"This programme contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing." "The death penalty exists in 34 states of the United States of America." "Currently, only 16 states actually perform executions." "Executions are carried out by lethal injection." "Utah is the only state that until recently allowed the option of a firing squad." "As a German, coming from a different historical background, and being a guest in the United States," "I respectfully disagree with the practice of capital punishment." "In order to film a death row inmate, you have to be invited by him in writing." "Then the warden of the prison has to give his approval, and the rules are you only get one hour on camera." "Hank Skinner has been on death row, at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, for 17 years." "Those lights are bright!" "Whoa, man!" "Hi, glad to meet you, Jeff, I'm Hank." "In 1995, he was convicted of a triple homicide in Pampa, Texas." "A crime which he vehemently denies having committed." "I would like to make two things clear at the beginning." "One, I'm not an advocate of capital punishment." "OK." "Second, I..." "OK." "Neither am I!" "I can imagine!" "Knowing that you are very much into your quest to prove your innocence, what we are doing here is not an instrument for proving your innocence." "Oh, I understand that, he already told me." "Fact is you are here on death row, and you are different than we outside on the other side of this glass." "We do not know when we are going to die, and how we are going to die." "How familiar are you with the details and the rituals?" "Very, very." "I was within 20 minutes of execution." "I had had my last visits, they took me over there to the Walls, I was in the death house, so..." "I have a priest who supports me, that's from the Vatican." "And he came over here and delivered the Last Rites." "He brought an apostolic blessing from the Pope." "They anointed me with oil, on my hands and my head, so I had had extreme unction, the Last Rites, Confirmation, Communion." "I went through the whole thing." "The only thing was they didn't kill me." "I ate my last meal, I was..." "What was in the last meal, if I may ask?" "I had three pieces of Popeyes-style fried chicken." "Not from Popeyes - they fixed it here, but it was spicy." "I had two catfish filets." "I had a bowl each, a little small finger bowl of boiled eggs that was ground up." "Bacon bits for the salad." "Ranch dressing, tartar sauce, onions, and shredded cheese, cheddar cheese." "And a bacon cheeseburger." "And a large order of fries, and a big pitcher of chocolate milkshake." "And your holding cell is only five, six steps away from the gurney?" "Yes." "It's just a barred-front cell." "As I was sitting there eating and talking on the phone," "I could look to my left and I could see the doorway." "I could see the gurney, I could see the arm boards." "I could see the microphone hanging down, and I could see the windows where the witnesses watch through there." "So I was literally looking at my death, while I was sitting there, eating." "I wasn't bothered by it at all." "You were not afraid?" "No." "You know, in the days leading up to this, when I had the date, two of my best friends were up there on death watch with me." "And my first date was February 24th." "Sigala had a date, March 2nd." "And Maxwell had a date, March 11th." "Maxwell was my best friend here." "We'd been side by side in the cells for three years together, down on F-Pod." "So I was thinking, "Well, at least I don't have to watch them die, because I'm going first", you know what I'm saying?" "So that was some consolation." "And as the time drug on, it got closer and closer." "I got within seven days of execution, February 24th." "And the judge agreed that the warrant was no good, it was improperly drawn." "And so he modified my date forward 30 days to March 24th." "So now I'm immediately after Sigala and Maxwell." "So, more or less, I had to watch them die." "Then I had to go over there myself." "I wasn't scared in the sense of dying, and I'm not gonna exist anymore, OK?" "I was scared of the blackness, the unknown." "You know what I mean?" "You get closer and closer and closer, and they're gonna kill you, they're gonna kill you, they're gonna kill you." "This ain't something you do every day." "You don't go over there and lay down and die every day, you know?" "How does time function?" "Does it stand still or does it race?" "It does everything." "It depends upon your mood." "Tell me about time." "Some days..." "Well, really there's no sense of time in here." "Although we can see the sunlight out the windows you know, we know when it's night and day... there is activity here 24 hours a day." "And the same activity." "They have SSis come in to clean the pod, they're banging around, making all kind of noise." "Same thing at night time." "Is there lots of noise?" "Yes, and they feed around the clock." "They feed lunch at 4:00pm in the afternoon." "They feed breakfast at 3:00am." "They feed lunch at 10:00am" "So, they feed all around the clock, so basically, it's very disorienting because lots of times you'll wake up and you'll not know where the hell you're at, or what meal it is," "because usually you wake up at meal time, that's when you'll be sleeping." "And they'll come and bang on your door." ""Hey, you gonna eat?", you know?" "You ask them, "What is it?", because what it is is how you figure out what time it is." "Time really has no meaning in here, you know?" "It's like my days have elongated from 28 to 34 hours." "The prison windows down there in my cell, they don't wash them, OK?" "So as it rains, it rains, it rains, it rains, it knocks up dust and dirt on the window, and so it's pretty much coated, so the view that you get of the world is like overcoated." "You know what I mean?" "It's like Leonardo da Vinci used to say - "saper vedere"." "It's not what you see, but how you see it." "Now, when you did this trip, and you are being transported from Polunsky Unit about 48, 50 miles to the death house?" "41." "Yes, 41." "41 miles, yes." "Do the guards shout out, "Dead man walking?" Things like that?" "No." "No." "That's movies." "Yes." "No, they never do that." "The people who handle you, when they come to pick you up at this unit, there's a major, a captain, a lieutenant, and a sergeant." "Four people in the van with you, OK?" "The driver, the front-seat passenger, the jump-seat driver that's in front of the dog cage." "There's a dog cage inside the van, and that's what you're locked in." "It's made out of this stuff right here." "And so it's like this." "And there's one guy sitting in front of it." "There's one guy sitting behind it, between the cage and the back doors." "They're very stern and sincere about what they want you to do." "They have a protocol." "They do this once a week, so they're very good at it, you know?" "They're the team who handles this, OK?" "They're the death house team." "That's all they do." "And they get paid extra pay for it." "They're required to tell you that if anyone tries to stop..." "There's a caravan, there's a car in front, and there's two chase cars behind, they're all armed to the teeth, OK?" "And they tell you, right off the bat," ""OK, look, if anybody tries to stop this van" ""and tries to get you out of here, we will kill you first."" "And they got guns." "I mean, the guy in the jump seat, this one back here's got a shotgun, this one in the front's got a pistol and a AR-15." "Hi-tech weaponry, you know?" "And they tell you, "We will shoot you first."" "So you need to know that." "So I couldn't free you if I tried?" "Even if I had a bazooka and a tank?" "No, all you would do is get me killed." "You would be dead before I could rescue you." "The Walls unit, in Huntsville, Texas, is where the death house is located." "It is a journey of some 40 miles from the Polunsky Unit, where they house all the male death row inmates." "On the drive in, the condemned catch a glimpse of the world out there, one last time." "The strangest thing for me was the people in the cars behind us." "They were pointing at me, like, you know, "Look, there they go!"" ""They got some prisoner in a van!", you know?" "I wonder what they would say if they knew that guy is going to die." "They're taking him to kill him." "When we cross the lake, you know, there's a certain smell that's on the water." "I always used to smell that when I would go catfishing at night." "Well, that made me think about that." "When we were going across that bridge, going to Huntsville, it's a very long bridge, you know?" "And it's got those expansion joints in it so every six or seven turns of the tyres - "pa-pump, pa-pump, pa-pump"" "I could tell you, there's 26 joints in that bridge." "26 "ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk."" "When they get you over there, you got from 1 o'clock to 6 o'clock." "Five hours." "It goes just like that." "Time is flying so fast." "At 5 o'clock, they take the phone away from you, OK?" "And from 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock, you're eating your last meal." "They start serving it to you at 4 o'clock." "You just have to pull your mattress back and they hand it to you in bowls." "OK, so I'm sitting there eating, talking on the phone." "The chaplain tells me to hang the phone up." ""I can't let you go any further," you know?" "You went 15 minutes, 13 minutes after or so." "I said, "Well, I tell you what, I want to make one more call."" "He said, "Who do you want to call?" I said, "I want to call my lawyer."" "And he says, "OK, I'll let you call your lawyer."" "So he dialled the number, the lawyer answers, "Hank?" And I said, "Yeah."" "He said, "It's Doug Robinson" - my lead counsel." "And he says, "Hank?" I said, "Yeah?"" "He said, "Man, you have the most uncanny sense of timing of any man I have ever met in my life."" "I said, "Why do you say that?"" "He said, "No sooner had I heard the click," ""the Supreme Court clerk just hung up the phone, and you came on the line."" "He said, "I didn't even hear the phone ring."" "And he said, "They granted you a stay."" "And when he said that, I couldn't hear anything." "Tears started running down my eyes and my legs gave out." "And I slid down the wall, and my ears were buzzing." "I felt like somebody had lifted a 1,000-pound weight off of my chest." "And I didn't realize that I felt like that until after this happened, so it was scary, you know what I mean?" "And so I thought, "Well, why am I so upset now?"" ""I should have been upset that they was going to kill me!"" "But I was handling that, you know what I'm saying?" "But this news, now I've got a stay." "And so I still have some of my food left sitting up there on the bunk, so I got to looking at that food, and suddenly I was ravenous." "I was eating it before, but I was eating it kinda slow." "But now I wanted to just devour it all." "So I got up and I grabbed the food, and I started eating it and I was just, I was so elated and so happy." "The chaplain told me, he said, "You look like God had touched you."" "He said, "You were just beatific."" "He said, "You were just beaming and smiling." ""Your eyes were all, you know?"" "And then the lieutenant comes in there and tells me, he says, "Your lawyer told us you got a stay?" I said, "Yeah."" "He said, "Listen, I need to tell you something." And I said, "What?"" "He said, "You see them two phones over there on that wall?"" "I said, "Yes, sir."" "He said, "That's the governor's line, and the attorney general's line."" ""Unless one of those phones ring," ""and tell us to stand down, this execution's going forward at 6:00pm" ""because we do not accept stays from defence counsel."" "And how long did it take until the phone rang?" "That was the longest 23 minutes of my life." "It was 5:13pm." "The phone did not ring until 20 minutes to 6 o'clock, then they got the official order to stand down." "The phone rung, the lieutenant went over there, picked it up smartly, got on the phone and said, "Hello!"" "And he said, "And you're sure?" And they said, "Yeah!"" "And he said, "And we're to stand down?"" "And they said, "There's no execution tonight."" "He said, "Thank you very much"" "and hung the phone up and said, "Skinner, you got a stay."" "You know what was the saddest part of after I got the stay?" "I'm eating the last meal, and they're telling me," ""Here, give me them plates back."" "I said, "No, no, no, I'm gonna finish this." ""They fixed it for me, I'm gonna finish it"." "And so he said, "But we're gonna take you back to the Polunsky unit."" "And that's when it dawned on me, you know what I'm saying?" "The only thing is, they're gonna take me back over there to that hellhole I just came from." "Where we are sitting right now?" "Yes!" "And see, and it looks pretty nice out here, you know what I mean?" "It's a whole different story back there." "You don't see..." "Death row, we cannot see." "We are not allowed." "Yes, and I want to say this." "They do not treat us mean and they do not mistreat us." "That's got nothing to do with what it is." "What it is, is all these guys, the oppression, all these guys sentenced to death." "All these guys that are suffering this with me, OK?" "And so that's what makes it so bad." "It is a place of human bondage and human suffrage." "And you know, it's like in the night time, guys, you hear 'em crying." "You hear 'em call because they're suffering." "You know, I'm not sure how to explain it." "It's just a bad place, you know what I mean?" "It's a bad place." "They kill somebody here about once a week." "So I told him, I said, "Man, my heart's beating pretty hard."" "I've got high blood pressure, I have to take medicine for it." ""I haven't had my medication this evening."" "He said, "Why didn't you take it?" I said, "They were gonna kill me!"" ""What's the point of taking medicine?" "What's that gonna do?"" "He's like, "I see your point," ""I'll get the nurse down here to see you, but gimme them plates back"." "I said "No, I'm gonna finish eating this meal." ""You just go get the nurse"." "And so, the chaplain tells me," ""You know, Skinner, you really blow my mind." I said, "Why?"" "He said, "Most of the guys," ""when they're two weeks out, and they want to