Average user rating    (0 vote)

Views 2654

Perhaps Steve James and Peter Gilbert's most noted collaboration is the sports documentary Hoop Dreams from 1994. It's tale of two young men and their dreams of making it big playing basketball is poignant for how it captures lives in the present and depicts their hopes and struggles with adversity. It ranks in my mind not only as one of the greatest sports films ever made, but simply amongst the best films, period.

With their new work At the Death House Door, premiering on IFC May 29^th, James and Gilbert provide a look into the past work of a man I find to be living proof that God walks among us and works through us, and two others who do some of the most important work a journalist can do. Getting an opportunity to sit with all of them at SXSW to talk about this exceptional film augmented my already healthy respect for all of them in ways I could not have imagined.

***

I began by meeting with Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, reporters for the Chicago Tribune. Though not the central figures of the film, their investigation into the potentially wrongful conviction and execution of Texas inmate Carlos De Luna brought them in contact with the man who would be the focus of James and Gilbert's story.

Enrique Gomez: I watched the film, and I'm curious, did this start out with Steve James and Peter Gilbert talking with you about De Luna's case or was it something they started out talking about Reverend Pickett and then you went with it?

Steve Mills: We had been working on the investigation of whether he was innocent or not. We're meeting with Steve and Peter and talking about different ways we could work together, and brought up this story that we were working on. And then we took it a little further and suggested perhaps the angle they might find most rewarding, the narrative that might really be strong enough to drive a movie would be Reverend Pickett.

Maurice Possley: In part because of the tapes. And it was...the tapes weren't going to be a significant part of our investigation piece on the execution of Carlos De Luna. We wanted to talk to Reverend Pickett because he could tell us whether or not Carlos had ever confessed. Had he said, "Carlos told me ‘Sorry,' he did it," we walk away from that story because executing the right guy is not a story.

EG: It's a powerful image early in the film when you're showing the boxes of all the letters you've received. How often does that happen where you do the initial legwork, you find someone who says "Yeah, he said he did this," and you move on?

SM: It's happened. We don't usually get so far that we then figure out, "No this isn't the case." We've screened them pretty closely and we don't do all that many. It takes so long that...

EG: The research aspect must be mind-boggling.

SM: The research takes a lot of time. But there have been times, I remember telling a guy who I'd been spending a little bit of time on his case. I just said, "You know, I could be wrong, but I think you did it and we're done. I'd be happy if you could prove me wrong." I mean, this is a guy who is doing life. So it does happen, but we don't do that many case because it takes so much time and investigation.

MP: We try to sift through and...the amount of letters we get, there are a lot of people who are somewhat delusional about what really happened. Fair amount of people who don't understand the felony murder accountability law, which says if you're in the car and you go there to rob a 7-11 and your partner goes and shoots and kills the clerk inside, even if you're in the car you're accountable for that murder. So we try to sift through and look for...

SM: People who just had nothing to do with it...

MP: ...really runs the...I mean, we get enough letters that you can sort of cherry pick. And we take the best ones.

EG: How much resistance did you receive institutionally on De Luna's case? I understand I only see a small piece of the investigation in the film, but it seems so cut and dried obvious that this wasn't the man they were looking for that it seems an obscene miscarriage of justice that he was railroaded through.

SM: In some cases you'll find the authorities are unwilling to talk with you. In this case, the prosecutor, the main prosecutor Steve Schiwetz, who's now a defense lawyer...actually he does civil litigation...still in Corpus Christi...he was very willing to talk with us. He was extremely cooperative. Spent a lot of time with us looking through the files, driving places to see things. I think he was very...he wanted to know if he had done the right thing or not. He was open to anything that we brought to him, any evidence that we found. He really searched his soul about this.

MP: He was troubled by some of our findings. And ultimately, he didn't come around. I thought that he was going to come around. It is so unusual when you see a prosecutor come around.

EG: How often do you see that happen?

SM: Never on an execution case. In other case, we've written about people and they've gotten out of prison, in those cases yes. But as Maurice said, as troubled as he was by some of the things we found...

MP: He still wouldn't budge.

