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[pensive music]
But as I drive past the house
we lived in in fifth and sixth grade,
I think of my next-door neighbor Mark,
a childhood friend and high-school teammate,
and I'm haunted by how his life could go
so far off the rails,
he'd end up dying on death row.
It seemed like the prison just had
this gravitational inevitability to it,
not only pulling so many into its workforce
but also into a life behind bars.
♪ ♪
A much larger than normal percentage of the guys
I grew up with ended up doing time.
I haven't been back here in a couple years,
since my mom's memorial.
We were the only divorced family
I'd ever heard of in the whole town,
it felt like. - Yeah.
- She was just so different,
in the fact that she was dating,
and she was kind of a woman of the, you know,
'60s and '70s, you know? - Yeah.
- Just--she was far from a housewife.
- Right.
- But I remember people loving her.
[soft music]
Yeah, we moved out here, which is the boonies.
It's not the inner city.
- Well, it seems kind of nice now.
- It's really pretty. I mean, it's always been this way.
I haven't been back here in years.
The Cowerts lived there. - Yeah.
- The Lossacks lived over there.
We moved, like, four times in three years.
- Yeah.
- After sixth grade, my mom finally bought a house
for $18,000.
- This is it?
- Yeah, looks like we can pull up here.
She said we can come by.
Mowing this yard was just hell. - Sure.
- It was like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.
You start on one end.
By the time you get done, it's time to start again.
- Look, they put out a lawn mower for you.
- Yeah. [both laughing]
Aah, PTSD. - He's coming back.
- PTSD.
We had a pen in the back where we had a--
for Christmas one time, some--
my stepfather's in-laws gave us a baby bull...
- A bull? - For Christmas, yeah.
- They don't stay babies. - No.
- Yeah. - No, it got so big,
it would break out of its pen.
So we kept that gate locked all the time, 'cause we had dogs.
But also, you had this bull that might attack you.
- Right, yeah. - It would just come at you.
- Uh-huh. - Yeah, we had a tambourine.
We would hit it, you know, and it would scare it.
- Hello. - Hello.
- How are you? - I'm all right.
- Hi.
Yeah, I was saying I lived here a long time ago.
- Oh, okay.
- In the '70's, my mom had this house.
We bought it in '73 and stuff, so...
I'm Rick, by the way.
- Nice to meet you. I'm Nikki.
- Do you have to mow this whole yard?
- Yes. - Do you do it?
- I do it. - How long does it take?
- When I do it with my push mower,
it takes me three hours.
- She has a push mower. - [laughs]
Where is it? - I even have that one.
- You're killing my story. You do it with this mower?
- This is great.
- No, I was saying how this was the worst of my childhood,
having to mow this huge yard. - Oh, yes.
- I want to know, what do you use this building for?
- Oh, just like a storage. - Storage?
Okay, because I built this with my uncle and grandfather.
- Really?
- My grandfather had a little woodworking studio.
- Uh-huh, still--
- And I don't think it's changed.
- Still here. - Yeah. This is it.
But, hey, it's a good little storage.
I just thought this plywood--
I just would never have thought it would still be here.
My mom landed a job teaching speech pathology
at the local university, Sam Houston State.
That's why we moved here when I was a kid in 1970.
It was about a year or two
after they had finally integrated the schools.
- Desegregation by order of the federal district court
is proceeding this year in kindergarten
through junior and senior high school.
- Before I moved to Huntsville,
hundreds of prisoners had been put to death
in the electric chair,
affectionately referred to as Old Sparky.
Old Sparky's last execution was in 1964.
- The Supreme Court declared the death penalty
unconstitutional today and spared the lives of 600 men
in death row cells across the country.
- As it stands now, the death penalty is illegal
in the United States.
- This was also the heyday of the Texas Prison Rodeo.
- Once a year, 90,000 people from all over the country
fill this East Texas arena.
It's the most unique rodeo in the world.
You see, all of the participants are convicts.
- It was an economic boom for the town
every Sunday in October.
- I'm in here for burglary.
- Aggravated robbery.
- Murder.
- Many of us parked cars at the rodeo
just to make a few extra dollars.
[crowd cheering]
In 1982, a year or so after I moved away,
I was living in Houston
when they brought the death penalty back.
- After a 10-year struggle, the Senate voted
to reinstate the death penalty.
- Texas was about to execute its first person
in almost two decades.
- Death row inmate Charlie Brooks Jr.
will be the first man in the country
executed by lethal injection
and the first man executed in Texas since 1964.
- I remember the news footage that night.
They cut to what looked like a huge mob of people
outside the Walls Unit.
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
For a second, I thought, "Oh, good for my hometown
"for protesting this barbaric practice
that's been brought back."
- Outside the prison, a crowd had gathered.
Some had come to cheer.
- Then I realized,
"Oh, it's mostly a pro-death penalty rally."
- Hey, where's the stopping point?
- He's already stopped. He's behind bars.
- What happens if he kills somebody else?
- Behind bars?
- Sure, they do it all the time.
- It was really disturbing.
- Kill first, ask questions later.
- It just feels like there's still some element
of frontier justice in the Texas spirit.
- Are you in favor to support lowering
the capital punishment age for juveniles from 17?
- I think we ought to try 14-year-olders as adults.
- On all issues of punishment, we think we're the toughest.
- Governor Perry, your state has executed
234 death row inmates,
more than any other governor in modern times.
Have you-- [applause]
- I'm in favor of the death penalty,
and we want to ensure the death penalty
is going to be enforced effectively.
[tense music]
- So the prison is right downtown.
- Right downtown. - Fascinating.
- One block from the courthouse.
- Yeah.
- The Walls Unit is the oldest prison in Texas.
That's where the executions certainly are.
I had a stepfather who was a prison guard.
I had another stepfather who was in prison.
Yeah, I remember visiting him a couple times.
He was really a bright guy, an electronics whiz.
My mom had met him through some activist friends of hers.
And I think she thought if she married him,
it would help him get out sooner.
In the end, it didn't work out,
and their marriage was annulled.
[pensive music]
My mom was compassionate, strong, a fighter.
When she saw something she thought was wrong,
her impulse was to actually try
to make it better if she could.
I see many of her qualities
in some of the folks who live here.
- She was a delight.
She was a little bit of a spitfire and kept--
- Really? - She was our spice.
Yeah, she was our Spice Girl down there.
But, yeah, she was a fighter.
She did not--she was tenacious.
That's a word I would apply to her.
- I think so, yeah.
- I was really sad when she was gone.
- Yeah. - You know.
- Bambi is an old classmate from high school.
We were on the newspaper staff together.
Later, she became my mom's neighbor and friend,
and she spent her career
as an educator in the prison system.
- These are people that, for the most part,
have never had any kind of success in their lives...
- Mm-hmm. - Much less academic.
So to watch somebody make the change
or realize that they had worth and value
and that they could go and be released
and then take care of their families,
go back to society, stay out of prison...
- Yeah.
- That was really a gratifying thing to be a part of.
- When my mom heard that inmates being released,
all with $200 in their pocket,
were being met first by drug dealers and prostitutes,
she started a program where they were invited
to a reception area for free coffee and doughnuts.
That way, their reintroduction into society
began with a conversation with someone who cared
about what was next for them.