get the meal," ""they got big eyes - they want everything." ""But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty like today," "" - you almost died - they can't eat nothing."" "He said, "They sit here and talk on the phone," ""and cry with their family." ""Then it's time to go, and the meal's virtually untouched"." "And he said the prisoners in the ODR, which is the Officers' Dining Room, are the ones who prepare these meals." "And he said, "They do the best they can for two reasons." ""One reason is, they know it'll be the last thing you eat on this earth, and so they want it to be as good as it can be for you." ""The second thing is, they know you're gonna be so damn nervous" ""you can't eat it anyway, and when it comes back to them, they're gonna get it and they're gonna eat it!"" "And he says, "So they're gonna be sorely disappointed today."" "So we were laughing about that." "Hank Skinner's troubles began here in the North Texas town of Pampa, 50 miles east of Amarillo." "Population, 18,000." "In 1993, Skinner was living here with Twila Busby and her two mentally impaired sons." "We wanted to speak with a reporter who covered the case back then." "David Bowser, we have looked into the case of Hank Skinner." "How did you come across the case yourself?" "Well, I came to work that New Year's morning, and was met at the door by our police reporter, who..." "Still hung-over?" "(LAUGHS) Well, no." "She doesn't drink, and I didn't get the chance, but I was met at the door by her, and she said, "We have a triple."" "And I said, "What?"" "And she said, "We have a triple homicide."" "So I went from a New Year's morning, that I had no main story for the front page, to having a main story, so we spent the next week covering the murder case." ""Triple" meant good news for you!" "It meant good news, in the perverse world of journalism, yes." "And, uh, what had happened?" "Supposedly, Twila Busby, Hank Skinner's girlfriend, had gone to a party." "Skinner had passed out on the couch... a combination of cold medicine and drugs, and he was..." "He had a cold at the time." "And when she got back, apparently they had a fight, and she died, her two mentally impaired sons were both stabbed." "Hank Skinner maintains that he was so drunk and so spaced out, and found after he was arrested with such a high level of alcohol in his blood that it was impossible for him to even walk, stand up or do anything." "That was the testimony of the doctor that examined him, and yet he still made his way from the house where he was to his girlfriend's house, to have his hand fixed." "Uh..." "I don't know." "Well, I think we should have a look at the crime scene, if you do not mind?" "Not at all." "We are expecting a snowstorm." "I'd like to do it before the snow." "This is downtown Pampa, before the blizzard." "On this very afternoon," "Hank Skinner's son found himself in the middle of a storm of his own." "His son still lives here." "His son and his former wife still live in Pampa, and his son is on trial presently... in fact, the jury is out right now." "He is accused of kidnapping his girlfriend, and the son could face life in prison." "But..." "Girl he's accused of kidnapping, they're now engaged, they're planning on getting married, so he's bought the ring." "What is going on with his family?" "I don't know." "I don't believe in criminal energy itself." "You believe in what, then?" "(LAUGHS)" "I believe in what's going to happen next." "This is the neighbourhood in Pampa, as forlorn as downtown, where the murders took place." "This is where Twila Busby and Hank Skinner lived with Twila's two sons." "The night of the murder, she was beaten to death in the front room." "The son..." "Both sons were stabbed." "One of them in his bunk bed in the back bedroom, where they found him, and the other one came, apparently, out the front door, down the sidewalk, all the way down the street," "down the sidewalk, and to the house on the corner, which is no longer there, knocked at the door, and then collapsed on the front porch." "You are speaking about a sidewalk, but there's no sidewalk." "There was. (LAUGHS)" "And Hank Skinner himself?" "Was there blood evidence on him, as far as you remember?" "My understanding was that there was blood on his clothing and he had cut his hand and she was sewing it up." "She is who?" "Uh, Andrea, his former girlfriend." "So he had a girlfriend and a former girlfriend nearby?" "Yup." "That's where he was arrested, the sheriff and the District Attorney investigator found him over there, standing in a closet in a back bedroom of the house trailer." "We're going over to the house where the boy was found." "He came down here, there were drops of blood, and he apparently stayed on the sidewalk." "Came down to the corner... over... would have come up this way, up on the porch." "And there was a house here." "The gentleman that lived here found the boy collapsed on the porch, and called police." "From there, they tried to follow the blood back." "Drops of blood back to that house, and that's where they found Twila Busby, and initially they couldn't identify her." "Why?" "She was so badly beaten." "She was bludgeoned to death, the two boys were stabbed." "Here in Texas, particularly in this area," "I think most of the population is fundamental Christian." "Let's say news hit the town that Skinner has been executed." "What's going to happen then?" "I don't think there'll be any public outcry." "This is a very conservative community, so..." "And there's probably more interest outside of Pampa now than there is in, so..." "But they would welcome it, they would probably celebrate and feel good about it?" "They would feel justice had been done." "What is your opinion about justice in a case like Skinner?" "I have no problem with the death penalty." "I question how it's interpreted many times and whether justice has been done, but I have no problem with the death penalty." "I have no doubt that Hank Skinner is guilty of what he did." "If somehow evidence comes back that exonerates him... ..that's even a better story, so..." "We'll see." "After a hiatus of five months, we were allowed to visit Hank Skinner again, on death row at the Polunsky Unit." "In the interim, the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in his favour." "For the first time, a convicted person could sue the state to gain access to evidence not brought forth in their trial." "Skinner's argument is that in his case, the evidence would point to someone else." "Mr Skinner, last time we saw you, you looked different." "Oh, yes..." "What happened?" "..I've gotten a little bushier." "Well, I'm a level two." "They moved me down to a different wing and so I don't have to shave." "I can look like I want to look like and so that's..." "I'd rather look like me than look like what they want me to look like, you know?" "So I have to give up all my privileges to do that, you know, in order to... express my identity but I'd rather be me, myself than what they want me to look like." "So that's where I'm at now." "I'm on the punitive wing, you know?" "So, I can't buy any commissary, I can't possess any property but there's a freedom in that too because down there they can't tell me nothing, they can't tell me what to do." "If they tell me what to do," "I just blow 'em off and not listen to 'em." "Yeah." "Even though I'm locked up in a prison, it's a very..." "Like a freedom, an experience, you know?" "I'm released from the rules," "I don't have to pay attention to nothing nobody says." "I can stay in my cell all day and do what I want." "The only problem is I've only got what I've got to work with, which ain't much!" "(LAUGHS)" "My legal material, which I take great pride in, and books that my wife sends me to read." "The book of yours, that I just finished reading, yeah." "Now, a big change happened." "There was this case at the Supreme Court of the United States." "Yes." "Tell us about it because it's big." "Yes, it is, it is big." "Well... (CLEARS THROAT)" "..when I lost my appeal in the fifth Circuit, my lawyers came to me and told me, they said, "Listen," you know, they said, "this is serious." "We should have won this case here." ""And you're now out of criminal appeals." ""So, we don't know what to do," you know, "Do you have any ideas?"" "I did have an idea, and I told them what I wanted to do." "At first, they said, "No, that's not going to work." ""The Supreme Court has never allowed a prisoner" ""to sue the District Attorney." "They're sovereignty immune." ""There's nothing you can do." "Forget that." I said, "Wait!", and I went back to this Osborne decision, which was the case preceding mine, in the DNA, and I told 'em, "Look, look at this, and look at this." ""I think because of what this says, we can do this and make it fly." ""I think it'll work."" "And the chances of them hearing it were practically zilch." "They take less than one tenth of one percent of the cases presented to them every year." "So, finally they set their oral arguments for October the 13th, and that's a very significant date for me because Friday October the 13th is the day that Prince Philip the Fair gave up the Templars and got them all slaughtered by some of my ancestors." "Yeah." "I took that as a good sign, as an omen." "I believe in portents." "I'm a hillbilly and I'm superstitious anyway!" "Are you familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh?" "I am, yes." "Are you?" "Yes." "You know what God told Gilgamesh...?" "Hank Skinner has a tendency to lose himself in obscure historical events." "Like the persecution of the sect of the Templars in medieval France, or in the Gilgamesh opus, the earliest human literature of the Ancient Sumerians." "..god told Gilgamesh, "Live thy life well," ""for it is appointed to man, who wants to die," ""let thy belly be full..."" "For him, everything holds a secret connection." "His own persecution, events, dates." "This guy, who was the Texas Solicitor General, he got killed in a plane crash, eight months to the day that they were going to kill me." "And in my case, it's a woman and two men who are dead, and in his plane crash it's a woman and two men who died." "This man, who tried to get me killed, himself is dead." "You understand what I'm saying?" "That's a significant portent to me, you know, so..." "Can you translate the ruling very briefly for a taxi driver?" "OK, the ruling says that, for the first time in the history of the United States, you can sue a District Attorney, to force her to turn over DNA evidence in a capital case if she withheld it and refuses to let it, post trial, after trial." "Congratulations... because it's way beyond your case." "It's a landmark." "Now any person, who has DNA, or not just DNA evidence, but any forensic evidence which could prove them innocent, if the state is withholding it and refuses to turn it over, you can sue them and force them to do so." "But you know, the thing about it is, is that a lawsuit like that should be so unnecessary because any District Attorney has an ethical obligation to release the innocent and if he's holding somebody that he knows could be innocent," "he has an ethical obligation to test the evidence and see if they're innocent." "And if they are, he should let them go." "And in your case, it is within the discretion of the District Attorney just to say, "I am handing it over."" "Yes." "Without lawsuit, without anything." "Just, er..." "Yes." "Yes." "She is in sole custody of the evidence." "She is the custodian of the evidence and she could turn it over to my lawyers." "She doesn't have to have a court order, permission of the judge or anything else." "She can just say, "Here, go test it and let's find out."" "And I don't understand why she wouldn't want to do that." "The District Attorney's essential argument is that she's satisfied with the overwhelming amount of evidence against Skinner found at the crime scene." "According to her, he's just over-extending the legal process in order to further delay his execution." "Twila and her sons were killed in the house using implements that came from our house." "The two knives that they say were the murder weapons, laid on our kitchen counter." "They were the sandwich-making knives." "I used those knives on a daily basis, you know?" "Fixing sandwiches for myself and for the kids, you know?" "We had a bunch of little ragamuffin kids that lived in the neighbourhood," "I fed them too, you know?" "Crack-mama kids, you know?" "So I took care of them too." "Another problem Skinner had with his defence was the cut that the police found on his hand when they arrested him." "Skinner explains it this way." "My hand had a separating wound." "I just had the drainage tube removed where it was surgically worked on." "And it was still leaking, so you know..." "But do you have a scar there?" "Oh yes, a very bad one." "It goes from here, all the way up to here, and from here, all the way out to there." "I nearly filleted the thumb plumb off my hand, it was a shop accident." "You can see that there's mass missing out of my hand, it's all sunk in." "Look at this one." "You see the difference, right?" "So, I've got less than 48% use left in this hand." "My thumb will go only to there." "This thumb goes all the way to here." "If ever the evidence in question is tested, the results might be inconclusive, incriminate him further, or, as Skinner hopes, point to someone else." "This guy who killed Twila, I firmly believe it was her uncle." "I believe he snatched those knives off the counter and used them to kill the boys." "That makes perfect sense." "But he touched them one time." "I touched them 650,000 times." "I used them every day, so did other people in the house." "So, let's just play the odds, like we're in Vegas, you know?" "What are the odds of his DNA being on it versus my DNA?" "So, the chances are if we test this stuff," "I could be executed for fixing brisket sandwiches, that's what it amounts to." "(LAUGHS)" "That sounds insane!" "(LAUGHS)" "But you have to laugh or cry, you know." "So anyway, I think what holds the greatest promise is the jacket that was found beside her body because it's absolutely not my jacket." "It's a man's extra large, 44, 46, which was the size that he