SM: He'd say "We got the right guy." And you know, neither of us was there when the murder happened. So...

MP: There's no doubt in my mind.

EG: When you first started working as journalists, was this something you foresaw yourself doing, or is this something that became a passion over time?

SM: I was always interested in criminal justice, even at my first paper, was interested in doing that. But it's something that we've developed together as a specialty. And we've been doing together for the last...eight years I guess...nine years.

MP: I started out wanting to cover trials. And I spent a lot of time covering court beats because I've always thought it was great theater. It's to watch the system work that way. It's fascinating. But I never had an idea that at some point the focus would be not on the conviction, but who was wrongly convicted. And that sort of wide in-depth investigation of issues, problems within the criminal justice system...it started about nine years ago, and it seems like everything we've done has spawned something else. An idea has emerged and we're just starting another one in Chicago that, you know...we're hopeful about. But you look at one area and it prompts thoughts in another area.

SM: It's such a big system and there are so many parts to it that always seems there's something to look into, and write about.

EG: I've always been a fan of documentary filmmaking, but I've only recently been able to get my hands on Errol Morris' catalog, and there's some much of this movie that reminds me of Thin Blue...

SM: The Thin Blue Line, an unbelievable film.

EG: I heard an interview with Morris where he said that was his favorite film of all he'd done because it actively changed somebody's life, it actively changed the world this man lived in with a new trial. How much of an impact have you two had? Because the work that you're doing is quite possibly the most import work journalists can do as public advocates for those who might not otherwise have a voice.

SM: A lot of what we've written about has led to reforms in the system...about videotaping confessions, how crime labs work...all of those things have led to reforms. There's sort of two tangible rewards. One is that we change the system so that the injustices that happen to one person won't happen to another. And then there's the very tangible reward...we've both seen people that we've written about, cases that we've investigated walk out of prison.

MP: It's a far more visceral experience to watch someone walk out who's been in there for 15, 20, 25 years and to think that you've played even some small role in their freedom is...

SM: Sometimes it's just serendipitous that the day you had maybe a little more time to devote to all the letters that you get, you spend more time on that letter. And it broke in a good way rather than in a bad way.

MP: There are letters in those boxes that are from innocent people, that we'll never get to.

SM: There are guys I've been talking to on the phone maybe 5, 6, 7 years who I believe are very, very likely innocent. And we just haven't had the time to get to those cases. And they're persistent, they call every couple of weeks. And they're patient, they keep calling. It's terrible that you can't get to their cases. And I mean it's guys that we know, we know guys are innocent.

MP: We've proved it out and they haven't gotten out, and there are cases where we've figured it out, we believe they're innocent, we just can't find the proof. Where we just can't move the case in such a way, can't find the person who can tell us the person who could potentially tell us what we think is the truth or talk to us. It's very frustrating.

EG: As much time as you spend working on stories and cases where it's obvious the system failed, how hard is it to still have faith in the judicial system? Do you still feel like it does what it was meant to do, or do you think it is irrevocably broken?

MP: I think that they get the right guy most of the time. I think that DNA has given us this learning opportunity to see all the things that are wrong with the system and that there's been a great reluctance to move. That's discouraging, is the reluctance to move and make things better. It's never going to be a foolproof system, it's the best we've got. What's discouraging is the lack of impetus in certain places and areas in the system to embrace change. Videotaping interrogations is an example. You know, if the 7-11 can afford to put a camera in to keep people from stealing a 75¢ candy bar, certainly we should be able to afford to record interrogations of murder suspects to be sure we get it right. The more people can think about..that the goal here is to find the truth and do justice and not "win" and get a conviction the better the system will be.

***

Reverend Carroll Pickett presided in the chapel at Hunstville State Prison for 12 years and ministered to 95 prisoners executed at that prison, including Carlos De Luna. He recorded a tape with his thoughts and observations about the day of each execution, ostensibly never to be heard again. I spoke with him about the tapes, working with Mills and Possley and subsequently James and Gilbert on the film.

EG: What did you first think when Steve and Peter came to talk to you about doing this movie?