But that was her, trying to right a wrong,
trying to help folks in any way she could.
[light music]
- I was asked one time
how many tickets I've made for inmates.
Okay, if you do an average
of 60 a day, 5 days a week...
52 weeks a year for 30 years,
it's been a lot of tickets.
And I would say...
somewhere around 20% of those,
I've seen more than one time.
♪ ♪
I have seen fights.
- Yeah, that was the funny one.
- Yeah, two women show up to pick up one guy.
It don't work that way. - And he gets on the bus.
[both laughing]
"Give me my ticket. I'm getting on the bus."
- Mm-hmm. - You know?
And two ladies are just out there,
squabbling over him, and--
- There's been a lot of comedy.
There's been a lot of sad things that happen, too.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
If I take five minutes and talk to 'em,
I can tell you whether they're coming back or not.
- I'll get to the halfway house today.
Oh, couple days, I should know what's going on.
I just wanted to let y'all know I'm out.
I got three months of parole, but, hey...
- Next.
In 30 years, you can't come up with an excuse
that I haven't heard already.
Nobody has committed a major crime.
Nobody wants to be a criminal.
♪ ♪
- We're the first leg of their trip.
You know, this is just the beginning of their journey
back into society.
They're trying to figure out where they're gonna go,
how they're gonna get there,
and they're just trying to get it all figured out.
♪ ♪
- Okay, we'll see y'all tomorrow.
- Bye. - Bye.
- And some of them will tell you,
"Oh, well, I'll be back in a couple years.
I guess I'll see you again."
And I'll tell them, I say, "Hey,
"let me give you a round-trip ticket.
"That way, they don't have to come get you.
You can come back on your own."
♪ ♪
- I really hope they get out soon.
I just saw him, like, walking down the street,
and I asked him if he's-- - I don't see him.
- Oh, look, there's a...
- Well, it started off
when I was, like, super little, for five years.
He got on parole for about three years.
And then he went back for another two years, so...
I actually want to be a football player
when I grow up,
and I haven't really been able to play football with anybody,
'cause, like, my grandma's not really into football,
'cause she's a grandma.
And my dad is, like, a huge sports fanatic.
So me and him are gonna, like, play football and stuff,
and it's gonna be fun.
- It's crazy.
We've been waiting on this day for so long.
It seemed like it was never coming.
And now it's here. It don't seem real.
I think it's just the time away,
and you're missing out on so much.
And it ain't nothing you can do.
It ain't no second chances
and creating the stuff you missed out on.
[bell tolling]
- I'm super excited, 'cause, like, I actually have
my football, like, in the car.
He's changed.
And he said that his, like, number-one priority
would be me...
like, taking care of me and stuff.
- Y'all keep looking. They got me looking.
[laughs]
The dude looking. I'm like, is he coming?
[laughs]
Oh.
My heart is, like, beating.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- There they go. They coming out.
- Look at 'em, y'all.
- I don't see him. - They coming, y'all.
They coming.
He coming, y'all. He coming.
[laughs] Oh, my gosh.
- I don't see him. Who--
- Shit, is this him right here?
- Yeah.
Let me see.
- Welcome home, all y'all.
- Welcome home. - Welcome home.
Welcome home, man. Welcome home.
- Welcome home.
Oh. - What's up, man?
- Welcome home, everybody.
- What's up, man?
What's up, Mom?
- Hi. - What's going on?
My son, he's my world.
What's up, bud?
Out of the ten years of his life,
I've been incarcerated about eight of 'em.
So you can't really be too good of a father from in here.
- Dad? - Yeah.
- You don't have to check in over there?
- No. Let's go. - Oh, are you done?
All right.
- I mean, I love my son more than anything.
But, you know, I do have a little--
you know, you get a little nervous stepping out of here.
So, you know, he asked me why I'm not excited.
I am excited.
But, I mean, at the same time, I got to start all over.
I had to sell my house. I sold some things.
So I'm starting from scratch again, so...
♪ ♪
- I didn't think this day would ever come.
Ahh! [laughs]
Somebody call and tell my mama we got her baby.
- For real. [indistinct chatter]
- 11 years, 7 months,
my brother been off up in that thing.
Now he here for all the holidays.
We're about to party for Halloween, Thanksgiving,
Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa.
What's next?
We celebrating it all.
We got so much time to make up for.
♪ ♪
- He said that this is the last time.
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
- You know, I think I got a lot more going for me
than a lot of people getting out of here.
So, I mean, they don't offer no rehabilitation.
If you're trying to get right, you need to do it on your own,
you know what I mean?
- We out of here.
Ahh!
He here now, man. Ain't no looking back.
Nigga, we finna burn rubber.
Don't even look out the window, kid.
Close your eyes till we get on the freeway.
[laughter] Don't even look at the shit.
We leaving.
[indistinct chatter]
- Kiner, what are you doing in town, brother?
- [laughs]
- Oh, it's a wife thing.
- Dale, hey, man.
- My wife's helping his wife put on a--
- Yeah. A baby shower. - A baby shower.
- Dale and I played baseball together at Sam Houston.
And my film "Everybody Wants Some!!"
is based on my own experiences there.
The off-campus houses we all lived in
were just a few blocks from the prison.
Amityville East.
- Yes, quite a-- quite an experience.
- [laughs] - 40 years ago.
- It's still here, man. What, the couch was right here?
- Couch here.
This was--and you remember the couch?
It had all kinds of rips and tears, fuzz coming out.
- Yeah. Total...
This was also the Nerf ball court, as I remember.
- Yeah, we had a Nerf hoop mounted somewhere.
- Yeah, it was, I think, against that wall.
- And we had a foosball table...
- Uh-huh. - In here.
- It was a cool bonding experience
just to be living with 18 guys.
- Mm-hmm. - That was a damn good team.
Did you ever think you'd still be in Huntsville?
- No, it was almost like...
fate that brought me back here. - Yeah.
I remember, just from my perspective--
I got a call from Keith.
It was like, "Hey, we think something--
"you know, I think Dale, something happened to him
"or something's wrong.
"He's not returning phone calls.
- Mm-hmm. - "Where's Dale?"
- I had shut everybody off... - Right.
- Because I didn't want to drag anybody else through my mess.
- Yeah, so-- - You know, I created it.
And so, you know, I paid the price for that--
sentenced to 30 years in prison,
never been in trouble with the law ever.
- For a financial thing. - Mm-hmm.
- 30 years, that goes for people who--
that's in rape/murder territory.
- Yeah, it was an interesting experience.
Prison is not what people think it is.
Being in prison is not a lot different than being
out here in the free world.
About 90% of the people are good people...
- Mm-hmm. - Who have made bad choices,
just like out here. - Right.
- Not everybody in prison is bad.
- How long were you in? - 39 months.
- 39 months out of a 30-year sentence?
- Yeah. Of all the things that I regret seeing
through this whole process,
it's how young minorities...
that don't have money are treated.
They don't have a chance.
I mean, they make you sit in there until you plead guilty.
- Yeah. Oh, gosh. - They do.
I mean, I sat and watched it. It's sickening.
It doesn't matter whether you're guilty or not.
They just want a conviction.
- How do you explain--
When I was a kid here in Huntsville,
there were 50,000 inmates,
and now there's, like, 10 times as much.