wore." "It has sweat stains in the armpits, the cuffs and the forearms of the sleeves have medium velocity impact blood spatter all over them and the criminalist who's the best in the country, Max Courtney, who examined this evidence," "he says that that jacket was worn by the assailant." "That's how the blood is all over the forearms and the sleeves cos as he was killing her with the club, it's splattering all, back all over him." "So, I think that it was definitely him but... we're going to have to have conclusive evidence." "It can't just be something here or there, you know, something ephemeral." "It's got to be something that's dead-on." "But the chances of it being me, in an innocent way, are so great because I used those knives every day." "And so, you know, the state is not going to be willing to see that." "If the, if the, if the DNA on the handle of that knife comes back to me, they're going to say, "Oh that's it!" "That proves it, he done it."" "And the public will be more than ready to kill me because they want to kill me anyway, you know what I'm saying?" "This is Hank Skinner 17 years ago at the time of his trial." "His appearance has changed wildly over the years, but the threat over him has remained a constant." "Even after the Supreme Court's ruling in his favour, yet another date for his execution was set and subsequently withdrawn." "Through it all, the only refuge for Skinner has been his dreams." "I look at those newspaper ads, and I look at each thing in there that I remember stuff." "Avocados, I would kill somebody for...." "No, I wouldn't, but I'm joking, but I mean, I would do anything," "I would kill somebody for an avocado right now, you know what I'm saying?" "Just to be able to peel that thing, man, and cut it into slices, and put some salt and pepper on it and eat it." "And if I had a bottle of tequila to go with it?" "Woo-hoo, man, I'm telling you, that is the best taste in the world, man!" "Avocados, lime and tequila?" "Man, man!" "I dream about that all the time." "And right when I get the taste, when I dream about it, when I'm getting the taste of it in my mouth, I wake up." "And I'm back in this damn cell with this concrete walls and this concrete bunk." "It's hard to explain, to convey this where people out there could understand it." "They go to the grocery store every day." "I live in a little concrete box for the last 17 years, and the only thing I get to eat is what they decide to give me, and it comes on a tray and it's already prepared," "and there's nothing extra, you know what I'm saying?" "It's the leanest, most unappetising food that you could possibly imagine." "The movie where Werner Herzog ate his shoe?" "Imagine that every day." "It's about the same thing. (LAUGHS)" "It tastes like cardboard, man, you know?" "Sometimes, they get something that's got some flavour, but not very often." "And so, just to be in a grocery store, like one of those mega-grocery stores where they got all this stuff, man, and I could be in there and I could just pick anything I wanted." "If I just had $1,000 in my hand," "I'd get me some sash cord and tie two or three grocery carts together, end to end like a train, and just fill 'em up!" "And go to the..." "I don't need the express lane, I can take my time." "I'm free now, you know what I'm saying?" "And go to the cash register, and just watch them ring that stuff up." "Ring that stuff up." "And I just told my daughter, in a letter that I wrote her," "I think about a washing machine all the time." "I have to wash all my clothes by hand." "You see how white these are?" "They don't come out of the laundry like that." "I had a dream the other night I had bought a brand-new washing machine, and I had me a frozen margarita in one hand, the left hand roll in the other hand, the lid up on the washing machine," "and I was putting the clothes in it and pouring the detergent in it and it started washing, and I started crying, because I was just so damn grateful to watch that thing turn, and I don't have to do it no more by hand, you know?" "This is what it does to your hands when you wash clothes here by hand, because the sink is round, you know?" "And so you have to knead the clothes and turn 'em, so your knuckles are constantly in the bottom of the sink." "Now both of my fingers are crooked because of this, you know?" "For years, 17 years of doing this, that's what it's done to my hands." "You know what I mean?" "I dared myself to start thinking again about the future." "I had quit thinking about the future altogether, just live moment to moment, you know." "I don't know if I'm going to have any future, because they might kill me." "Let's speak about the future." "Close your eyes and think about the day you're going to be released from here." "What are you going to do then?" "What's the first thing?" "I have dreamed it so many times, it's got to come true." "I think that all the time." "That's the only thing that keeps me from going insane in here." "You know, my first-born daughter - I have three children." "I got two daughters and a son and all three have different mamas." "The son is the youngest." "I got a middle daughter who's 28 and my oldest daughter, she just turned 30." "Her birthday is one month to the day after mine, OK?" "She was my first-born, and when I brought her home from the hospital," "I was 19 years old and I was just infatuated with this child." "Look what I did, I made this!" "Can you believe this?" "I did this myself, you know what I'm saying, and had a lot of fun doing it, too!" "(LAUGHS)" "And so, but I was..." "When I brought her home from the hospital, she was a daddy's girl the moment she came out of her mama's womb." "She was not sleeping in the baby bed." "The only place she wanted to sleep was on Daddy's chest." "She cut her teeth on my collarbone." "When she was little, up until she was six or eight months old, she wouldn't sleep anywhere but on my chest." "Like a little frog with her legs pulled up to her belly, you know, and her arms wrapped around my neck, and she'd have her little mouth right there on the side of my neck." "Every few minutes she'd wake up and start sucking on my neck, you know?" "And so, every morning, she would wake me up." "She would wake up, when I'd wake up, here's this baby right in my face, and when she learned to raise herself up, she's about six months old, she'd always be checking out my lips." "She loved my lips." "She'd always kiss me on the bottom lip, and then pat me on the cheek, like, "There you go." "That'll hold you," you know what I'm saying?" "When they almost killed me, she came back into my life." "25 years she's been absent, and so we've had some marvellous visits together, and her name is Natalie Jo, and I call her Queen Natalie Jo." "(LAUGHS)" "And there's just no way I can explain to you the bond that that child and I have and it's this glass, you know." "When she comes to see me, it's so sweet, because she's right there, but I can't touch her." "It's my own daughter, my own blood, and I can't even hug her." "I can't kiss her goodbye." "I want to put my face in her hair and smell her hair." "I want to pull her to me and hold her, I want to feel her, the warmth of her body against me, you know what I mean?" "That's the first thing." "The second thing is," "I want to do the same thing to my wife, and lots more. (LAUGHS)" "I want to be with my wife, you know?" "We have been together for 14 years, and I have not seen her in 28 months." "They took her off my visit list for bogus reasons, and so they won't let her come see me any more." "You know, I think about hugging 'em both at the same time, a three-way, cos my wife's small." "I think I can handle both of 'em." "Just pick 'em up off the ground and squeeze 'em together." "But at the same time, being so sad from losing everything earthly and dying, you know, I believe in the hereafter." "It's like going on a trip." "You're going to see something for the first time." "And then there's the unknown, you know?" "And you just vacillate between these three emotions." "It keeps getting... it's like, well, what will happen next when I get on the other side, you know?" "I'll be free of this flesh." "I'll be out of this flesh." "I could do, I can go however I want, and do whatever I want to do." "But will I still be, you know, am I still going to be spread out so, maybe not, nothing conscious, or what is it going to be, you know?" "So you think about that, then think about the unknown form, you know?" "It's permanent." "Whatever happens, you're stuck with it." "You can't come back. (LAUGHS) So... that's the scary part." "HARMONICA PLAYS" "Don't let them hurt me!" "'When I was a kid, I saw a Twilight Zone episode." "'It had Dennis Weaver." "He used to be McCloud.'" "When the scene comes on, he's in a jail cell, and the jailer is shaking his foot." "He's saying, "Blackie, Blackie, wake up, wake up!" ""Your mouthpiece is here!" So the guy wakes up, and he looks around and he realises he's on death row." "The lawyer comes in, sits down and says, "I did everything I could," ""but the court's not hearing it and you better prepare yourself," ""because they're going to kill you, OK?"" "Then here comes his girlfriend, she's blonde-headed, sits there and she's crying and wringing her handkerchief, you know." "They take him in there, and they put him in, it's a gas chamber, and they put him in the gas chamber." "And just as they drop the pellets, the telephone rings, and it was the governor with the stay and he screams, "Ahh!"" "They killed him, and he wakes up, and he's in another jail cell." "And the jailor says, "Whitey!" "Wake up!"" "It was Blackie before. "Whitey, wake up!" "Your lawyer's here!"" "And another lawyer comes in, and he starts talking to this guy." "He's rubbing his head, "Man, I was having a hell of a bad dream." ""I dreamed that they killed me!"" "TELEPHONE RINGS" "The lawyer tells him, "Hey, man, I did everything I could do," ""but it didn't do any good and this is going through," ""you'd better prepare yourself." "The girlfriend comes in." "This time it's a redhead." "She's got big breasts." "She sits down and starts talking, and you can see the look in his eyes." "He don't know this woman, you know!" "And she's telling him, "Oh, you know, I've had your kids" ""and Frankie Jr, and this and that and another thing,"" "and he's sitting looking at her like, "Who in the hell are you?"" "And so they take him in there, and it's the hangman's noose." "They're on a hangman's scaffold." "They put the noose around his neck, and they hit the lever right as the phone's ringing." "It's the governor with a stay!" "Pa-choo!" "It's too late!" "He starts screaming again." "He wakes up in another jail cell." "This goes on over and over again." "HARMONICA PLAYS" "Hey!" "Until, finally, he just wakes up screaming. (LAUGHS)" "And he don't quit screaming!" "And so, when they put me on Texas death row," "I really identified with that, how he feels, because, in a way, that is what has happened to me." "So I got the stay, I was resurrected." "Did you see the tie-down team?" "What kind of guys are they?" "They're all a pretty good size." "The main one, the major is a pretty good size." "Oh, boy, he looks like played football in high school." "They're all pretty good sized." "They're not, oh... you know what I was thinking?" "I was thinking, you know, if you were a serial killer, and you didn't want to get arrested by the police, man, this would be the job to have." "(LAUGHS)" "You know what I'm saying?" "You know, I'm looking at them, and that's what's going through my mind and they see I'm giving them the once-over, because when they're looking at me, they're kind of... kind of mean mugging me, because of the way I'm just staring at 'em," "you know what I'm saying?" "And I'm not saying anything." "So they probably think, "This one here, look at him!" ""He looks like a damn killer." "We'll probably have to fight him."" "But that's what's going through my mind!" "(LAUGHS)" "I was thinking, "Damn, here's a whole pack of serial killers," ""and they can get away with it." (LAUGHS)" "The... the insanity of it, you know what I'm saying?" "It's like you feel like you're in a Twilight Zone moment, man, because it's like reality, they just grabbed it and twisted it inside out, and here you go, now, it just doesn't even..." "you can't..." "I couldn't imagine working on a team like that, where I'm going to go strap somebody down and kill them, you know?" "When you did this trip, and you knew you were going to Walls Unit, to the Death House, could you see the landscape out there?" "When we got to the end of the driveway," "I was so happy to be leaving this place." "I hate this place." "I despise this place." "It was almost like seeing something alien." "Now say if someone took you to, like, Israel and set you down in the middle of the Holy Land, and it's the very first time you'd ever saw it." "You know, you'd be in shock, in awe." "You know what I mean?" "So when you see stuff like that, and you know that you're going to die, you know, at certain points over there, I was just laughing insanely to myself, because it's like, this can't be real. (LAUGHS)" "There's no way in hell that this is really happening." "I'm having a bad dream, and I'll wake up in a minute and somebody will say, "What's wrong with you, man?" ""You're talking in your sleep again," you know." "Inspired by Hank Skinner, we took this trip for ourselves." "The landscape bleak, forlorn." "And yet everything out there, all of a sudden, looked magnificent, as if entering the Holy Land..." "..Hank Skinner's Holy Land." "The Happy Worm Bait Shop in the Holy Land." "We even saw something which looked like a few stray apostles on the road to death." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "This programme contains content and description that some viewers may find disturbing." "The death penalty exists in 34 states of the United States of America." "Currently, only 16 states actually perform executions." "Executions are carried out by lethal injection." "Utah is the only state that, until recently, allowed the option of a firing squad." "As a German, coming from a different historical background, and being a guest in the United States," "I respectfully disagree with the practise of capital punishment." "Florida currently has nearly 400 inmates on Death Row." "The main population is held at the state prison in Raiford." "James Barnes is one of them." "I'd love to have you do, James, is sign this." "OK." "Are you able to do that?" "Well, I can put a mark there for you, so." "In 1998, James Barnes was given a life sentence for the murder of his wife." "However, seven years into this sentence, he confessed to a previous murder, which landed him on death row." "Even though I knew that Barnes still had an ongoing appeal," "I was determined to be straightforward with him." "Mr Barnes you should know that, sympathising with your quest to have procedural injustices corrected in your case, it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you." "Correct." "However, I really am intrigued by the question, how does the world outside appear." "Do you see the sky?" "Do you see trees?" "Do you see a bird nesting somewhere?" "I'm all the way in the back in a cell, where I can see..." "We have two barriers, two walkways, hallways as you would, with bars separating them." "About ten feet away is a window, but I can't see anything but the building across from me." "But if I look down at the end," "I can see through a window that's about 15 feet away and I can see some green, um, grass." "I can see some trees that are 700, 800 yards away." "It's something, and, of course, every once in a while a bird will nest for a few days in one of the window sills, but..." "You have observed that?" "I have observed that." "And how big of an event is that?" "For me, uh, I appreciate it." "But I've had cellmates where if a bird chirps, they just go ballistic." "They can't stand that it's making noise." "It's just there's different, um, personalities." "Yeah, and for you?" "For me, I love the rain." "I love when it, I can hear it beat on the roof." "When was the last time you experienced rain on you?" "I would have to say that it was in 2002." "So, eight years ago." "Yes." "You had rain on you?" "Yes, I was in open population." "You know I've been, in December I'll have been locked up for 13 years." "Yes." "But I haven't spent that whole time on death row." "Yeah." "Well, it was for a previous conviction." "Correct." "On murder charges." "Correct." "In 1997, Barnes was living in Melbourne on the east coast of Florida." "He already had accumulated a considerable rap sheet and was trying to get back together with his estranged wife, Linda." "What happened in the crime was, he and she," "I don't know if they were making amends but he was staying there somewhat." "She found some drugs." "They got into an argument over it." "He ended up grabbing her in what he calls a sleeper hold." "And basically..." "What is a sleeper hold?" "Where he took her neck and put it in the crook of his arm and started to choke her." "And actually what ends up happening is he chokes her to death, he strangles her to death." "And after he's dead, or after she's dead, he has to get rid of the body or make an attempt to get rid of the body and wasn't sure what he was going to do." "And so he put her in the closet, in one of the closets in the house so that if anyone came they might not see her." "And left her there for a period of time, trying to figure out what he could do to dispose of her." "When law enforcement comes at you, and you're cornered, this has happened to me several different times." "And describe how, cornered in which way?" "All right, I'm going to give you the worst incident that happened." "I was at my father's house." "I don't..." "This was..." "I was going to be arrested." "I didn't know what the charge was at the time, but I thought it was for this murder that I'm here on death row for." "And this was in 1988." "There was a knock on the door when, actually, it started with a squirrel in the backyard, looked at me, cos I used to feed it peanuts in the morning." "And it looked at me, and looked to the side and it bolted up a tree." "And I had the sliding glass door open and I looked outside and I saw a police officer with a shot gun and he ducked behind a palmetto bush." "I shut the door and stepped back like, did I just see that?" "I thought it was an illusion at first, so I opened the door and looked again and I didn't see him." "When I looked at the roof across, and there was a cop with a rifle pointed at me." "And that was terrifying, all right?" "And then I looked through the kitchen, out the jalousie windows and there was another cop with a pistol at the side of the house." "So I locked the doors and I went to the front and there was a knock." "And there was a guy I had went to school with who was a warrants officer with a big old .44" "Magnum at his side." "And I said, "Oh, my God."" "When I finally did come out of the house," "I had over 20 weapons pointed at me." "That was severe panic." "I..." "If I would have sneezed," "I would've been shot to pieces." "It was, um, the..." "You were in panic when the body of your wife was hidden in the closet?" "Correct." "It happened there?" "It's another incident." "This is another incident." "Yeah." "Um, uh..." "I was home, the police..." "Well, actually, her mother and her sister-in-law and her brother knocked on the door and I opened the door for them." "And they wanted to know where my wife was." "And I said that she was at an attorney's." "She was going to divorce me." "Um..." "Within an hour there was police surrounding the house." "They wanted to come in." "They wanted to search." "There was no way out." "It was severe panic." "Where was your wife?" "She was in a closet in the back bedroom." "Dead?" "Yes, yes, she was dead." "And what were his comments?" "Um, you know, he tried to play it off in the interview that it was all an accident." "That he had gotten mad at her." "He had put this choke hold on her to calm her down because she was getting out of control." "And that in so doing they fell to the floor and when they fell to the floor, he said he either must have broken her neck or, um..." "..in some form choked her." "Now, as we go through this interview and keep going on, he tells us and describes it quite vividly how he picked her up off the ground, and to the point where she's shaking and he notices that she urinates on herself," "which is a little bit different than we fell to the ground and this was an accident." "So as the interview goes on, of course, he gets much more descriptive and details you a very violent act, a very, vivid violent act in his memory of noting that she's shaking, noting that she urinates on her herself." "You know, so, he was cognizant of what's going on at that point in time and it's obvious in my mind, and of course it was to the legal system, that this was a premeditated act at that point, he was there to kill her." "And he made a very nasty, strange remark?" "You mentioned something." "He asked, I guess, I think you're talking about, he asked to have her ex-husband in that part of the interview, and that he would confess to the act and tell us the exact truth," "if the ex-husband was in the room, so that the ex-husband could relay her last minutes to her children, which to me is a very..." "It's another violation." "And, for me, he's doing that because that's the ultimate power trip for him." "He ends up going out with the power over the ex-husband, and the power over those children, by knowing that that's the last thing that they're going to now remember about their mother." "And his wife, you know, that's the last thing that they're going to remember is what he told of her last minutes." "And you know, to me, that's a violation to victims all over again." "And when he tried to manipulate the course of the interrogation before it really started, was it like a chess game?" "It very much was." "We were playing a big game, it really was, you know," "I called at one point, probably four hours into the interview, four or five hours, and I think this interview is about nine hours from the time I meet him down in our holding cells till we'd get finished." "And at some point in there I..." "And I want to say about five hours in," "I actually called my supervisor and said," ""You need to get somebody else here because I'm getting very tired", because, mentally, it was a big challenge of being able to do everything right so that this case could be prosecuted, because he was very, very smart in what he was saying." "I mean, even to bring up, you know, to ask me," ""What would an attorney tell me to do?"" "And of course my answer back was," ""What do you think they'd tell you to do, James?"" "And then his answer back was," ""Well, they'd tell me not to talk, don't you think?"" "I said, "That's probably what'd they do." ""But you know it's up to you what you do." ""Do you want an attorney?"" "And then we would move off of that subject." "You know, he wanted me to make a mistake in answering that question, once again to set up a suppression issue for him, to have it thrown out." "Somehow to trap you on his Miranda rights?" "Yes, sure, because he knew." "And so it would be on tape." "Sure." "And you would somehow persuade him not to have an attorney present, or something like this." "You know, at one point in there he said I will talk to you and tell you everything if we're not on tape, but you can take all the notes you want, knowing that we tape everything." "So, putting me in a position that there would be nothing memorialized, my word against his." "Um, I think I'll win that battle, but it muddies the water and I was trying not to do anything, I knew the type of case we had." "And he did too." "He knew he had a problem." "He has a dead woman in his closet and he's the only person in there, you know, who did that." "I mean that's, he knows he has a real problem with this case." "So, his best bet is to try to find something, technically, that I do wrong in order to get it thrown out." "And that's what he was doing." "But very, very intelligent man." "There's no question about that." "Very well schooled in the legal system and the criminal justice system and trying to use it for his own good at that point." "I'm very impressed with your abilities to defend yourself in court." "For example, in the appeal papers that I've seen, you act as your own attorney." "Yes, I did, under the 6th amendment of the constitution of the United States," "I have a right to representation." "Yes." "The other side of that coin is I have a right to represent myself." "Yeah." "You invoked the so-called Ferreta Right." "Right, the Ferreta." "Which means you would not be allowed to defend yourself if you were planning to commit state-ordered suicide." "So, the clock is ticking." "Right now, it started October 4th." "I have one year to have my next appeal complete." "James Barnes is awaiting execution for a different crime, one that took place right next to this marina in Melbourne." "Imprisoned for his wife's killing," "Barnes converted to Islam, and during the holy month of Ramadan, decided to seek atonement." "He confessed to a previous murder." "Patricia Miller, a nurse, lived alone in this apartment complex." "Leaving all his clothes outside in a bag, Barnes, stark naked, entered and watched her for hours from a closet as she did household chores and watched TV." "The murder became known as the Burning Bed." "He made a determination that he wanted to sexually assault and kill her." "He took off all his clothes, went into her apartment, watched her for a period of time and then assaulted her, bound her, tried to strangle her." "I don't believe she died at that point." "So he picked up a hammer, um, beat her with the hammer actually killing her." "And then in an attempt to destroy as much evidence as he could, he set the bed that she was on on fire." "You know, there's a couple different types of murder." "One's an opportunity murder, that's like robbery, or something like that." "And it's kind of messy." "No, it's very messy, an opportunity murder is very messy." "There is a vengeance murder, where somebody's humiliated you and you've planned, even if it was a quick and that's..." "That's very fascinating for me because you refuse to speak about it." "Apparently you had one or two, several encounters with your victim, with Patricia Miller, whom you killed." "You never talked about it and refused to talk about it, but apparently you were humiliated or repudiated by her, I do not know." "Well, there were several events that had happened." "And as somebody who..." "I really don't want to..." "I don't know, saying something disparaging or pointing my finger at my victim," "I don't think would help me at all." "And I don't think it would help anybody at all." "But there was a couple incidents between us and I felt terribly humiliated." "That's about all I can say." "I was humiliated." "Yeah, and there was premeditation then to kill her, enter her apartment, kill her." "Yes." "Sexually assault her." "Yes, all those things." "It was very ugly." "It was very brutal." "It was very messy." "And... ..there's no way to take it back." "Mr Burden, you are the legal counsel for James Barnes, who is on Death Row." "How far are his appeals exhausted?" "Well, he had his direct appeal with the Florida Supreme Court, and a writ of certiorari has been filed with the United States Supreme Court." "And I believe that's pending." "If that has been decided, he's now in what we call the post-conviction phase, and that is a time frame of a couple of years that the Capital Collateral Representative will have to present any post-conviction issues." "James Barnes' case, in particular the murder of Patricia Miller, looks to me like a monstrous crime." "There's something really monstrous, scary, definitively evil about it." "However, he does not appear to be a monster in my opinion." "I always try to see him and treat him as a human being." "In your case, is your opinion somehow split between the facts of the case and the human being here in front of you who needs your defence?" "I'll tell you that we all have feelings and we all have concerns, and due process of law and the fact that we have this in this country is more important than my personal feelings about any of it." "I was an intelligence officer in El Salvador