Reverend Caroll Pickett: I don't really remember exactly. I remember it started with Maury (Possley) when he came down to discuss Carlos (De Luna). Carlos has been...he's still in my life. He's in my life, he's in my thoughts every day, I will never forget him. It started with him. And (Maury) went back to talk to Steve and then they came down. And I had always been taught to be very...careful talking to the press. When I worked for prison, I hadn't talked to but two in sixteen years. And they both agreed that I could edit them. One was with San Antonio Express-News and the other is now Press Secretary for the Governor. When they first came to me, I didn't know exactly what they wanted. I did know Maury and Steve had been concerned about Carlos, as I had been concerned about him forever.

EG: I see.

RCP: I had a son the same age, the exact same age. And when a young man asks you, in the middle of the afternoon, "Well, I never had a daddy. Can I call you, ‘Daddy'?" Well, Daddy means one thing, Father means something else and Chaplin means something else.

EG: Indeed.

RCP: And we got along so well. He was so young. Forget the chronological age, as an emotional age he was very young. His demeanor, his actions, everything. And it's not just cause I have a degree in psychology or a doctorate in Clinical Pastoral Education. I knew this kid could NOT have killed anyone. He didn't even know how to use a knife.

EG: Listening to the tape from the day when Carlos was executed, it's very hard to listen to, especially given how later in the film about how the execution, for all intents and purposes went wrong. You were absolutely right in the film when you said no one should suffer like that. How hard was that for you, because you mentioned that you never really listened to them after you recorded them? How hard was it to revisit that?

RCP: Well, it was extremely difficult to go back. I had put them all away, and they were away for posterity. They were to be locked away in a vault. I had talked to a lawyer...my son-in-law is a lawyer...and I hadn't listened to them. When Maury came down, and he told me what he was doing, I thought, "This is great. Maybe somebody is going to help me show that Texas...can not live with the fact that the Governor and the former Governor and current President are saying that ‘We've never executed an innocent man.'" It's not true. So I got the tape out. Listening to it the first time, Maury was crying.

EG: It was very hard for me not to cry listening to it myself.

RCP: And I was...I had never forgotten even though the years had passed. And I thought maybe I had a mistake pulling them out. I did not listen to any of those tapes. It was just for that particular purpose, when I did two executions in the same night, then I had to have those. But it was not fun, it was terrible. When this man who I had checked out...found out he was a Pullitzer Prize winner...was crying...I didn't cry, I can't cry cause as I was raised you have to be tough...then I realized I had to do something for Carlos and for others.

EG: You screened part of this film before the Texas State Legislature. How do you think that went? Do you think you convinced anybody? That wheels are turning that you might see capital punishment abolished in your lifetime? In your children's lifetime?

RCP: Maybe in my children's lifetimes. We have some tremendous people in the legislature. Rodney Ellis out of Houston who is going to introduce an Innocence Commission bill that we will support very strongly. We had a large number of people there the other day who are in favor of abolition. We have to go in steps. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know how to write the law. But the polls that people keep saying that 70% of people are in favor of the death penalty, I don't know who they're talking to. I've been all over Texas, I've spoken to colleges and churches and groups. And when I ask them if they've ever been polled about how they feel about the death penalty, I can't find anyone!

EG: (laughs)

RCP: So I don't know who it is. It's like when Crest toothpaste came out and they said 1 out of every 2 dentists recommended Crest. I checked that out, and I think they only interviewed maybe 2 dentists. Polls I don't go with. As long as we talk to people, the people turn out like they did the other day...my book has been extremely successful. It's not near as emotional as the film. But that was a beginning. We have a lady, a Representative from Houston named Jessica Ferrar who's going to introduce a bill next session that advocates against the death penalty. It's going to be interesting to see where we go. We still have to see what happens with the Supreme Court and lethal injections. Is it cruel and inhuman punishment? I think it is. I think Carlos suffered. The first drug didn't put him to sleep. I told him based on the history, with previous people with the drug he would be asleep in 7 to 12 seconds, which they were, but not him. And here's the one I was most close to, and here he's raising up his head to look at me and the second drug is flowing. And I know that second drug hurts. I've never had it, but I have a veterinarian that told me. That drug...what was he thinking? I will go to heaven wondering, "What was Carlos thinking?" Because he had to be thinking something. And the third drug killed him. Because I felt his pulse on his leg.