In a generation, it's a tenfold thing.
There were-- there were, like, 11 prisons.
Now there's 100 and something. - There's 104.
- What's going on? What does it mean?
- I think it's about money. - Yeah.
- Texas Correctional Industries run the prison system,
'cause it's industry.
I mean, that's how they... - Yeah.
- Keep the cost of the prison down.
What would the economy in Huntsville do
if they shut down half the prisons here?
It would-- - [scoffs]
- Right. It would be tough.
- It just seems like there's a machinery involved
in this prosecution, punitive...
And then, ultimately, it's the machinery of death, too.
You know, they're executing someone this evening.
Did you know that? - I did.
The spiritual side of me says it's not our--
it's not our job to decide life and death.
I mean, that's what the Bible says.
So I struggle with that.
[soft music]
- Sam Houston State's student population
of over 20,000
is almost double what it was when I was here.
They have many top-notch programs,
one of the largest criminal justice departments
in the country.
And recently the Bearkat football team
even won a national championship.
- Sam Houston wins it!
The Bearkats capture their first FCS championship!
♪ ♪
- Well, I think prisons don't really define the town,
you know, 'cause it's not like
they're running around here, you know.
- I mean, every now and then, you know,
you see people in their guard uniforms walking around.
But I never thought to myself,
"Huh, I'm in a prison town
with a whole bunch of prisoners."
- And it's weird because you can see, like,
whenever they're getting released
or even when there's, like, an execution about to happen,
like, you see the protesters and stuff.
But it's weird because it's just
kind of, like, normal now.
- You know, it's, like, an open campus.
People come and protest down in the mall area.
But other than that,
I've never heard no professor talk about it,
none of my friends.
- Oh, man. [scoffs]
We don't talk about it enough,
being so close-- like, maybe a mile away
from a prison that's had, like,
the most executions in the country.
They just executed, like, the youngest guy ever.
And I went to high school with him.
- I've never given too much thought to it
until you hear the siren go off.
[siren blaring]
- So, when I was hearing it and it was, like,
just me by myself and I heard that foghorn
and I'm like...
It just creeped me out, 'cause it's like,
people are dictated by that horn,
and it means something completely different to them
inside that wall.
- From what I know, there's a siren
when they're doing guard change,
and then they blow the siren again
whenever they do the count,
and then if there's a third siren,
I think it's bad, but I'm not sure.
[laughs]
- It's just an ominous sound, you know.
So, yeah, it's freaky. It's freaky.
[laughs]
- I get a good vibe here.
And I don't think you'd really get that kind of, like, vibe
in, like, a prison, you know?
It doesn't feel like it's really that close.
- Yeah, what a difference a few blocks makes, huh?
- It seems very separate.
It seems that everyone's aware of it,
but no one wants to talk about it.
It seems too controversial.
- They're always like, "Oh, it's crazy
that people are dying in there," but that's it.
No one really--
It's something that I don't try to think about, 'cause...
I don't like it.
It's just weird, like, knowing people are dying in there.
But I don't know.
There's nothing I can do about it.
- There's always been this disconnect
between the prison system
and a lot of the local population.
It's kind of a Huntsville tradition, actually,
to see what goes on at the prison
as the state's business
and to try not to give it any more thought
than anyone else around the state would.
Oh, look, there you go.
That's a hairdo for you.
[laughter]
This was a great team. It really was.
It was a good group of guys.
There's John.
There I am, sitting there.
I never wanted number 1,
but the coach saddled me with that.
Hornets ranked at the top. Indeed, we were.
[soft music]
[crowd cheering]
Several of the guys we played ball with ended up in prison,
and I know a lot ended up working there, too.
- Growing up here,
unless somebody specifically asks you
about being around prisoners, we don't even--
I don't--I don't even-- - Mm-mm.
- Doesn't even come to my consciousness.
It was nothing that I ever--
- Yeah. - Never even gave a thought.
- Do you remember anybody that you hung out with
that worked for the prison,
their parents worked for the prison?
- I had a stepfather who was a prison guard
in there somewhere.
So that kind of put me a little closer to it
or a little aware of it.
It was in the house, you know. - Right.
- It is a job. - It's a tough job.
- Yeah.
I remember my stepfather going from being this really fun guy
that my mom was dating
to the guy who was sitting in a chair across the room
just staring at the floor.
[tense music]
I saw the toll it takes on the corrections officers.
They're spending a big part of their lives
behind bars, too, in really trying conditions.
♪ ♪
In meeting and following around Italia,
I was trying to see if anything had changed,
if it was any better now
than it had been decades before
when my stepfather was there.
I got my answer.
- They always kind of tell you not necessarily to be afraid,
but just to be on your toes.
Anything could happen.
That's the scary part, knowing that you're agreeing to that.
But it's part of the job.
For me, my top priority is to keep
the other officers safe first.
You know, of course, everybody has families.
And you want them to go home.
Morning.
And then second, you know, keep the offenders safe.
I talk to them like human beings.
I always tell them, "Hey, I'm gonna respect you,
and I want that in return."
♪ ♪
- All right, communication is key
to running an effective facility, right?
Okay?
Make sure that we're talking to one another.
Y'all been doing really good about that.
I thank y'all.
- We're short-staffed a lot.
There's a lot of stress, you know,
especially at our unit.
You know, when I started, it was in January.
And so, you know, you always hear,
"Hey, just wait till summer."
We don't have any AC.
You know, the unit is made out of brick.
It literally gets like a brick oven.
I remember one day hearing that it was, like, 114 inside.
- And it's not just offenders, people behind bars,
who are being, you know, pushed to the brink.
It's state employees... - Right. Right.
- People such as yourself. - Yeah.
- Do you think things are changing
or has the possibility of changing?
- Well, you know, Texas is Texas.
It's, you know, extremely conservative.
Like they say, you know,
you do the crime, you do the time.
And so I think they don't really care,
you know, like... - Mm-hmm.
- What kind of conditions they're in.
- So what came first here,
you coming to Sam Houston or getting the job at the--
- Prison? - At the prison? Yeah.
- I had no idea about corrections, to be honest.
Nobody in my family really went to college.
I came here to Sam Houston, and I love college,
because it's nothing like, you know,
high school or anything like that.
My dream job definitely is to work for the FBI.
♪ ♪
One day, I saw the recruiters here.
And they were like, "Hey, you could work part-time
"and still go to school full-time,
and we'll work with your schedule."
That's kind of how I got into corrections.
I kind of see it just like as a sacrifice
that I have to keep making to improve our situation.
My kids, sometimes I only get to see them
right before they go to bed or sometimes not at all.
♪ ♪
- "Ev"-- - Mm-hmm, that's right.
- "Very lots.
"First, I love my chocolatey cake.
I nodded my head."
- We were really young parents.
Our oldest son was born when I was 15.
I want them to continue their education,
you know, when they get older.
- "Unsuitable"...
- That's good enough.
Noah, you're reading in the dark, son.
You're gonna mess up your eyes.
[device beeping]
I feel a lot of sadness.
Just the stuff--
you know, the stories that they tell you,
the lives that they used to have
before, you know, they were incarcerated,
I feel really bad for them.
♪ ♪
You know you're there, like, clock in, clock out,
but even though we can leave,
it's still like I'm locked up.
