In a new documentary, titled Into the Abyss: A Tale of Life, A Tale of Death, renowned documentarian Werner Herzog (pictured) examines the case of a triple homicide in Conroe, Texas, exploring why people kill and why states carry out executions. The film features intimate conversations with many of those involved in the case, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry, who was executed shortly after his interview with Herzog in 2010. The film also includes interviews with Perry's co-defendant, Jason Burkett, who was given a life sentence; the woman who lost both her mother and brother in the crime; the Texas death row chaplain; and one of the guards who performed executions. Richard Corliss, a reviewer from Time Magazine, commented on "Into the Abyss": “It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery. Herzog asks viewers not to agree with his position on the state's right to kill, but to spend some time with folks who would kill, or be killed, for the sake of a red Camaro.” "Into the Abyss" will be released In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on November 11, 2011, with a wider release in the following weeks. Among Herzog's other works are his recent "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" (2010) and the award-winning "Grizzly Man." See below for a trailer to the film.
A new video produced by the American Civil Liberties Union features three North Carolina citizens who believe they were excluded from serving on juries in capital cases because of their race. The video was released in conjunction with the first court challenge brought under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The defendant, Marcus Robinson, is asking his death sentence be commuted to life without parole because potential African-American jurors were struck from his jury at a rate 3.5 times higher than other potential jurors. Laverne Keys (pictured), who was excluded from a capital jury in 1999, believes she was removed because of her race: “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she said in the video. Denny LeBoeuf, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, said, “The stories presented in this video make clear that the death penalty system in North Carolina and across the nation is plagued by discrimination. The Racial Justice Act is a crucial means of ensuring that no one is wrongfully executed because of racial bias.” 
The latest edition of the Death Penalty Information Center's series of podcasts, DPIC on the Issues, is now available for listening or downloading. This podcast - the 17th in the series - discusses international views on the death penalty and how those views might affect capital punishment in the United States. The podcast includes discussions about the role of international pharmaceutical companies in lethal injections being carried out in the United States, and the consideration of international opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court in rulings related to the death penalty. Click here to listen to this latest 
DPIC is pleased to announce the addition of five more states to our 