EG: After seeing this movie, I find you are the strongest argument existing that God lives, works and walks amongst us and through us. That's some powerfully compelling work. How do you feel knowing what you're doing? It seems a facetious question to ask, but none of us can live life in your shoes.

RCP: (smiling) There are no facetious questions I have determined in my ministry that people can ask. I don't know, you know I was raised one way...and most of us grow up the way we're raised. I changed completely from what I had been taught and raised. I never thought I would get into this place. When I entered seminary in 1952, I wrote down on a piece of paper...they asked us "What are your goals in life?" I wrote down, "I want to be a minister in a small town church in a small congregation where I can get to know everybody. Spend my whole ministry ministering to one small group of people. I never expected it to get like this. I worked with 38 states on their...I wrote a paper on the team approach to lethal injection and everybody's using it now. 38 states have come, I have been all over their states. I never thought it would get this far. I don't regret it. It's overwhelming in many ways. The movie I haven't seen with an audience. They tell me it is fantastically different with an audience. These are great producers, they have done wonderful work. Why they selected me, I don't know. But I would not change. I can't go back and change it. I enjoyed my work at the prison. I regret some of the things I saw. I didn't like when an inmate hung himself that they called me to come pull him down. But looking back, I don't know how much God was in charge and how much I fought...you deal with people, and there are some really good people. I have met some tremendous people. So I've learned to trust that. But I'm not going to back off. There are too many mistakes in killing people. Most of the convicts would ask the serious question, "How can Texas kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?" Then four or five hours later I would lead these people in to the gurney and they're gone.

***

After sitting with Pickett, I had a chance finally to sit with the filmmakers and get a better understanding of how they sought to bring this amazing man's story to life, how it affected them, and how they hope it affects others.

Enrique Gomez: This is one of the most significant documentaries I've seen since The Fog of War. It's so hard watching this film to fight back the urge to cry at many times throughout. I want to start, how did you come to decide to do this particular documentary after talking with Reverend Pickett?

Peter Gilbert: Well, Steve met with Steve (Mills) and Maury, and obvious the Carlos De Luna story is an amazing story and as they were telling Steve and then later both of us about this story, they brought up Reverend Caroll Pickett and his story began to fascinate us. Here was a man who presided over the first lethal injection done in the world and then presided over 95 people who were put to death by lethal injection over a period of years. And then the fact that he had kept these tapes, and one of those tapes was about Carlos De Luna. I think that was something that immediately perked our interest.

Steve James: The Carlos story you can make a film about itself. What happened to him is the kind of story that documentary films can tell well. But I think that for us...we were kind of greedy in a sense that...because I think that when we heard about Carroll Pickett, we felt like the journey that this man took, the more we learned about him the more fascinated we became. The journey that he took starting with his first encounter with the Huntsville Prison during the Carrasco siege, through the circumstances that led him to work there when he thought he would never set foot there again, to the reinstitution of the death penalty and being there for the first lethal injection done anywhere in the world and then being there for 95 other executions...as Peter said, coming home and recording what happened on these tapes...that is a life journey that is full of complexity and all kinds of moral and ethical quandaries that he struggled with. That just seemed like, to us, that was going to be the spine of our story. Whereas with Steve and Maury' story...I think they're interesting companion pieces if you go back and read their story, you should. If you go and read their series, it's a fabulous series. The series and our film are sort of like mirrors. Theirs is focused in tremendous detail and nuance on the story of Carlos and who he was, the investigation and what happened to him and what went wrong. And Carroll Pickett is part of that story. But ours in many ways is Carroll Pickett's complex, nuanced journey. And Carlos De Luna is the most significant guy of the 95 and that's what brings him into our story.