♪ ♪
- I think every industry town--
And you think about coal-mining towns...
- Yeah. - Or Hollywood or, you know,
whatever, you know, the-- - Oh, yeah.
- A culture arises because of the work.
- We've seen the prison industry grow,
and I guess, on one hand, it's a blessing.
It's the local economy largely. - Right.
- But it is a bit of a curse.
- What does your mom think about the prisons?
- I mean, when we moved here, I don't think
she thought about it much at all.
I don't remember her having an opinion
one way or another about the prison.
- Mm-hmm. - But, you know,
you open your eyes, and you get to talking to people
and know people who've been,
you know, deeply affected by it,
and you meet people getting out of prison,
you eventually kind of--
She became a little more of an activist,
took a more active part in that.
I remember her just, you know, and it kind of opened my eyes.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- Hey, Rick.
[both chuckling]
- I think the last time I was out here
was, like, '77, summer of '77.
- I think that's probably about it.
It's changed a bit. - How you doing?
- Good, good. We--
- I remember I fell asleep out here one night I was here.
- I think it was in that end. - Yeah.
God, it's still here, everything.
- Well, we've done quite a bit to it.
- So this was where the house ended, right?
- This is where the house ended,
right here with this wall.
And we've knocked all of this out over here, enlarged it,
put the fireplace in. - Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think when I first met you,
you were hanging out with my mom
when you were playing Richard Pryor
in my living room for the first time.
Thank you, by the way.
You and my mom, I think, had just started
seeing each other-- I'm thinking fall '75.
- Well, I always thought well of her.
And we would talk about every six months or so on the phone.
She was a good friend.
I came to Huntsville
because I was interested in prison rights.
I wanted to be a criminal lawyer.
I was just out of law school.
And this opportunity developed here
with a public-defender system the prison was opening.
- Yeah. I remember you came in.
You were just kind of a radical.
You had a chip on your shoulder.
I think you saw a lot of racial injustice.
- I came to Huntsville, and I thought
I'd landed in Mississippi 20 years before.
- It does feel like it's the South, the Old South.
- It is, the prison being a plantation mentality.
They shot through the window, and it came,
and I left this as a memento. - Yeah.
- There probably was 12, 15 bullet holes in the house.
- Yeah.
You were involved in a pretty high-profile case
to do with Darrell Shaw.
- Darrell Shaw was the leading ground gainer
for the high school.
- Darrell was the star running back
on the high-school football team,
and everyone knew who he was.
Even though we weren't that many years apart,
it felt like Darrell grew up
in a completely different Huntsville than I had.
- My grandparents were sharecroppers,
picked cotton.
They'd take us out in the cotton field,
and they'd sit us all down, find a good shady spot.
And one lady would be designated
to take care of all the kids
while everybody else was out picking cotton.
During the day, the other grandparents
give you a dime, 15 cents,
and we'd go upstairs to the town theater
and to the back door of the Texan Café
for a hamburger or so, you know.
- Wow, you're describing a very segregated city.
- Yes, very segregated.
- You were the star running back.
- I knew I was good.
[crowd cheering]
The lineman coach, he told me,
"Darrell Shaw, you are poison."
Yeah, I took it as a compliment, you know,
kind of got to be known as outspoken, little radical guy.
Used to get paddlings.
And that was very humiliating getting those licks.
- Back then, they beat all of us.
And not surprisingly, Black students
were more likely to be paddled than white students.
I saw things that would put an adult in jail
on assault charges today.
- I think it was my junior year
was when I had the issues with Mr. Hooker,
who was assistant principal at the high school.
Ben Hooker was a big man, and he could hurt.
And I just was fed up that day when he called me
into his office and wanted to paddle me.
And I wasn't gonna take any paddles that day.
He told me to get off our campus.
"You can go home."
And my mom came home,
and I told her I'd got kicked out of school.
- The choice for all of us was simple.
If you didn't want to get paddled,
you could instead just take an F in the class
or be kicked out of school like Darrell.
Not much of a choice, really.
- The school system ran their disciplinary program
just like the prisons ran their disciplinary program.
No due process to mention.
Zip, zap, you're gone.
Darrell came over, and they talked.
And I said, "Well, I don't think they can do that."
You can't kick a school kid out of school
without giving him a hearing.
I talked to the school superintendent.
And they said, "Okay, we kicked him out of school
'cause he didn't wear socks to school one day."
I said, "Now, look, if we can't resolve this,
we're going to court over it."
When I said that, I'm sure they thought I meant
we're going to court in Walker County.
- Between my junior and senior year,
we sued Huntsville Independent School District
in federal court down in Houston, Texas.
- I'd never filed a civil-rights case in my life.
I didn't know which end of the pencil to hold.
But I was so pissed off about it.
And that has happened to me several times in my life.
- Yeah. - The situation would get
to where I was so pissed off about it, I'd say,
"We're gonna do something about this."
- [chuckles] - So we filed our lawsuit.
The school board shows up with some hot-dog lawyer
from a white-shoe firm that I'd never heard of before.
- And the superintendent was there, you know,
and I think Ben Hooker was even there, too.
They did not want me back on their campus.
- The judge comes out.
- Judge John V. Singleton-- I'll never forget that man.
- He says, "Gentlemen, why are we here?
"I don't know if Mr. Habern can prove
what he's pled or not," but he said, "If he can,"
he says, "I'm gonna have to rule for him.
"Now, I haven't had my coffee this morning.
"I'm gonna go in and have a cup of coffee,
"and why don't you guys go out in the hall
"and talk for about 30 minutes,
"see if you can't work this out,
and then we'll re-adjourn?"
- Man, he slammed that gavel down and told them,
"Instead of kicking folks out of school,
"you ought to be doing everything you can
to keep a child in school."
- You won.
And I think it changed things,
because that paddle-happy era finally came to an end.
- I believe it did, too.
Looking on the Internet or whatever, I do Bill Habern,
and I see all the compliments, awards, and stuff he's got.
- Winning Darrell's case inspired Bill to keep going.
He went on to have a long and storied career
defending prisoners' rights.
At 83 years old, he continues to fight
for criminal justice reform.
- Old Bill Habern, look at him now.
- I feel the same way.
I feel the same way. - Yeah.
- I think the things...
[voice breaking] That have been the most meaningful...
Pardon me.
[inhales deeply]
[sniffles, groans softly]
Are the ones...
that...
I don't make a penny on. - Right.
- They need to be done.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah. - That's that.
- Yeah, no.
[upbeat country music]
♪ ♪
- Thank you. Have a good one.
- Enjoy, guys. Thank you.
♪ ♪
- Two, three, and four.
♪ ♪
- I'm always amused by the radicals
that still live here, you know.
My...
You know, it's like, they have an option to move,
but people who choose to stay...
- Right.
- And kind of be in opposition to this,
to the local small-town power structure
and the local economy,
they've always kind of fascinated me.
- You know, it's evidence of their cherishing
the place they come from in order to change it
in the way they want it to become.
- Yeah, I think there's an oppositional personality
that just wants to be butting up against power.
- Here's the thing-- people say, well,
why don't you go to Granola Land,
like Boulder, Colorado? - Right.
- Well, I lived in Boulder, Colorado, for a while.
There was nobody to argue with, nobody to educate.