during the '80's, when there was no due process." "Yes." "And I was in Panama during the Noriega administration where there wasn't due process." "And you see how the lack of due process wears on a citizenry." "It's horrible." "They don't discuss things frankly with you." "They be careful who they associate with and who they talk to." "It's a different kind of society that I would never want to choose to live in." "So I have very strong feelings that due process is far more important than the, the vagaries of an individual case." "I could equally prosecute Mr Barnes as defendant, with equal vigour." "The process, it's what's more important." "And sometimes, I think, in the hysteria of the actual events, people forget the bigger picture, what really is at stake here." "It's that someone has their day in court before their rights or their life are taken from them." "You made some cryptic remark that there might be still something else out there." "Do I misread it or...?" "No, there was much into... innuendo is what I would say, cryptic innuendo." "There are other... you know..." "There are other crimes out there that I've committed that I've never been held accountable for." "Um, would I ever come forward again and admit to these things?" "I think I picked the wrong agenda, the wrong platform last time." "Um, I don't believe..." "But would you eventually speak if you are strapped to the gurney or shortly before when you have a last chance to..." "Oh, abso... ..bring closure to families of victims or whatever?" "Um, abs..." "Would that be on your agenda?" "That's absolutely part of something that I have thought greatly about." "Um..." "The state of Florida... is, is a state that... they don't care about the consequences of an individual's actions or..." "Yeah, but let's forget about the state." "I mean, you are in a very grim situation and at the, at the end of possibilities, almost." "Right." "There is you as a human being, not dealing with a state, but dealing with personal guilt." "Do I see that correctly?" "You do see that correctly." "Um..." "There is no proper way to come forward and say how sorry one is or show remorse." "They say I'm remorseless, I'm not." "I have cried so many nights, so many days." "I've spent so much time trying to figure out how to balance the scale." "Um, I just..." "I just didn't see..." "I just didn't really understand the gravity of what this state would do to me, you know, for coming forward and saying I'm sorry." "And not offering anything other than, you know, I'm responsible." "This is what I've done." "This is exactly how it happened." "There is no more questions in this case." "Um... and now I'm going to be executed." "When he's in pain, it's like I can feel his pain." "I mean, we've been estranged for a long time now" "But back in the day when we were close or being raised together," "I could feel his pain, I could feel his hurt." "The hurt was so bad that I would be crying too." "Like, if he was sent to a detention centre or the juvenile detention centre," "I'm the one that would be crying at home." "I'm the one that hurt because it was like we were ripped in half." "It's like part of me was always gone." "I would not celebrate our birthdays when he was not there." "And I would not celebrate our Christmases." "This is my siblings." "This is my older sister, Beth, my twin brother, James, me, my little brother, Michael and my little sister, Roberta." "I'm not bitter anymore." "I'm accepting." "I hurt for James that he didn't make it." "I hurt for my little brother, Michael, who committed suicide." "And I survived." "I could've been a statistic, out there on drugs and alcohol and I could be dead from the lifestyle." "Is there a possibility that you will see him?" "Or do you have to settle with yourself first?" "I would like to see him." "But, um, I may not be allowed to." "But I think family members should have a possibility to see him." "Well..." "I understand but I think I might have a warrant down there for a misdemeanour." "Yeah, I mean as long as I'm in Georgia, I'm fine." "You were in trouble as well?" "I got in trouble, yes." "When they got divorced," "I think I was about 16 years old." "I did end up dropping out of school and doing my own thing." "Beach bum kind of lifestyle, working in night clubs, entering bikini contests, just drugs and the alcohol and all the nightlife that came with it is what I did." "So you were a bad girl?" "I was very bad, yes." "I've, yes, I'm a two-time convicted felon for drugs." "And I've probably had over 35 to 40 misdemeanour arrests, for drug-related incidences." "And if you show up in prison, they may decide to keep you for a while." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "CHICKENS CLUCK" "Hey, birdies!" "Hey, birdies!" "I've had some horrible dreams here, I mean absolute... and especially when I first got here." "Describe it." "Wow." "Uh..." "I remember my home in Maryland, and the grass was very green there." "And, for some reason, my twin sister and I were buried up to our heads and my father was mowing the grass, and he was pushing a lawnmower towards us." "And he ran over my twin sister's head." "And I've had that recurring dream about five times." "And it just messes me up inside because... my feeling is, "Don't do this to me," but I feel so... terrified and, and repulsed by what just happened." "The nightmares were so bad that..." "I was mentally and physically exhausted during the day and I could not understand why I had to have such horrific nightmares." "Why couldn't I be normal like everybody else and have a normal dream?" "I have woken my husband up saying, "You need to call 911,"" "because somebody else was getting hurt and I was watching the other person getting hurt." "And, you know, I woke him up, telling him to call 911." "It wasn't me getting hurt anymore." "It was somebody else." "Mm-hmm." "I've had, you know, a couple real good dreams, the one where God appeared to me." "Um... um..." "Oh, please describe." "That's what I want to know." "Well, OK." "The scenario was, um, something bad was happening and I was running from room to room to get away from this bad thing coming to get me." "And all of sudden" "I seen this light in this doorway and I was scared to go," "I was scared to go behind any door because this person was going to get me." "But I ran, and all of a sudden there was this big giant image of Jesus, letting me know that nobody was going to hurt me now." "And I was like, the dream's over, and I'm sitting there looking at God, you know, and I wasn't even sure it was God, but I know it was, you can just tell." "And Pastor Jan, I guess I invited her in my dream because I wanted to know, "Is this Jesus?"" "And she said "Yeah," and ran out of my dream." "But it went from a real horrific scenario to just seeing God, and him saving me, it was just so big and such a glow and he's so perfect, and yeah, it was just really, it was, yeah... it was a good dream." "I was one of those that wasn't wired like everybody else." "I needed constant supervision." "I needed my parents there." "And then you have to keep your family unit whole, no matter what, because people are going to make mistakes." "And if you can keep those mistakes private it's best." "If that's what will keep the family unit strong." "But if you have to go outside of your family with mistakes that others have made, you have to support them." "You may not agree or like what the individual has done, but you have to love them and tell them that you support them." "This might have been a juvenile detention centre at 17." "But he went to jail fairly soon after that." "Yeah, he was always in and out of jail for all kind of stuff." "Like?" "Theft, arson, um..." "I don't really remember." "Drugs." "Drugs." "I remember our next door neighbour's house, next door to this house." "Um, James did admit to doing that." "He, well, I think he admitted it." "He went in and burglarised them and then he lit their bedroom on fire to..." "..get rid of the evidence." "Or something like that." "And then there was another fire out there where my father lived in a town home that he had burglarised." "And then he set it on fire too." "And then, one time, I think he had a BB gun." "And when it rained the frogs would all come into our pool." "And he went around with this BB gun and shot 'em all." "He thought it was neat because the pellet come out through the stomach and you could turn it over and see the pellets where he just kept killing 'em, and it just really broke my heart cos, you know," "we had a scooper, he'd scoop 'em out." "But he thought it was OK to just shoot 'em all." ""Look how neat it is!" and..." "Generally, what they say when you look at the profiles that behavioural sciences come up with, a lot of people that have done serial crimes, particularly serial murder, um, have been, have arson in their background," "have, um, animal abuse in their background." "In his case..." "As you start to go through these things, those are some of the things that they see on some of the people that have been studied as serial killers." "We have some vague indications, but not verified, that he strangled a family cat, or cats." "Right, which would fit in." "And always in trouble for arson." "So, yeah, there seemed to be a lot of fires." "That's about all I can remember on the fires for now." "Except for, um, I was told about the last fire, when he set the lady on fire." "You do have a few absurd privileges like a last meal." "That's not what's going to be on my mind." "That's not important to me." "I have thought about it and I do have favourite foods, you know." "Like?" "Well, anything that comes off, any meat, beef that comes from a grill, cooked on fire, I do, I'm just," "I mean, I'm fixated on fire ever since I was a kid." "But I love the smell and the ritual of cooking beef on a grill." "It has nothing to do with you being an arsonist..." "I don't think so." "..as well?" "No, because any good chef is under a lot of... has a lot of flame in the kitchen whether they're outside or not." "But, uh..." "This is the home where most of the trouble started in." "As you can see, this is us looking like the Cleaver family, but it really wasn't." "What happened inside those doors was very horrific." "I still have flashbacks." "My father would make us all go into this living room." "And as you can see, in this window here, and he would close the blinds, and this is when James would do something bad." "Or Mom said he did, or Beth said he did." "My father would have what they call a blanket party." "That's something he learned from the military." "And I believe he actually used one of those blankets from the military, them old grey ones." "And, uh, he would put it over my brother's head, which, this is my twin brother right here." "And take a belt and make us all stand there and whip him." "And if we didn't whip him, we were going to get whipped." "So, he didn't know when he was going to get hit, but by the time my dad got him out of the blanket, his face would be beet red, with just tears streaming down and welts all over him." "I just remember me screaming and crying throughout the whole thing." "James started to withdraw and become angry." "Didn't want to go to school cos he didn't like going to PE, cos you had to dress out and he always had welts on him, or whipping marks." "The other kids would laugh at him." "Was there sexual abuse?" "Well, I was told there was sexual abuse," "I don't have any memory of it." "I do have the frozen fear and I do remember being in my bed and someone coming into my room." "I don't know who it was." "I don't know what they did to me." "I was only told by my older sibling and my mother that I was sexually abused." "But I can't say who did it." "I don't know." "I have no memory at all." "But they did say that's why James was taken out of the home." "'With his execution looming, four months after our first visit, 'we were allowed to see James Barnes again." "'He had had no contact with his family for over a decade.'" "You do know that we found your sister?" "Yes." "And there's one surprise that I would like to bring to you." "Last night we located your father." "Oh, you did?" "We identified ourselves." "He immediately declined to be filmed." "And now, I asked him, specifically, is there anything that I could pass on to your son, to you?" "And he pondered and pondered and then he said," ""Yes, please pass one thing on to my son." ""One, I love him." ""Two, I hate the crimes he committed."" "So, and he was silent then, and looked at me, and I said," ""Mr Barnes, I will not fail to pass this on."" "That's, uh... it's been a long time." "Yes." "Thank you so much." "I don't know what to tell you." "It's..." "I've been wanting to be in touch with him for so long." "And to find out that you met him just last night is, it's wonderful." "Wow." "You know, years ago, I had..." "I had taken a self-inventory." "And I, I wrote lists about... ..what things I've done in my life that I'm most ashamed of, what things in my life I'm most proud of." "And then what in my life would cause me the greatest grief and what in my life would cause me the greatest joy." "And I've found that the thing that would've affected me the most because I knew I was never getting out, was if my father were to die while I was still alive," "I would've been devastated." "Well, I thought that that was the worst possible thing that could've happened to me and I was wrong." "The worst possible thing ended up being I knew he was still alive and he didn't want anything else to do with me." "That... that put me down hard for many years." "And now I feel..." "I feel so much better." "I understand... that he sees the ugliness of the things that I've done and I understand anybody seeing that." "You know, you could sit here and you can cry about what you've done, you could tell people how sorry are about what you've done in your past." "But, the fact of the matter is, that taking 100% responsibility for your actions is the most important thing in any, it doesn't matter whether you're a defendant or the victim, in any type of incident," "the person who's wrong needs to take 100% responsibility." "Six weeks after our first encounter," "James Barnes sent