EG: It's interesting how you say you could have done a story about Carlos De Luna himself, because the way you've interwoven the two stories together and the way they converge with Rose's introduction late in the movie (Rose Rhoton, Carlos' sister) and her movement into activism against the death penalty, I think you provide good coverage to both stories and how they intertwine is fascinating to me. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking in terms that I think it is very even to both stories.

SJ: I'm glad you feel that way because that was one of the real struggles creatively we had was how to do that exact thing, so if it's working for you...

PG: It's one of those thing of "How do you tell?" Our focus is on Carroll Pickett, but also you can never diminish Carlos De Luna and what his story means and what he means overall to society and how that one man...not only did he haunt Pastor Pickett, but he also haunted so many other people's lives, from Karen Boudrie (a TV reporter who covered De Luna's trial as one of her first assignments) to Rose to families to the guards who were there. Carlos is obviously an important piece and represents for a lot of people who don't have enough money to have proper legal representation. So many people are wrongfully convicted and just sort of real misjustice (sic) in the criminal justice system.

SJ: The filmmaking process was interesting for us, and I think it's reflected in the movie...we start with this guy, Carroll Pickett, literally in the movie and in our filmmaking process. We knew Carlos was going to be a big part of it, but we try to take you into the life of Carroll Pickett first, in a sense, and then as Carlos enters the story and the impact he had on Carroll's life the movie opens out to sort of show this as a ripple effect that execution had, not only on Carroll a profound effect, but the kind of effect these executions have on all these other people. It makes...the executions make victims of more people.

PG: I want to add one thing. I think by using Carroll's Pickett's life as the core...for me it allows Carlos' life in a way to kind of have a different meaning because I think...what he meant to Reverend Pickett...in a way Carlos definitely was one of the things that made him (Pickett) start to question and change. That's an incredibly important thing.

EG: Structurally I think it's compelling the way you have Pickett as the institutional connection to the death penalty on one side in the beginning and Maurice and Steve as the journalist side and then bookending them at the end you have Rose and her connection to the criminal justice system on the institutional side and the way Carlos brought them together. And then you have Karen Boudrie who is the other end of the journalistic side. The film has great symmetry. I don't know if this was deliberate or an incidental occurrence due to artistic choices on your part...

SJ: (smiling) If you liked it, it was deliberate.

PG: Absolutely.

EG: I feel like you're very even handed in terms of how you handle the issue. Yes, the movie is anti-death penalty in slant, but certainly with Reverend Pickett's journey...the Carrasco story is a hammer very early on, and I think it provides a very profound perspective for the pro-death penalty side for Reverend Pickett and how he came around.

PG: And he's unique because in a way, he was a victim. And so in this unique way he can be both and that was something that was very interesting about Carrasco.

SJ: I think that we...we don't make polemical films. I didn't come to this film as a death penalty activist. Peter has been involved in a number of films that deal with the death penalty, so he was way more passionate about the issue than I was coming into it. But it's not even the way he approaches it either. Nothing makes us feel like we've succeed more than when someone comes to us and says they feel like it's a complex portrait that can really speak to people no matter what their feelings are about the death penalty. Because these things aren't easy and I think that there are certain issues in American society that we tend to want to look at in purely black and white, you're either for it or against it. Abortion is one of those, death penalty is one of those. And the reality is that most people, on abortion as well and certainly on the death penalty, most people wrestle with their feelings towards these things. Because if it were easy, it would be black and white but it's not. When you've suffered violence close to home like people who've had loved ones murdered, or in the case of Pickett a grandfather who was murdered and parishioners who he was very close to murdered, you understand where that desire for retribution comes from. But then when you go through the experience that Pickett has, I think his life experience can speak to anybody about this issue.

PG: And I think that it's so often that you see these films where you have pundits, experts talking about...they're the ones who are sort of creating the dialogue. I think it's more interesting to see somebody who's a real person, through their life you see them battling how they believe about a subject matter. And that it isn't black and white. And that is what is so wonderful about what Carroll did with us which is that he opened himself us to allow us...like when he says about Cuevas (a prisoner involved in the Carrasco siege that killed two of Pickett's parishioners) in present day, "I just wanted him (Cuevas) to die." To be able to be that honest, say that's how he was feeling. Even though you know he's going towards that road against the death penalty. It shows the complexity of it. You know, it's interesting...the death penalty as an issue...Sometimes you know how complex issues are in American politics when they're never spoken of. You know, this is one of those issues. You would never see it in a debate. We're in a Presidential year. It's one of those ones they don't want to talk about because it's complex.