You know, if you're all sitting around drinking tea
while the whole world is burning
and you're not helping put out the fire,
what good are you?
I have never been accepted in Huntsville.
I didn't play football, and I didn't shoot animals.
[bell tolls]
I went bird watching.
I love beautiful flowers.
All right, that's enough. [tolling echoes]
I'm not masculine enough for this culture.
Who would think that a rusty old iron bell
would have a tone like that?
Isn't that crazy?
You know, most people call me asshole, son of a bitch,
dickhead, 'cause I'm not well-liked...
- [chuckles]
- Because I hold up growth and progress.
- Yeah, yeah.
So all this land out here, you bought.
I remember when this was a big development.
It was gonna be a big, booming community.
It went bankrupt at some point. - Right.
- And so did you buy it just to preserve the land?
- Absolutely.
♪ ♪
The fact that this is now
under a perpetual conservation easement
means it can never, ever be developed.
We've been able to save about 3,000 acres.
We have some of the rarest plants in North America,
more biodiversity than anywhere in Texas.
We have two archaeological landmarks.
I have a rattlesnake sanctuary,
red wolf sanctuary... - Yeah.
- Arachnid sanctuary.
We opened the first green cemetery in Texas,
third in the United States.
There's a grave.
That one's marked with that.
The sad thing is just the toxicity,
turning graveyards into toxic wastelands.
They use herbicides, fungicides, biocides.
They turn Grandma into a toxic pickle.
- Yeah.
- Spend thousands of dollars, for what?
♪ ♪
My mother died in 2007,
and my father, 2013.
And then here's my grave.
I think they'll have to make it
a little bit bigger. [laughter]
[upbeat music]
- George and his family got rich making
and selling educational films back in the day.
And he's used that wealth to follow his passion
as a conservationist, an obsessive collector...
- We have the world's largest collection
of handmade Texas furniture from the 1800s.
But it's also a kitsch collection.
We have different categories of kitsch.
California Raisins, golf kitsch, clown kitsch--
- [laughs] Good Lord.
Jeez, there's a whole nother room.
- This is overflow. - God.
- [laughs] - I'm looking--
We're gonna find Rosebud in here somewhere.
- [laughs] Isn't this absurd?
Seriously.
- And fun things like making horror films...
- It's good.
- And starting his own church.
- You're hereby anointed as a deacon
in the Universal Ethician Church for eternity.
- George buys buildings
to keep them from being developed.
- This was a funeral home in 1905.
- And this grouping near the university
has been deemed Russellville,
which is really just a series of funky museums
crammed with all of his archaeological
and art collections.
- This is a mammoth tooth.
♪ ♪
It's Museum of Genocide and Atrocities
Perpetrated Against Native Americans
and Other Native Peoples. - Right.
- Columbus was responsible for a genocidal campaign
that murdered more Native Americans
than Hitler killed.
So this is our rogues gallery,
and there are many more rogues than this.
These are two of the most evil men
in the history of the United States.
Andrew Jackson--oh, my gosh,
Trail of Tears, horror stories.
And we just go on and on.
- What concerns me here, George--is this the future?
You got-- - Yeah, that's the future.
- Do teachers bring their students
over here for field trips?
- No. No. No, they don't like--
any time I come up with an idea
that will make Huntsville better...
- Yeah. [chuckles] - Then they shoot it down.
- Yeah, I don't think they like you, George.
Taking an unpopular stance
goes back centuries in this town.
- This is Sam Houston.
And he's one of my heroes. - Yeah.
- He represents...
good in the history of Texas.
- As governor of Texas when the Civil War broke out,
he opposed Texas joining the Confederacy.
- He refused to take the oath to the Confederacy.
And so he was thrown out of the governor's office.
And it was the worst mistake Texas ever made.
- Yeah. We're still paying for it.
- Yeah. - History proves him so right.
So he retires to Huntsville,
where we are now. - Right.
- And there was talk of this maybe being the state capital.
But they decided to throw that to Stephen F. Austin, right?
- Yeah. - Or to Central Texas.
- Right. - And in lieu of--
But they still--they gave Sam some state government
for his local economy, the prison system.
- The prison system.
♪ ♪
- Trey, did you know what a badass your dad was?
- [laughing] - Have you heard stories?
Did he grow up telling you stories--
old war stories about how good he was and stuff?
- Yeah. - Dads are usually pretty good
at that.
- Well, yeah.
This is where we resided for five years maybe.
- Mm-hmm.
I knew Ed from high school.
He was a senior when I was a freshman,
a kind of big man on campus you naturally looked up to.
So TDCJ owns these--
they kind of own the neighborhood, don't they?
- Yeah, they own this whole block almost.
You know, I'm second generation.
My father was an industrial supervisor.
So, you know, I've been coming in and out of prison
since I got my first haircut there when I was 12.
I really didn't get exposed to a lot of racism
till I went to work at the prison.
And I guess it was from that whole experience--
that's what made me want to do more in the system.
Back in the '70's when I went to work,
there was not a lot of people that looked like me...
- Right. - That worked in the prison.
I assumed that the warden was God.
He ruled the world because he ruled mine.
I never could see myself as a warden,
the main reason being, at that time,
I could never see a Black...
- Right. - Being a warden.
- Had there been-- I don't remember--
It seems like all the authority figures, to me,
it seemed like they were all white.
- They were. At that time, they were.
I was promoted to warden in 1990.
And from 1990 to '95,
the prison system doubled in size.
'95, I became region one director.
You know, it came with a lot of responsibility.
We told our employees, you know,
leave it at the gate. - Right.
- Go home to your families, enjoy your families.
But that's something I know the higher up I got,
you never left it at the gate.
The job consumed you.
And I lived the job.
- Mm-hmm.
- After the executions, I would make this--
This was a long walk. - Ooh, man.
- Yeah. Yeah. - Yeah.
- Of course, nothing was said about what happened.
Life just carried on as usual. - Yeah.
- Did you an execution day from another?
- Only if it was just because my mom would say,
"Oh, yeah, your dad's got an execution at 6:00,"
and then, snap, like it was never--
- They used to block the street.
They still block the street down there.
- Yeah, through all that. - And they pull just a...
a tape across there.
- Yeah, 'cause certain executions really stand out.
- You had Karla Faye Tucker and Gary Graham.
- Yeah. - You have the KKK
and the Black Panthers outside your house.
- Which side was the Klan on, and which side was the--
Was it right here?
- The new Black Panthers was on that end.
- Mm-hmm.
- And the Klan was right here in front of our house.
- House, yeah.
- You all was talking that big shit when we walked over here.
Talk that shit now.
That's what I thought, with your bad ass.
- I sent Trey and his mother out to my parents' home.
- For that.
That's a little scary.
- I remember my first execution.
I remember the feeling that I had when...
I saw this guy one minute, and he was fine,
and the next minute, he was-- he was--he was deceased.
So it had a profound impact on me.
I actually went to a minister
and talked to him about--
talked to him about, okay, how do you...
You know, I wanted to make sure my soul wasn't going
to hell. - Yeah.
- He basically told me that, you know...
mankind is supposed to obey the laws of the land,
and if the laws of the land is execution
and that is your job,
then so be it.
Uh...
I guess from a spiritual standpoint,
that's how I dealt with it. - Right.