us a letter in which he hinted at the possibility of telling us about two more unsolved cases." "I was suspicious of Barnes, using me as an instrument either to procrastinate, or speed up his execution by opening new cases against him." "Could I address our last, um, contact through letters?" "And our last conversation, where I was under the impression you know more than I do." "Yes." "And that there are things out there that maybe the world should know." "I have a list, you know, how people talk about a bucket list, well, no..." "I do have a list as well." "OK, I have a list of things that I'm going to accomplish, and one of them is to resolve all the unresolved crimes that I've ever committed." "May I mention two names?" "Right." "You mentioned Chester Wetmore, a young man, very young, teenage." "Yes, yes, he was teenage." "And Brenda Fletcher." "Right, and the only reason I knew her name was because I had seen her I.D, but she was going under a different name when I had met her." "We actually travelled north, and we saw the water filled ditch along the northbound, on ramp from state road 520." "To Interstate 95." "Correct, that's the place." "I looked at it, it turns it goes in a right curve, in a soft right curve." "If you are coming from the east, it would be on north." "Northbound, exactly, yeah." "By examining unsolved homicide records, we learned that in the water filled ditch to the right, the decomposed body of Brenda Fletcher was found." "Brenda was a prostitute," "she obviously didn't have any family or any roots." "It's hard when you talk about crack cocaine addicts to give an age, but she was, I would say, 40." "She stole my wallet." "She didn't have to steal my wallet," "I only had like 30 something bucks, all right?" "All I really wanted was my drivers license back and I told her that," "I said all I want is my drivers license back." ""Oh, I didn't steal it."" "I said, "you're the only person, you're a crack addict," ""I know what you did." "I just want my ID back," ""if I get pulled over without it I'm going to jail."" "I had already had a suspended try this license deal once before." "And you were involved in this crime?" "Yes." "And you were involved in Chester Wetmore?" "Yes." "Let me talk about Chester Wetmore." "OK." "He was missing since 27th of May, 1986." "I ran across him in 1988." "He was skinny, I would say, 5'9", 5'11", somewhere in between there." "17, 18, 19." "He was a runaway." "Yes." "I knew that he was on crystal meth, but he had graduated to crack cocaine, but it didn't matter which drugs used." "Um, I was very much aware, made aware by him, that his family had been looking for him and he needed a place to hide." "He needed a place, he'd been on the streets for a long time." "He had been involved in prostituting himself," "I mean, he was a street person." "I supplemented my income by selling drugs." "Yes." "And that's how I ran into him." "And he ended up breaking into my car, and I was very, very upset, because he took all my product, and I knew it was him." "And, uh, I ended up," "I ended up killing him, and I ended up burying him." "I took his body next to a lake, let's just say, that there was a spot that had been prepared, not for specifically Chester, it was just an easy spot to throw someone in and fill up." "He, he was still shiny," "I don't know how to explain this, but before you get to a certain age, when, especially at night, and that's when I saw him most of the time, older people, they don't have a shine, a glean to their skin." "He still had a young glean, you could tell that," "I don't know how to explain this, he still had a glow, he still..." "You mean as an inner attitude, like you still have the world ahead of you, your whole life ahead of you?" "No, what I mean is, descriptively, occularly, is he still had a sheen, the sweat sheen, the glow." "And Children have it, adults like me and you we don't have it," "I may right now, because this is my second call out today, my ankles are killing me, they put shackles on too tight the first time and they rub me raw." "Oh, my God, plus I'm way down the end and in the cell, and it's humid today." "Last time we were here I was freezing." "But, no, descriptively, he was still very young." "He still had, he had the glow." "Mr Barnes, my impression is that the state of Florida is interested in one thing, and that is to kill you off." "What's that?" "Oh, yes, that's right." "So, that's number one." "And I have my doubts, that the state decides to indict you on any other crime, spend months and months of investigations, indictment, legal procedures, have a, a trial against you, again spend millions of dollars and sentencing to death again." "What's the point?" "They just want to kill you..." "You see, these are... ..Fast." "Right." "There are a lot of different arguments in support of capital punishment." "Deterrence, and so forth." "You know it doesn't deter anyone." "And I agree with that." "Statistically, we know it." "I think the only support for it is retribution." "An eye for an eye, to speak." "Yes, which is biblical, it's old Testament." "Arguably so." "And it's not what it Jesus tried to tell us." "Well, I have to tell you that for the foreseeable future, capital punishment is here to stay." "And it's very popular in this state." "If you took opinion poll, the citizens of Florida support it." "And, so, I don't see it changing any time soon." "There is a, an overwhelming sense of shame, along with the fear, the panic, and the knowing that so many people want you dead." "Um, I mean, I'm already incapacitated," "I'm in a cell I'm chained, shackled," "I mean, I've got seven pounds worth of state jewellery on me." "You're going to kill me now?" "Is that retribution, is that vengeance?" "Is that punishment?" "Is that going to change anything in this world for the better?" "It's not." "You have to have imagination in order to cope, that's how I cope." "And I spend most of my time wishing for things I don't have." "Give me some details." "All right, um... ..I wish I was free, all right?" "Um, I wish I had no constraints," "I wish it was a hot day on the beach and I could jump in the ocean." "That's, like the thing that I really want to do is submerge myself, and then come out and rinse off with fresh water." "It is, I don't know, it's like a rebirth or a renewal." "It's like I've been through so much, and I've gotten so dirty." "And I can't wash it off, and the only thing that I can do is dream about how I would wash all the filth." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "The death penalty exists in 34 states of the United States of America." "Currently, only 16 states actually perform executions." "Executions are carried out by lethal injection." "Utah is the only state that until recently allowed the option of a firing squad." "As a German, coming from a different historical background, and being a guest in the United States, I respectfully disagree with the practice of capital punishment." "This is the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas." "All male death row inmates of the state, more than 300 of them, are held here." "Since this unit does not have a death house, executions are carried out in Huntsville, at the Walls Unit, some 40 miles away." "Cell blocks for those who wait to be killed look like this one." "In June 2010, I met Michael Perry here." "He was executed eight days from the time of this conversation." "But, you know because I, like I'll forget, I'll literally forget, and then I'll look at my calendar or I'll hear someone say something, I'll be like, man!" "And I'll sit back and I'll just stare at the wall, and I'll be like, man, it's eight days, seven days, six days or whatever, and it's like, it's just I must not be comprehending the fact that it's that close," "because you know, it's hard for me to say you know what?" "Like I talk to people, you know in eight days, these people want to murder me." "Yeah, I just can't allow myself to think, like I can't even picture myself laying on a gurney, but if it happens, I'll have to deal with it, huh?" "After our interview, used for a different film," "I noticed this man, Joseph Garcia, with whom I had been in contact through letters." "He was waiting to be taken back to his cell after having spoken to a reporter." "Like all the men here, his mind was consumed with his impending fate." "I don't know how the drugs work, per se." "I mean, I understand from what I've read that the first one is to make you basically unconscious, you know." "The second drug is to stop your lungs." "And the third one is to stop your heart." "It's a wild concept to think about, that you're gonna be put to sleep." "Euthanized, you know?" "Like a dog." "Does it frighten you?" "Yes, it does." "Yes, it does." "Garcia is one of the infamous Texas Seven." "He is on death row for the murder of a police officer, a crime that was committed after a spectacular prison break." "All of you who were involved in this escape are charged with capital murder." "Basically, yeah, the law states that, the law of parties, if you're convicted, that because of your co-defendants' responsibilities in that crime, that you are held responsible along with them." "It's a crazy law, you know, because how could you say, you know, if you and I were doing a crime, and you decided to kill somebody, how can I be responsible for what you did?" "You know, I, it wasn't..." "So you were not, you personally were not plotting," ""let's kill this officer who is driving up the ramp,"" "while you were burglarizing a store for weapons?" "Exactly." "I wasn't even out on the back dock when that happened." "You know, I was still in the store tying up hostages." "Yes." "You know when that activity, I mean when that..." "Yeah, which was bad enough, let's face it." "Man." "You have been in serious crimes, there's no doubt." "The prison museum in Huntsville contains mannequins of the bad guys." "The Texas Seven feature prominently among them." "Here, Joseph Garcia." "The mastermind, however, was George Rivas, who had a long rap sheet for robberies." "I was robbing businesses with a handgun, and I would either pose as security or as a late shopper, and take over the store." "Then using the clothing of the employees there," "I'd go and empty the safe and whatever I could carry, and then leave." "My first conviction, of the first robbery," "I ended up with ten aggregate life sentences for one store." "But there was no murder, there was no bloodshed." "No, no, what they did here in Texas, they say here in Texas that if I'm telling you that this is a robbery, and one of your co-workers hears me, they count that as two robberies now." "And whatever amount of employees are in the store, or customers, but there was always employees only, no customers, they charged me with an individual count of kidnapping, because I told to one to move from point A to point B" "during a commission of a crime." "I came out with ten aggregate life sentences." "Consecutive?" "Yes, that means stacked." "That means I had to do the time which was, in '93 it was 15 years before you're eligible for parole, so I had to do 15 years on one life, and then start the parole process for the second life, and so on to ten." "Well, in June of '95, I was again tried for another robbery." "And this time it was again the two counts of aggregate robbery, and five employees this time, so another seven aggregate life sentences stacked on top of the first ten, so now I had 17 life sentences." "And then..." "But do I see it right?" "You were some sort of a gentleman robber." "Yes, sir." "You would explain that you like to have all the employees together, and ask them, don't do anything stupid?" "Yes, in fact one time I had a person in one of the robberies tell me to shoot him, and I had to talk him out of it." "He had a very long day, he was very stressful, and he actually testified in his report he made to police, he actually admitted all this but," "I actually had to talk him out of shooting him." "He had such a hard day, and I had to talk him down out of it." "It was a surreal experience, and it's one of the things that started making me aware of how, what I was really doing was stupid, to put it bluntly." "Within a year and three months of being arrested in '93," "I had 18 aggregate life sentences." "I had more time than all mass murderers in the prison system, that I know of." "And..." "Did it make you angry?" "Did you feel that this was out of proportion?" "I know I belong in prison." "I was robbing, and I grew up mentally here in prison, and I recognise that I did commit the crimes," "I should have been sentenced to prison, but I did believe that they went overboard." "They took away all hope for me, and when you do that to a person, anything is possible." "Some people go crazy, some people kill themselves, and other people sometimes try to do what I did, later on." "Prison rules dictate that there must be a hiatus of at least three months before any follow-up discourse with a prisoner." "Authorities do not want an inmate to become a regular on TV." "'In our case, it was four months before we met Garcia again." "'In studying his case," "'I was interested in tracing back his life 'to an incident which could have happened to any one of us.'" "For me, the interesting thing is these tiny little details that are very average, everyday things that all of a sudden lead to catastrophic events." "In your case, a conviction of 50 years in prison. 