Jury of One
The documentary Deadline: The Movie just finished running on Dateline NBC.
With ads.
"Jarring" doesn't begin to cover it. But that's the case even when the discussion isn't about race, poverty, political corruption, death and other light topics, I suppose. And this did give the film a larger audience than it would otherwise receive.
Not sure if you need a registration to read the Trib's series, Failure of the death penalty in Illinois, but since the writers, Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, appeared frequently in the film, along with Cornelia Grumman, who "won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for a series of editorials on Illinois' troubled death penalty system," it's worth a look, if you wanted to know more.
Also, those are journalists. The gentleman currently interviewing former Governor Ryan on The Abrams Report, Dan Abrams?
Who started off by mispronouncing Kankakee?
And, if I heard right, announced that Des Moines is in Illinois?
And let a guest, Joshua Marquis, say (paraphrasing) that the number of innocent people on death row is very, very small? Without asking, "Don't you think that's too many. . . dumbass?"
Not so much a journalist. Or perhaps I have a mistaken definition of the word.
Update: There's an open thread for discussion of the film, over at their brand-new blog,
Also, Abrams did get around to asking Mr. Marquis about that whole executing someone who was wrongfully convicted thing. This has never, ever happened, apparently, but someone will die because of Ryan's decision to commute sentences. Definitely.
Scott Turow jumped on that one.
Then this. . . creature from Texas named Kim Ogg jumped on. . . no, I'm not making this up.
Comments
Kim Ogg runs the Crime Stoppers affiliate in Houston. I've never seen her on TV, but I don't really watch local TV. I've never paid much attention to Crime Stoppers other than seeing their announcements/solicitations/requests for information in the paper.
The guy I really expect to see say batshit things about the death penalty is Andy Kahan of the Mayor's Victim Assistance Office, which I tend to think of as the Mayor's Prosecution Cheerleading Team. If Ogg is half as bad as Kahan, I can imagine that people who aren't from Harris County (and somewhat numb) would think she's insane.
Posted by: Ginger | July 30, 2004 11:00 PM
How do you mispronounce Kankakee? It's pretty phonetically spelled, no?
Posted by: neogrammarian | July 30, 2004 11:12 PM
Ginger, thanks. I think they just introduced her as a "former prosecutor." And according to her, Texas has managed to avoid all the problems we had in Illinois, because, um, the system there is just so much better. . .
Neo, I'm waiting for the transcript, because I'm really not sure what Abrams was trying to say when he mentioned the city. Perhaps the intern wrote it down wrong.
Posted by: Aaron | July 31, 2004 12:31 PM
I guess the system is better in Texas than in Illinois because they kill quicker or something.
Really, the death penalty has beena topic of discussion since the mid-70s when a more decent and liberal court abolished it, briefly, but not for good. I could go for some sentencing reforms, too. The Rockefeller laws are complete abominations. The drug laws are ridiculous. But the death penalty is the grand-daddy of legal outrages. We are the last industrialized country that continues to use them.
When anybody tells me that race is no longer an issue in America ("Why, those Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan guys make more money ina year than anyone I know has ever made in a lifetime.") and that blacks should get past it, I point at Death Row: "They'll get over the race issue soon."
Posted by: dean | August 2, 2004 9:29 AM