- It became the job. It was the job.
- Do you think more poor people are sentenced
to death than rich people? - Yes, sir.
- Can you show us--
You cannot give no exact time
or place where a rich man has been sentenced to death.
- You think there's discrimination
in the death sentence? - It really is. It really is.
- Look for yourself, sir. - It really is.
- I haven't seen nobody else but colored people
and one Jew boy and a white girl
that I know of that I've seen.
- The state of Texas has electrocuted
a total of 357 men.
- The death-penalty debate isn't new around here.
- I favor capital punishment because I think
it is a strong deterrent.
- It has to be admitted that the Bible
does recognize the enforcement of capital punishment.
But if we follow this to the letter,
then we would have to say that the Bible also says
that we must use capital punishment
for striking a parent
or for witchcraft or for breaking the Sabbath.
- Huntsville newspaperman Don Reid
has witnessed every execution held here
in the past 18 years.
- Do you think all of them were guilty?
- No, I do not.
Eight to ten, in my opinion, were innocent.
- In the cases where you saw executed people
you thought were innocent, did you try to stop it?
- I tried the best I could.
- Have ever saved anybody from the electric chair?
- Yes, I have.
- How many? - Two.
[soft music]
- By killing us, will not solve anything.
It will only add to their own sin.
- Damnation, that's right.
♪ ♪
- Another guy I was in high school with
who played football but was a year behind me
was Fred Allen.
He ended up about as close to the executions
as you could get.
He put in 16 years at the Huntsville Unit
and a lot of it as a member of the tie-down team,
where he oversaw 130 executions.
- Going through school, you know,
I didn't even pay no attention
to what was going on with the prison.
I knew when I graduated, I knew I wanted to get a job.
I wanted to go make some money.
- So I was living in Houston, working offshore
when they started up the executions again.
So do you remember having an opinion
about that back then?
- My opinion on that was, is, you know,
if it's gonna be the law, let's do it.
And I'm taking care of the last part of the law.
But let's do it humanely and, you know, with integrity.
I sat back there with those individuals
eight, nine, ten hours...
before we would even execute them.
So, I mean, I would get to even know the person.
It's like, "What you need?"
"Hey, man, can I have a cup of coffee?"
"Yeah, I'll get you a cup of coffee.
What else you want, doughnut?"
You know, I mean, I had those individuals--
"Hey, you know how to play checkers?"
"Yeah, I can play checkers."
"How about chess?" "I can play ch--"
And I'm playing chess with this son of a gun,
you know, because we got eight hours to burn, you know.
And then I got the other ones back there
that they want to talk about their football team,
you know.
"Oh, I want to talk about Dallas."
And I said, "I don't really want to talk
"about Dallas too much
"since I'm a Washington Redskin fan,
"but let's talk, you know.
Yeah, let's talk."
♪ ♪
This is the quietest time they've ever had.
It's quiet.
You know, I asked 'em, "You want me to turn on the radio?"
"I heard enough noise, you know.
I just enjoy talking to y'all."
A lot of them, they're just ready to...
they were just ready, you know.
And then when I unlocked the door,
I'd tell 'em to follow me.
And it wouldn't take 10, 15 steps to get to the gurney.
And then when I get to the gurney,
I tell them to hop up on the gurney.
And when he hops up on the gurney,
all five of us have different assigned straps,
and I always took care of the left leg.
Anyways, we'd strap 'em all down,
and then we would all exit.
The door would close just a little bit.
♪ ♪
Then they would escort all the witnesses in...
♪ ♪
On the other side.
One of the wardens would take his glasses off to start.
And within...
a few seconds, you'll hear him cough,
and that's about it.
That's all you're gonna hear.
And then he's over with.
As soon as that's done, the doctor's out...
all the witnesses leave.
And as soon as they leave,
then the funeral home comes in there with their gurney.
Then we go back in there and unstrap him
and pick him up, put him on a gurney.
[solemn music]
Go home, drink a couple cold beers,
and try to unwind.
But then when you do and when you do lay down,
you know, when you have something traumatic
that you're dealing with all day long,
eight, nine, ten hours, even though you lay down,
that stuff just goes through your brain,
what happened all day long, you know.
But the main thing is the next day,
get up and get on.
Forget about it.
And you keep on doing that, and you keep on doing that,
and eventually you're gonna break.
♪ ♪
Once it finally hit me was at Karla Faye.
- Karla Faye Tucker was convicted and sentenced
by a jury of her peers.
Therefore, I will not grant
a 30-day stay.
- What she did back in her younger--that was--
that was horrible, totally horrible.
But what was it, 15, 16, 18 years later?
Now you got a...
more mature woman that...
[clears throat] Could've been more beneficial
to the other younger ladies in the penitentiary,
talking to them and counseling them,
saying, "Hey, you can change your life,"
before they do something.
That's the way I looked at it.
One of the things she said to me
probably two hours into it,
she asked, "Captain Allen, you doing okay?"
And I looked at her.
I said, "I'm fine."
She goes, "I want to make sure you're okay."
I said, "I'm here for you.
I want to make sure you're okay, you know."
"Oh, I am."
I said, "Okay."
Two days afterwards, I'm sitting in my shop,
and that's when I broke.
I just--I had no emo--
I couldn't control my emotions at all.
I called Chaplain Pickett, and I said,
"You need to come see me, 'cause I'm just"--
I was a mess.
He said, "You take a vase.
"You put a drop of water in it.
"Every drop of water is your execution.
"Eventually you're gonna put that last drop of water in,
"it's gonna overfill.
That means you're done."
And I said, "You're right," and the next day,
I went in the warden's office, said, "I can't do it no more."
- If someone were to ask you today
what you feel about the death penalty,
what do you say? - I say--[clears throat]
I'm definitely against it, period.
And that took me a while. It took me a while to do it.
I went from the point of being pro--
this is what the law is--
to where, you know, this ain't right.
You ain't got a right to take nobody's life, period.
It should just be completely life without parole,
because that's the worst sentence
that an individual could have.
♪ ♪
It is a different kind of generation.
40 years ago, you still had that Wild West,
Texas, you know, mentality.
- Do you think we'd change people's opinion
if they knew for sure
Texas had executed someone innocent?
- It should wake some people up.
We've had some people get off of death row
and actually got paroled back out because of DNA.
So, I mean, it's there.
♪ ♪
It gives you the opportunity
to find out if we got the right one.
If you do, he's in there for the rest of his life.
If you find out something,
you got an opportunity to make it right.
After the execution, you don't have the opportunity
to make it right anymore.
- Texas is about to kill an innocent man.
- Well, he's said to be very quiet and calm this evening.
He's surrounded by a chaplain and a spiritual advisor.
- Yes, I am expecting a miracle.
I am expecting God to move the hearts of men.
- That leads some to believe
that Texas could break its own record...
- The air was thick with this intensity,
and I'm thinking, "The state's about to do it.
They're actually going through with this."
Then I happened to look over at a national-news guy
who's on the phone.
He looks over and says, "They just granted a stay."
- Oh, Lord. - He got a stay?
- Now, now-- - We don't know.
both: We don't know yet. - Is it for real, though?
- Did it come over the wire? Did it come over the wire?
- Yes. - Oh, my God.
- Yeah, it's coming across the wire.
- Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Whoo!
[shouts indistinctly] Thank you.
Whoo. Whoo!
Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah.
Whoo-hoo! Yeah!
Whoo!
[squealing, laughing]
- Stand back.
- Whoo! - For real?
It's for real? Are you for real?
- Whoo! Hallelujah!
Whoo! Glory to God.
Ooh, God, there is some justice.
[laughs] Whoo!
Hallelujah.
[indistinct chatter]
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- I do want to say this about the victim's family.
My heart goes out for them.
They suffered a great loss.
And we are praying that justice will prevail.
- Whoo! Thank you. Thank you.
I said a prayer. Hallelujah.
Glory, hallelujah. Whoo.
- It's so bittersweet looking at this footage
of Delma's family celebrating.
Yes, his life was spared that day
by a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling,
but a state panel eventually voted 2-1
to not release him,
so he's still behind bars today,
and their suffering has never ended.
♪ ♪
Knowing what I know now, it was so naive
to even think that showing
we'd executed an innocent person
would have changed anything.
Why?
'Cause the very next year,
Texas did execute an innocent person.
But as long as the state gets to be its own jury,
it will never officially acknowledge it
or deal with it honestly.
Some states impose moratoriums on the death penalty
when they find a lot of wrongful convictions
and come to see it as an inherently flawed institution.
Texas, on the other hand, despite leading the nation
in DNA exonerations, is seemingly still okay
with its approach of,
"Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out."
- So I've got a Delma Banks folder.
- I first got to know Michelle back in '02
when I was trying to make
that prison and football movie.
She was early in her career as co-communications director
at TDCJ.
- And this was the stay of execution that he had.
And this shows-- okay, so it was at 5:59.
So he was given a stay right before 6:00,
and I ran back there
to ask him what his reaction was.
The gist of it was,
"I just want to give Jesus all the credit."
And... [clears throat]
He said that he wasn't really surprised.
- Here we go.
[dramatic music]
- Until I moved to Huntsville,
even though, again, I'm from Texas,
I grew up here,
I never gave any thought to the death penalty at all.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice
is the largest state agency in Texas,
and there were two of us
that were acting as the spokespeople.
And we were working around the clock,
because the news cycle is around the clock.
The 1993 rape and murder of Elizabeth Peña
and Jennifer Ertman in Houston.
In his last statement,
he looked to the victim's family.
I tended to favor the death penalty.
I was empathetic with the victim's family.
You can't lose sight of the fact that, you know,
he's not on death row for no reason.
For the most part, I was very good at being able
to separate myself from what I was witnessing.
Yes, I'm watching someone, ultimately, who is dying,
but I was very, very good at compartmentalizing it.
- You're 25 years old,
and you've seen, by your own count,
50 executions. - Mm-hmm.
- That must affect you, doesn't it?
- When I was working there as the spokesperson,
you know, part of our job was to go
and see them just a few hours
before they were scheduled to die.
After the executions, any media that wasn't there,
I would be responsible for giving them interviews.
And so I would take notes about the color in the room.
Said at the very end, "They're killing me tonight.
They're murdering me tonight."
And then he basically just stopped talking.
And that was it.
He kind of gave a short gasp,
and about eight minutes later, he was pronounced dead.
He said, "I am sorry for everything that I have done.
I've hurt a lot of people."
He then said, "I'm ready, Warden.
Let's get this show on the road."
So I would create a folder for every execution.
I have a file cabinet in my little home office
that is nothing but execution files.
You had inmates that professed their innocence
till the very end.
You had inmates that professed innocence
until they got to the gurney and then said,
"You know what? I'm really sorry.
I hate that I've done this to you."
And they would apologize to the victim's family.
Some that never acknowledged the victim's family
and only apologized to their families and said,
"I'm sorry for putting you through this."
You know, and then there were a few
that would say something that you just never saw coming.
There was a man named Robert Coulson.
This is it.
And it was notable because I received the letter
after he was executed.
And so it was really creepy, because, basically,
I saw the letter and saw the name on it
and realized, "This is someone that died a few days ago."
And this is how the letter started out.
"Ms. Lyons, hi.
"If you are reading this, then they killed me.
"I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed talking to you.
"You seem like a really great lady.
"I wish you all the luck in the world.
"Take care. Give yourself a hug for me.
"Thank you for your kindness. Have a wonderful day.
"Best wishes, Bob Coulson.
PS, don't let anyone steal your smile."
[somber music]
- Michelle resigned from her post in 2012
after a long struggle with her bosses over media relations.
She advocated for more transparency,
but that didn't sit well with the new leadership.
- [sighs]
You know, by the time I left,
you know, it was over 280 executions
that I witnessed.
And there were maybe 3
that actually fought on the way to the gurney.
He was not restrained.
And I found that just so incredibly unsettling
and contrary to what you would think
a human would do-- you know, that you would think
somebody would fight and be screaming and kicking
and all of that.
And so it really unnerved me
to see how docile and just...
resigned they were to it.
- Wow.
♪ ♪
- All of the inmates who die in the Texas prison system
whose bodies aren't claimed, they're taken here,
and they're buried.
This is Thomas Mason.
And this execution I witnessed.
This one was June 12th of 2000.
What struck me so much about that execution is,
he looked so much like my grandfather.
You know, because of the volume of executions,
you know, in rare cases, I do remember all of it.
But in a lot of cases,
some of the details bleed together.
And I wish that I could keep them sorted better.
♪ ♪
You know, when I left TDC, I was working in Houston.
So I'm in the car a lot.
And I was surprised at how much I kept thinking
about all these different executions.
And I was surprised that it was bothering me,
because I thought that all this time,
I'd been so good about really keeping it
very compartmentalized.
There was an execution
where there weren't any witnesses,
so we were able to go up right next to the glass.
The man was in the room, and he just stared
at the ceiling the entire time,
just looked up at the ceiling.
And so, when the warden came in, he said,
"Do you have a last statement?"
And he just barely shook his head no
and just kept looking at the ceiling.
And at that time, you just saw this one tear
roll down the right side of his cheek,
and the chemicals began flowing,
and that was it.
That was the one that just stayed with me the longest
because it was so sad how incredibly alone he was.
♪ ♪
The death penalty is sad all the way around,
because, I mean, nobody wins.
You have the initial taking of a life.
You have the victim's family, of course,
who never asked to be put in this position.
You have the inmate's family,
who never asked to be put in this position,
and they're also being drug along on this ride.
It's just a sad situation all the way around.
♪ ♪
- There are a lot of reasons
to be against the death penalty,
but the one I'm feeling the most right now
is what Michelle is talking about.
The death penalty takes one tragedy, a murder,
and expands the pain and suffering
to include so many others-- all the people involved
in the legal and criminal appeals process
that get dragged slowly to the death chamber,
all the obligatory witnesses,
and all the people with various jobs in the system,
like Ed, Michelle, and Fred.
♪ ♪
The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
specifically prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
But what can be more cruel and certainly unusual
than to have to play a part in or witness
another person's murder, however state sanctioned?
♪ ♪
But institutions aren't built to end themselves.
So the whole system lumbers along.
And the city of Huntsville continues to supply the labor.
I would never have imagined the town
could have become a major destination
for African immigrants,
but that's exactly what's happened
over the last 15 years or so,
with the prison actively recruiting men and women
to fill positions
more and more locals don't want to take.