EG: You talk of that moment where Reverend Pickett says "I just wanted him to die." That's as plain a face as you can put on this issue. He is the nexus point of where that desire can change. It's brilliant how you spin off of that in both directions.

SJ: I also think it's important, for me, that this is a man who is a minister who is being open enough to show that he has all these issues that are very difficult for him to deal with. I think the film can reach out to a lot of people, especially people of faith to make them think about how faith deals with how you reach these decisions.

EG: There are so many moments in this film where it is hard not cry. The first moment for me is when he's just started at the prison and he forms the prison choir. And you have that recording of the choir at the warden's Christmas party singing "O Holy Night". What prompted you to include that? It is very much part of Pickett's story, but it also seems almost tangential to the death penalty issue and the larger message of the film.

SJ: I think we're trying to tell story of the man, and the primary thrust is through the story of him at the death house. But we thought for at least for a couple of reasons it was important to include that. One: he didn't start at the death house, he started out at The Chapel of Hope. Which is maybe about the exact opposite of the death house. He went there to do the kind of ministry he was accustomed to in the outside world, but in a dire situation in a prison. He had tremendous success reaching those men through music. So we felt it was important to show that, because when the death house comes, you see in a sense he never gave up The Chapel of Hope, he still had that as a part of his ministry. You see the way in which in almost sort of a tragic sense...it's almost Shakespearian, here is a guy that ministers to people in the midst of a siege, his parishioners were murdered. He ends up at the very same prison, and he ends up with one of the guys that were part of the original siege that murdered his parishioners. So we thought that that progression was important for you to see, and to also see the way in which he was able to relate to his inmates. That he did not think of them as society's refuse. The choir showed, as beautifully and movingly as you can, that he saw these men as human beings.

PG: I think he is someone who believes in restorative justice, and that's part of it. That people can change. Later in the film when we go visit Roy's church (Roy being a prisoner at Hunstville that Reverend Pickett ministered to), for instance, that's a huge part of who Carroll is. When you see how these people care about him and that he had people that he affected that are out in society now and doing well, that's as much of his legacy as the other part. It's important never to forget that this was a man who was a minister and who tried to help people his entire life.

SJ: I mean he didn't just have an affect on those men on the last day of their lives, which I mean, he clearly did. He had a profound affect on men who were fortunate enough to get out of prison and get on with their lives.

EG: I thought that was another layer of depth in the film. The choir matches up with Roy's church as you see both people who didn't get out of prison reshape their lives and those who left and did the same.

SJ: That meant a lot for us as filmmakers. This is kind of new for us, at least for me, to do a film that is mostly about someone's past life instead of a film about a life unfolding in front of the camera. There are many verité moments in this movie, Pickett in the present grows with this all being in the news. But a large part of this film deals in the past and the large impact the past has on the present. So I think going to Roy's church meant a lot to us because that was such a clear indication of the impact he had on inmates in that prison in the present that we could see.

***

In spending time with all of these men, it is in my mind important to realize that Reverend Pickett is not the only person in the group who is having s significant impact on people's lives. Though the measure of the impact of a film on an audience can not always be quantified, there are certain films you just know will move people to a new awareness of things they believed they understood completely.

I have always been in opposition to the death penalty, but it has never been easy to articulate why in a way approaching any semblance of eloquence. In watching the film, which I'll write about more when the premiere date rolls around, I see not only the arguments that I could never vocalize to those who asked, but people that have done much to combat what I thought was an impenetrable cynicism about human nature.

Having time to sit and talk with these people who are fighting the good fight for no better reason than because it is right was both honor and privilege. It was one of the high point of a SXSW festival that would bring many more as the week wore on.

---

Tag this article:

Customer Reviews (0)

Add your Comment