The first time you walk into the Café Texan in downtown Huntsville you become immediately aware of two important facts about yourself. The first is that you are, without a doubt, in Texas. The second is that you are not, in fact, from Texas. Shooting a film about the town of Huntsville and its relationship to the death penalty is a daily reminder of these two facts and, at the same time, a constant reminder that there are more sides to a story than can be imagined. This is a town whose primary industry is the prison system and it is here that all executions in the State of Texas take place. In its sole death chamber, with its one bed, and its one microphone that has captured the final statements of hundreds of condemned men.

To gain access to offenders on Death Row we had to first undergo an exhaustive search and clearance process.  Each and every visit, every equipment case and each bag had to be opened and examined, its purposes explained, and then repacked. Wanded, then frisked, the soles of our feet examined, our pockets turned out - we were allowed our gear and nothing else: no phones certainly but also no money, cigarettes, or tools. In the interest of speed we developed the habit of traveling with only our driver's license.

Rolling our gear through countless gates and passages, we were finally admitted to an interview room filled with rows of glass booths the size of library carrels, many with offenders waiting patiently inside for their scheduled visitors, each watching us silently as we set up our equipment. These booths are nearly soundproof, with only one small seat facing the three-inch thick bulletproof Plexiglas that separated the offender from his visitor. It was through these windows that we were invited into the minds and lives of the three offenders in our film - all of whom were to be executed within a month's time.

In spite of knowing details of their truly unimaginable crimes, the first feelings I experienced when introduced to the condemned were compassion and sympathy. Here were humans in the most profound state of distress. There was just no precedent in my life for speaking with a man scheduled to die and I found each offender to be different from the next in so many ways. While one would appear shockingly at ease and even eager to get the execution over with, the next would be near mad with anxiety and in denial of his own identity. In a short while it became apparent that there was one thing that ran consistent among the inmates. They all appeared to have become unhinged in some way over the course of their experience.  It seems that when you're condemned to die, the conflict with the human survival instinct can drive you insane.

Time with the offenders invariably left me sorrowful and angry with nowhere to put the blame. It appeared that all the offenders came from troubled backgrounds that somehow informed their lives and were not simply evil. The guards and wardens all appeared to be intelligent and compassionate and were not to be blamed as well.  

These many employees of this overwhelmingly large Texas prison system were serious as a heart attack about their jobs and moved through their world with those old Southern notions of respect that we Northerners simply could not ever understand. To some of the younger guards, the adjustment of coming to guard their elders without referring to them as Sir was a difficult one.

And then we would be back at the Café Texan where the non-smoking section was in the back and you felt a palpable disappointment if you left without ordering a chocolate or coconut cream pie with your coffee. Here the waitress knew your name after two visits and the wall was covered with pictures of prominent citizens of Huntsville from the 1890's who more than likely worked in the prison system as well.