There are currently many individuals on death row; it is not known how many of them are innocent. In the film "The Exonerated," the survivors of wrongful death row convictions are not considered lucky. They are just getting back to a life that was taken from them, often in cases of common mistakes, shoddy evidence and false testimony. In this film, justice has many miscarriages.
Profiled are Kerry Max Cooke, Delbert Tibbs, David Keaton, Gary Gauger, Robert Earl Hayes and Sunny Jacobs, each played by actors such as Danny Glover and Sigourney Weaver who read from the vindicated's interview transcripts. All but Hayes have been freed; Hayes was still being held for an unrelated crime at the time the film was made.
The actors told each story against a black background, with brief cuts to recreations. Gauger is accused of shooting both of his parents and, even after it turned out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has a tape of the killer confessing, it still took a year for Gauger to be released. Gauger was tricked into testifying based upon a 12-hour interrogation that was called a "voluntary conversation and confession" in court. He was released in 1996.
Jacobs was given the distinction of being the first woman on death row, she said. Jacobs drove to pick up her husband in Florida when his car broke down. One of her husband's friends offered Jacobs and her children a ride home. During that ride the family was pulled over by the police who realized that Jesse Jacobs' friend was actually Walter Rhodes, a man wanted for violating parole. Rhodes refused to go back to prison so he shot both officers and kidnapped the Jacob family. Once Jesse and Sunny Jacobs were taken in for questioning, Rhodes formed a plea deal that said his hostages had committed the crime.
The innocent Jesse Jacobs was put to death, even after Rhodes testified in 1979 that he himself had actually fired the fatal shots. Jacobs' death by electrocution took 13 minutes because of a malfunction that extended his suffering and caused his body to catch fire. Sunny Jacobs was released in 1992 to children she had not seen in decades. She was a grandmother by then.
"Really, I was surprised by people because they covered it up," said Minal Matieda, a 3rd-semester nursing major. "[Sunny] got it. [Rhodes] said they did it and, even though she never did it, they didn't say she was innocent."
Tibbs was a spiritual and philosophical man who turned his incarceration into a positive experience, or as much of a positive experience as it could be. He felt that he reached a spiritual plateau and that God placed him on death row to show him the evils of it. Tibbs became an activist and a focal piece of the interviews. He even went so far as to share some of his poetry.
Keaton and Cooke were railroaded at trial on fingerprints. Both were victimized by prosecutors who portrayed them as blood-thirsty monsters just to get a conviction. Keaton was psychologically traumatized. Cooke was physically abused, raped and had the word "pussy" permanently carved into his lower back by an inmate who was under the mistaken impression that he was a homosexual. Cooke admitted that, emotionally, he had not progressed beyond 19 years of age. During Cooke's trial, the prosecuting attorney said that sending him to death row would be like "putting a sick animal to sleep because he had forfeited his right to walk among us."
"I thought it was depressing," said Duncan Campbell, 5th-semester English major who accompanied a friend to the film. "I am against the death penalty because I feel it is cruel and unusual punishment and costs more to taxpayers."
Contact Madeline Ward at Madeline.Ward@UConn.edu.
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