A few I talked with saw it
as a good starter job in America--
a foot in the door in the land of opportunity.
- Can somebody shout "hallelujah"?
all: Hallelujah!
[upbeat music playing]
- Praise the Lord. - Hallelujah.
- May the Lord continue to help us,
in Jesus' mighty name.
[applause]
Hallelujah. Praise the living Jesus.
Amen.
So temptation will lead us into sin.
And sin ultimately...
- My parents, they're both, like, really,
really faithful in the Lord.
And they believe that it was because of God
that they were able to, like, get the opportunity
to come to America.
So the first thing they did when we landed
was go find a church.
It was hard for them to find a job.
And then my dad, he heard about the TDC.
He works really hard.
He goes to work at the prison at, like, 7:00
and then comes, like, at 6:00 in the morning,
and then he goes to church.
- But now there are many that have come to this land,
even though they have their two eyes open,
but, spiritually, they are blind.
When I was leaving,
some of my fellow ministers in charge went,
"Oh, you're going to Texas?
That's more of a Republican state."
There were not much Africans here then.
When I got the job in the prison,
I look at the inmates.
I look at the environment.
I said, "Can I cope in this place?"
But 95% of my congregation work in the prison.
♪ ♪
But I will travel long distance.
Some of us travel in the air for 14 hours.
- I was born in Nigeria.
We were really poor back there, you know.
Some nights we weren't able to, like, get food,
and we had to buy it on credit.
That was, like, what we thought
was gonna be, like, daily life.
And I'm really grateful we're here.
- Now, those of us that work with the state corrections,
when you talk to some of these offenders--
- I get a lot of haircuts at the prison
because they give out free haircuts
to, like, people who work there
or, like, their family and all that.
- Your folks are working at a prison.
How has that affected your life?
- I think...
- Or not, you know? I mean, it's just there.
Stuff goes on behind those walls, but...
- I was able to, like, talk to a lot of the inmates
and just know their story.
And I don't like the way prisons are
in, like, the United States at all.
I don't like the way they are.
They just treat them like animals.
And it's like, these are people.
They're human beings, man.
- What are the odds you ever work at TDCJ?
- Low. I'm not--I don't see myself working there.
- Not for you. - And I'm not going to.
So... [laughs] - Yeah.
Ten years from now, what's Tega doing,
do you think, if you had to... - Modeling. Modeling.
That dream, like, it kind of directly, like, interferes
with, like, what my parents think.
- Yeah, my parents were a little slow to understand
what I was doing in the arts. - Yeah.
- I was about 30 when they finally said, "Oh, okay."
I see some of myself in Pastor John's son, Tega.
He wants to be an artist, move away,
and challenge himself in a bigger environment.
But he still loves Huntsville.
- I think I fit in in Huntsville,
but not to, like, the scale I would
in Austin.
Growing up in such a small town,
it's like, it gets boring, you know.
Like, things just remain too stagnant sometimes.
[camera beeping]
[shutter clicking]
And everybody knows everybody.
There's no bullying.
Bullying is not a problem
at Huntsville High School, I don't think.
But I'd say in the last, like, three years,
Huntsville has been growing, like, really fast,
like, ridiculously fast.
♪ ♪
The way I look at Texas now, it's way different
from, like, what you'll hear in history books,
because Texas is, like, one of the most diverse states.
It's a very open culture. It's accepting.
And I feel like you won't get--
you won't know about Texas until you live here.
[indistinct chatter]
Maybe this is just my perspective
as, like, a Huntsvillian and Texan.
These are the people I've grown up with
for, like, most of my life.
So it feels so tight-knit.
And it just feels like everybody's, like,
gonna be there for the rest of your lives.
And we came from a small town.
We're all Huntsville kids. - Yeah.
- We can't just, like, lose that sense of identity
and, like, where we came from, you know.
- She's from, like, Portland, so it's...
[indistinct chatter]
- And then I became Buzzy, which is another thing.
♪ ♪
And that allowed me to go to more football games.
And I was like, "Oh, wow, I'm really, like--
I have pride in where I come from."
I bleed green, you know. - [laughs] They got you.
It happened eventually. - [laughing]
- Yeah, but...
- You will the rest of your life.
- [laughs]
♪ ♪
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- This will be my 12th execution
I've covered since I've been in Huntsville.
Been here a little over a year.
This is a Dallas County man
that was convicted
for murdering his stepsons and his wife.
And it looks like we already have
a few protesters lining up.
- You can be Robert Sparks,
and you're gonna be executed,
because you're poor, you're Black,
you're mentally ill.
- I'm in the inmate's witness room
with any family or friends.
Covering executions-- the first time I covered one,
I was nervous as heck.
I had nightmares for a few days.
Now I've got to a point where it doesn't bother me.
- We know that the state of Texas
has no right to execute anybody!
- Even as journalists, we're kind of called murderers
as we're walking in.
- [speaking indistinctly]
For his mental health.
He should not be executed tonight.
- I came to Texas 35 years ago,
and I think it would have been the second execution
that the state carried out that I came to.
But I'd say that I've been to 90% of the executions
that have taken place.
- We are here because we oppose every single execution,
whether people are innocent or guilty.
- I like to try to keep the victims
as well as the offender in my prayers
while I'm on the corner,
because there are real victims.
While I'm here, I spend a lot of time
imagining the conversations
that take place between the parents and the children
in the cars that drive by,
because I think that's the ultimate measure
of the justness of what we do.
Can we rightly explain it to our children?
- We know that what is happening tonight
is wrong!
- They give us these.
When you're part of the support group,
they issue these packets.
It's just the one picture of him.
No pictures of anyone else.
I have no sympathy for him.
I think he's 45 today.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
My cousin was 30 years old.
♪ ♪
- Word of God says, you know, that an eye for an eye
and tooth for a tooth.
I know that was in the Old Testament.
But it also said we must obey the laws of the land.
So, if the law of the land is say,
"Murder him, kill him because of the crime he did,"
so be it.
So it's two blues for each son,
each brother, and their mom.
When they release it, for me, you know,
it means they finally can rest.
They can rest in heaven.
I know it'll make 'em feel better.
♪ ♪
[upbeat music]
- Yeah, baby!
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
- Hey, JB, I saved you.
[cheers and applause] - Let's go, Hornets!
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- Tonight Texas has another notch in their belt.
This execution should never have happened
given the facts in this case--never.
- It was a full room.
There was four members of the inmate's family,
three state officials, three from victim services,
three law enforcement, and I was the only media.
He was very remorseful.
Yeah, he was very apologetic to both the inmate
and the victim's family.
It was a very...
somber environment.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- In the last few decades, support for the death penalty
has dropped from a high in the 80s
down to its current level in the 50s.
It seems to be dying very slowly of,
of all things, old age.
♪ ♪
As more people come to truly understand how expensive,
arbitrary, racist, and classist it is
and that there are sentencing options,
like life without parole,
executions are way down, even in Texas.
Maybe the end will come with a bang,
like across-the-board moratoriums,
or a whimper, a slow trickle down to none.
But I wish I wasn't so sure the final holdout,
the very last execution in our country,
will be carried out in my hometown.
♪ ♪
[bright tone]