50 years." "50 years." "Yes." "50 years." "That was..." "Can we go back into the evening?" "The fatal night ended here, but it started harmlessly enough." "'After an evening in a bar," "'Joseph Garcia ended up at the house of a young woman, 'together with his friend Bobby 'and another young man, Miguel Luna, 'whom he had never met before.'" "What happened there?" "I remember..." "I stayed in the car while Bobby and Miguel went to go talk to this girl." "They weren't too sure if she was awake or not." "It was late in the evening." "By the time I walked in, Jocelyn was already sitting on the couch," "Miguel was sitting on a armchair by himself," "Bobby was sitting on the floor." "So the only place I could sit was on the couch with Jocelyn." "Miguel, he wasn't conversational, you know, he just sat there, watched TV." "Me and Bobby were the only two talking to Jocelyn." "To be honest, I liked Jocelyn." "There was a spark, an immediate spark." "Yeah, there was." "I mean, she was pretty, she was..." "I mean, she was smart, she was intelligent, she had conversation, she was funny." "There was a time in the evening where we were sitting down, and the apartment was cold, and she didn't have any socks on, and she turned to me and she goes," ""Hey, do you mind if I put my feet under your legs?"" "And I was like, "Sure." You know?" "I was like..." "It felt good." "Yeah, of course it did, you know?" "I was like, "Wow, hey, she likes me." You know?" "So I was like, "Well, we'll just see where this goes." ""I'll be cool about it."" "She met me in the bedroom, and she closed the door." "Secretly?" "Secretly, of course, yes." "And she sat on the bed and I tell her," ""What's up, Jocelyn, what's the problem?"" "She goes, "Well, I just want to let you know, if you all leave together," ""leave together, right?" "I don't want this guy to stay behind."" "So I thought she was talking about Bobby, right?" "And I was like, "Well, Bobby brought his own vehicle," ""I brought my own vehicle, but I'll make sure he leaves."" "And she was like, "I'm not talking about Bobby," ""I'm talking about Miguel." So I was like, "Oh, OK, well..."" "Yeah." "But you wanted to stay as well?" "Yes!" "Or return..." "Of course!" "Yes." "..and then stay." "In a sense, I wanted to come back because I liked her and I wanted to see what it was going to lead to but I also knew that this was a wild card." "You know?" "I knew that there was something going on between these two people." "And the only way to... for anything to happen between me and her was to get him out." "So Bobby had left the apartment, stranding him there, leaving him there, you know?" "And I'm trying to tell Miguel, "It's time to go."" "And the two guys jockeying for this girl, you know, it just happened that we ended up in the same car." "And as we're driving away, he becomes angry with me, you know?" "We have a old saying back in San Antonio, that us guys will say that it's..." "I don't want to curse on the TV or anything but it's..." "We'll bleep it out." "Yeah." "It's called (BLEEP) blocking." "You know?" "Yes." "Where one guy tries to get somebody else's girl, or, you know, that you're getting in the way of somebody else." "Right." "And I believe that that's what Miguel thought was happening... that I was trying to get in the way of him and Jocelyn since..." "Which was, in a way, the pattern of the evening." "If you had delivered him home, you would have returned and you probably would have spent the night with the girl." "More than likely." "More than likely." "Yes." "More than likely." "I'm not going to sit here and lie to you, but more than likely, cos I was very interested in her." "It ended up in a fight." "He started beating me while I was in the car driving, and it was just..." "I tried everything that I could do to get him off of me, even pleading with him, "Stop." "How...?" ""I can't..." "I can't protect myself while I'm driving a stick gear."" "Garcia pulled the car into this parking lot." "He claims that he was beaten by Luna, and choked to the point of unconsciousness." "When he came to, Luna had taken the car keys and was pacing around outside in a rage." "I opened the door." "I went to hit the seatbelt and my back of my hand fell across the blade which was sitting on my belt, horizontally." "It was my butterfly knife that I had just..." "I happened to leave on my belt that morning." "I pulled it out, I extended it." "By the time I got out of the car... ..it was extended, it was ready." "I put my hand out in front to stop him, to..." ""Hey, please, stop," you know?" "Just, "Hey, I'm trying to talk." I can barely talk." "I'm struggling, I'm trying to breathe, and I'm bleeding from my nose and my eye and my lips and I'm telling him, you know, "Stop!" ""Give me back my keys." Right?" ""Look, look, man, I got a knife."" "Seeing the knife, Miguel Luna retreated into the housing complex across the street." "Garcia followed him." "What spoke against you is that some people woke up and they heard you and that was very incriminating." "They heard you when you stabbed him, "Die, motherfucker, die."" "Yeah." "And the real incriminating fact was that he ended up being stabbed 19 times." "Approaching the crime scene on the sidewalk." "You'll find blood drops which will eventually lead up to the body." "I felt that I was innocent." "I felt that Miguel had drove me to this point." "You know, I didn't..." "I didn't want to kill him." "It wasn't my intention to kill him." "I was protecting myself." "I can remember when we were both standing in that hallway that second time and I'm telling him "Please, just..." ""just give me my keys, man, I don't want to hurt you." ""Just give me my keys, I want to leave."" "And when he swung back, you know, he told me, "Fuck you!" Right?" "And he swung back to swing at me, and I lost it." "I lost it." "I mean, I was like..." "At that moment, it just happened, just like that." "It was like, "This guy's for real." ""He wants to kill me," you know?" "He's not trying to listen to reason, he doesn't want me to leave, he..." "You know, why?" "And then..." "Yes, I lost it." "I lost it." "I lost it." "I mean, it just..." "I didn't stop stabbing Miguel until he stopped moving." "I see the body in the foreground." "Blood smears all over the door." "The only thing I could do was... turn to my side and I saw this door and I started banging for help, you know?" "I went and knocked on her door, or whoever's door that was, and I remember seeing like a 13A or a 13B or something." "I remember knocking on the door and I just... "Please, help." ""Send the ambulance." "Send an ambulance."" "And I..." "My handprint is on that door, you know?" "It's my handprint on that door." "The victim appears to be a Latin male of a young age." "I liked the boy." "But he just had a..." "He's so excitable." "He just..." "Everything he did was... not thought through." "Something took over and he killed this boy, but it wasn't his real self that did the actual killing." "He was just..." "It was a rage that had just overtaken." "His mind, as we say, was incapable of cool reflection." "There was a pre-trial bargaining agreement..." "Yes, there was." "And what would have happened to Garcia in that case?" "In that case, it would have..." "they would have... would have let him plead to 15 years for murder." "I suggested to him that it'd be in his best interests to accept it, but he... he was... he wanted to go to trial all the way." "You know, Joseph Garcia was his own worst enemy." "He testified, and when he testified, he sealed his fate." "You want me to tell you why I remember this case so well?" "Please." "This victim was stabbed multiple times with what is known as a butterfly knife." "A butterfly knife is a difficult knife to use to assault someone." "As a matter of fact, this is the only murder I've ever handled in which a butterfly knife was used." "It's difficult to use because it's unwieldy, unless you know how to use it very well." "The steps to unfold it and to prepare it for assaulting someone... there are multiple steps, it's elaborate, and it's not a quick process, unless you're very good with that knife." "Joseph Garcia in court, on trial for his life, insisted in front of the jury in demonstrating his proficiency with that butterfly knife." "And he was proficient." "He was scary when he did his demonstration in court." "It was scary how proficient he was with that knife." "He just couldn't avoid showing that jury how good he was with that butterfly knife, and that's what he did." "And I think once he did it, the jury was not going to have much difficulty finding him guilty." "And you couldn't stop that?" "You couldn't prevent him from taking the weapon in front of a jury?" "I could not." "But, I mean, the prosecutor had every right to demonstrate the weapon." "He handed it to him to identify." ""Is this your knife?"" "And he says, "Of course."" ""Can you show the jury how it operates?"" "Bam!" "There's nothing, there's no time to formulate an idea how dextrous he was with that knife." "And the result was?" "The result was that the jury gave him 50 years." "I'm looking back on it... ..if he had taken the 15 years, he probably wouldn't have been involved in this prison breakout." "And he'd be back today." "These seven men were all together at the Connally Unit, a maximum-security prison south of San Antonio." "Every one of them was serving an extended sentence." "They wanted out." "It was a highly intelligent plan, executed with military precision." "You overpowered people without bloodshed." "Yes, sir." "You tricked the guard towers and everyone into just letting you drive out?" "It was 13 officers and three inmates." "We had to take over three inmates also, that were not part of the plan." "I'll never forget, it was the beginning of April, 2000." "I was looking at myself in the mirror, and I decided that day I was not gonna die an old man in prison." "I wasn't gonna let myself be killed or crippled by the officers, or just die, just wither away." "So I made a plan, and it involved... having people with me who had the same mindset that we were not gonna take out our personal issues on the officers that were gonna be involved." "And that I could trust, once we were out on the other side of that fence, that they weren't gonna continue doing anything that would hurt another person." "So I began a screening process." "And Joseph Garcia in particular?" "He was one of the first men I picked." "Yeah." "Reliable?" "Yes, reliable and loyal." "Intelligent?" "He's intelligent and very calm." "Very calm spirit." "That was the whole thing, I mean, we planned for this for months, months." "I mean, we went through scenarios in which, you know, something else could happen and we adjusted to it." "The main thing is, no-one gets hurt." "Play it smart, you know?" "And if you do it smart, you know the system, then hey, you can just walk out, you know." "Watching the way the system operated," "I realised that the best way was gonna be the most difficult way... taking over the entire maintenance department." "By taking control of maintenance, we'd have a better shot of, basically, exiting the back gate." "We also knew that the back gate held all the weapons for the field bosses." "When everyone went to lunch," "I kept a crew behind to continue working in the back, the back dock." "We had one supervisor with us." "You mean the officers who went to lunch, yeah?" "One officer." "One officer and inmates." "The other workers in maintenance." "And, uh... ..when they left, went to lunch, we subdued the first officer, and he's the one that stabbed one of ours, and he's the one that got hurt, that got hit." "And then we bandaged him up, and put him in the room." "We took his clothing, and then we got ready for the rest, because now all the other officers are coming back from lunch, and they came back in twos and threes, so we were outnumbered, so what we did was wrestle them." "And it was hectic." "It was a very hectic time, and at the same time, I'm answering the phone that's calling back there, and actually called in a count, when they called in for the count time at one o'clock," "which is what I was waiting for, I had to call that in." "And once we had all the officers subdued, and we had their clothing, and I called the count in, then I called the back gate to the back tower, and let 'em know a maintenance crew was going back there." "Everybody that we had hostages for, you know, everybody was accounted for." "So we had to make sure that was taken care of." "Once getting out of there, it was basically getting into... maintenance workers' clothes, you know, and escorting a few inmates to the back gate, and now it's step by step... you have to take control of the maintenance shop," "take control of the back doghouse, in which we call the inside, you know, before you come into the unit, there's a doghouse, and then the tower." "Garcia at this time was calling the guard tower, and I had one of the other men calling what they call "the doghouse"" "where I left Chino and the other two men downstairs." "I had one of the men watching out the window of the warehouse, and he could see." "I said," ""The moment you see me walk inside that guardhouse," ""make the phone calls."" "So, Garcia was calling the guard tower, which I was going in there." "I was allowed into the guard tower, and he allowed me in." "I walked in and the phone's ringing, and the officer in there says, "Hey, yeah, he just walked up right now."" "He hands me the phone, says, "It's for you."" "I ask him, "Who is it?" And he says, "I don't know." ""I think it's maintenance."" "I said, "What do they want?" "I came from there!"" "We were playing the little thing, the role." "So I answered the phone, and we started talking." "And I said, "Oh, you want the serial number?"" "I have a part in my hand and I read the serial number." "While I'm doing this, I'm watching out the window to make sure there are no delivery trucks arriving." "And I said, "OK, Max, "I'll talk to you later," and I put the phone down." "The word "max" or "maximize" was our word." "When he told him "maximize" on the phone," "Chino and the other two men took over the officer downstairs." "Well, when I put the phone down, there was a .357" "Magnum, among many others, in a holster." "I grabbed it out of the holster, asked the officer, "Is this loaded?"" "And he looks surprised." ""Well, of course it's loaded."" "I flipped open the cylinder, saw it was loaded, closed it, and I said, "OK then." "All I want is your co-operation now." ""I have control of your guard tower."" "'The only thing remaining, 'how would they all get out together in a single pick-up truck?" "'" "Me and one of the men had made a false bottom of the maintenance truck, that looked like trash, but when you picked up the trash, there were two wooden double doors, like barn doors that they could hide under." "So, any guard tower looking down sees a bunch of trash." "Well, when you open the tailgate, you can slide in." "We knew the system, we knew that if a maintenance boss walked up to the back door, you know, to the back gate and yelled, "Hey!", you know, "Maintenance!", you know, "Gate!"" "He'll look over and he'll see a regular boss man, you know, with an ID and let him out." "Now the men that were downstairs, the one that dressed as an officer, he comes out and does a whole routine." "They shake hands, he shuts the truck off, they open the hood, the doors, and the man... one of my guys who's dressed as an officer... goes and checks the whole vehicle, correctly." "I told him to follow all the procedures unless I say otherwise, in case anyone else is watching." "He gets into the passenger's side." "I get in the driver's side and we drive off." "And even the second guard tower waved at us, so we waved back, kept on driving the speed limit, which is about 20 miles an hour." "They drove out calmly through the back gate to freedom." "It took the guards hours before they realised the escapees were not still somewhere on the prison grounds." "We drive to town, where we had a second vehicle parked." "If that vehicle had not been there," "I had black paint to paint this white vehicle with, because they're gonna be looking for a white state vehicle, and I had a lot of cans of paint from maintenance, to paint this quickly, in case we had to drive it to San Antonio." "How did it feel to be out there?" "Scary." "Oh, man!" "It was..." "You're constantly looking over your shoulder, you know, it's..." "You know they're coming." "You know they're coming." "You know, we missed the roadblock by three cars." "Murphy's looking out the back window and he's like, "Hey," ""we just missed it." ""Cops are putting up roadblocks." "We missed it by three cars."" "Good morning, ma'am, Highway Patrol." "You all aware of the prison escape in Kennedy, Texas?" "We're just..." "(REPORTER) 'San Antonio has become the focus of the search 'because two of the escapees are from here... '29-year-old Joseph Garcia...'" "I remember turning on the TV and seeing that a group of Texas inmates had escaped, and being shocked that they could have escaped, and when it dawned on me that one of them was Joseph Garcia..." "I don't scare very easily, but it startled me." "I was worried that he was one of the escapees, and his whereabouts were not known, and I recall, authorities thought they may be headed to San Antonio." "And I think for the first time in a long time," "I turned on the alarm in my house that night." "(GARCIA) We embarrassed Texas, you know?" "The seven inmates that escaped from Connally, we embarrassed Texas very, very bad." "Once you were past the roadblocks, it was like, we did it." "We did it, you know?" "We're out, we're free." "Now that you're out, you got to be smart enough to stay out, you know?" "And do what you got to do to stay out." "Four years in prison, that I was in," "I couldn't believe how much had changed." "It's just so much had changed." "You're like, man, you know?" "You're trying to make things work." "And I was like, "Man, I just hope this lasts."" "Within the next two weeks the escapees committed two robberies." "On Christmas Eve day, they planned their biggest heist at an Oshman's sporting goods store in Irving, Texas." "This is the aftermath of the crime which bears the imprint of Rivas' usual approach." "We were dressed as full security." "Full security uniforms and IDs, two of us, and the rest were shoppers, except for one, who was inside the vehicle." "When I had gone to check out the store, or stake it out," ""case the joint" as they call it here in Texas, they had a little tag on their window that said their security was provided by ADT Security." "Well, we were economising all the money we had, so we would shop at the thrifty stores, like at Goodwill." "At one of those stores, I noticed they had a rack of used clothing, different kind of clothing from businesses." "I saw ADT Security." "So I got two shirts, black pants, a jacket that had "Security," a cap." "Then I cut out some pictures from a newspaper, a Dallas newspaper, and went to a little Kinko's copy shop, and using their computer and their Xerox machine," "I made these little security alerts, talking about what they call "snatch and grab."" "It's real popular, where a group of people walk into a store, grab all handfuls of clothing, and then run out the store into a truck." "There's other stores in the little shopping area, and I named one of the stores that they'd already been identified there, had they seen 'em here, at this store?" "Strangely some of the employees say," ""Yes, I've seen that person, this person...", they were circling it." "I tell to take this pen and circle everyone you recognise." "And I did that in order to get all those employees to the front of the store." "So it was only a ruse?" "To get everyone there." "And you were convincing?" "Yes." "You sounded like a real security person?" "Yes, sir." "So you have it in you to look... reliable, trustworthy, you are calm?" "(SIGHS HEAVILY)" "You are a good actor?" "Yeah." "Otherwise it wouldn't have functioned?" "Yes." "This is the interior of the store after the heist." "The Texas Seven's loot included $73,000, clothing, and numerous firearms." "But things did not go according to plan." "So, it turns out that a person that was waiting to pick up one of their employees, her boyfriend, in fact, she saw something not right." "She called one of her friends, and to make a long story short, they called the police." "Well, I had Murphy outside listening to the police scanner." "So he notified me." "We were hooked up just like this, with walkie-talkies, and I let everyone know that if I say, "We're leaving", you stop what you're doing." "Don't keep on grabbing nothing else, just leave." "And I already had pickup points." "I had an extra vehicle parked behind the business." "I got back there, and they were not there." "They were still inside the store." "For four minutes... for four minutes, Mr. Herzog, and those four minutes changed the lives of all of us." "And that poor officer and his family." "I was yelling into the walkie-talkie." "All this time, Murphy outside is telling me that the dispatcher is calling more police officers, sending them over there." "And at this time, all they knew was a suspicious activity." "They didn't know what was going on." "They didn't know it was us." "It was suspicious activity." "I wouldn't leave the guys there, so I stayed there, yelling into the walkie-talkie." "They finally came out." "As they were coming out, the officer was already getting ready to pull up on us." "We couldn't get out." "So, posing as security." "I was going to get close to him and take him over, take his gun, handcuff him inside the vehicle, and then we'll leave." "I reached back to pull the ID out, to show the badge and ID so he'll recognise it, he'll feel comfortable with it when I come towards him." "As I'm getting closer, I see his hand coming up like this." "I drew my weapon at that time and I shot through the windshield, and shot the right shoulder." "I yelled, "Don't move again!"" "and that's when I saw flashes." "He had his window rolled up, and I saw these yellow flashes, like this, and then I heard the sound." "And I felt the piercing pain right through my stomach." "And that's when I fired the three fatal shots." "I fired three more shots, and I know it was in the head area." "And you were also shot?" "Yes, he shot at me seven times." "The authorities say that my..." "You mean the police officer?" "Yes." "Or was it your own people?" "Well, the police say my own people shot me, but that was impossible." "They were behind me." "I have the wounds in front of me." "You were shot where?" "Through my stomach." "I had turned to the side, I'm like this," "I got hit through the stomach, and then through my leg." "Front to the back, and my stomach, in and out also." "So, it's strange that the law of physics changes in Dallas County when it comes to bullet trajectories." "Forensic evidence tells a different story." "Rivas most likely was hit by his own men who opened a barrage of gunfire." "The police officer never had a chance to draw his weapon." "Was there only one person who shot at the officer, or were there several?" "I wasn't on the back dock." "I was still in the..." "Inside the store?" "I was still inside the store." "I was tying up these people." "I heard the gunshots." "By the time I got out, it was over." "Mm-hmm." "It was over." "And I noticed through court records that..." "..four people... with their own words, claim to have shot at the officer." "Mr. Rivas, fact is you shot and killed this officer." "He was a police officer, he was in uniform, in an official car, on duty." "And now, what makes it even worse..." "Yes, sir." "..is it is Christmas Eve day." "Think about his family." "Every Christmas I do think about his family." "Every Christmas I think about his family." "He had a one son, that I know of, and..." "Waiting for Daddy to come home for celebrating under the Christmas tree." "And instead of opening presents, they had to go identify him on Christmas day, I know." "I know, and I'm not..." "So it doesn't matter how heavily he was armed." "It doesn't matter." "By the way, you had 40 guns..." "Yes." "..that you had robbed." "Yes." "You could have outgunned him." "You outgunned him anyway." "Yes sir." "And I'll..." "And how does that feel to you now, when you think about the officer?" "The fact that you don't hear of any robberies, even though we're so armed now, with more than 40 weapons, we're more desperate now because a police officer is dead, you don't hear of any more crimes in Colorado." "I had given up robbing after that." "And I don't consider myself a real tough guy or a hard guy." "I will fight you, if you're just going to kill me." "But I held no malice towards him." "And I didn't want him to die." "But how do you live with it now?" "I have no choice." "It's either suicide or just make the best of each day." "And I'm facing execution by the State anyways." "And of course, there's always the regret, and it's not the regret because I'm in prison." "It's not the regret that I'm on Death Row, it's the regret that someone was hurt because of my actions." "Whether I wanted to hurt someone or not, whether the other guys..." "whatever accidents happened, or... still someone's hurt, and I can't make up for it." "Well he was not hurt, he was just dead." "I know, he was dead." "He was just killed." "Yes sir." "Let's face it." "Yes sir." "Not only the police officer, but now two men who were my friends and four others here that are sentenced to death," "I carry all of them." "And..." "You planned it all." "Yes." "Eventually the Texas Seven made their way to Colorado, where they holed up in this trailer park, posing as a group of missionaries." "Almost four weeks later, police received a tip, and they apprehended all of them, with the exception of one, who committed suicide rather than be captured." "The remaining six summarily received the death penalty, including Joseph Garcia." "He most likely was not involved in the actual shooting, but the law of parties ties him to the murder." "With the fate that certainly awaits him," "Garcia's only escape is his dreams." "Do you dream?" "Do you dream at night?" "Yes I do." "You dream of what?" "I dream of past events." "I dream of my ex-wife." "I dream of... past." "But always events outside of prison?" "Yeah, yeah." "Prison doesn't exist in your dreams?" "No, no." "No, no, that's... when I wake up that's my bad dream there, you know?" "Just seeing, you know..." "It's rough, waking up to four walls and just knowing that you can't get out, you can't walk along the street and go to work or drive a car." "It's frustrating, it's aggravating at times and I sleep a lot." "I sleep a lot, because it's my only getaway." "It's my only getaway and, you know, I fly in my dreams, I..." "I can taste different foods, I can hear different things, music." "And you could fly over the barbed wire and the gates and everything?" "Yeah, yeah." "Different places I have never been." "Do you see any chance for clemency?" "Not from this state, no." "No, sir, I don't." "Do you know about your execution?" "Is there a date when it's coming?" "It could be any day now, to be blunt about it." "Me and one of the guys, Newbury, our last appeal with the Fifth Circuit was denied us, so now it's the Supreme Court and I'm not expecting anything positive of the Supreme Court." "And to be blunt, I don't want another life sentence." "I told you earlier that I was originally sentenced to 18 life sentences." "When we escaped, the prison system ran court on us and without us present" "and they gave me another 13 aggravated lifes." "One aggravated life sentence for every officer that we tied up, they charged me with aggravated kidnapping." "And they added those life sentences to my 18 lifes, so I had 31 life sentences and then they gave me a 99 aggravated sentence for taking their truck." "And as I said at my trial, and it wasn't a ruse, it wasn't acting," "I don't want another life sentence." "What they call the death penalty, I call freedom, because one way or the other, I'm going to have it." "Do you have any hopes that you eventually would avoid the death penalty?" "I had a vision, I had..." "I want to stand on that." "I remember in this dream..." "I'm looking at a birthday cake and on this birthday cake it has two candles on it and it has 99 on it and I can hear people..." "I can't see them - there's a lot of people around." "I can hear them yelling, you know." ""Bobby, blow out the candles," you know, "it's your birthday"." "I know it's a happy moment, I can see this cake, it's on a big table, but I'm only staring at the 99, the candles." "And it's your cake and you're 99 years old?" "I don't know, I don't know." "I'm seeing out of my eyes but when I go to put my hands down on the table," "I realise that my hands are old, you know, and I realise that it's me because I see this tattoo on my hands, right, and..." "I'm going, "Wow," you know, "here I am at 99,"" "and I go to blow out the candles and I wake up." "So, I want to stand on that, you know." "I want to get the faith that I'm going to live till I'm 99." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"