14 Days in May...BBC Documentary

This documentary released in 1987 is a look at the last fourteen days in the life of Edward Earl Johnson while he awaits execution on death row in a Mississippi, USA prison. We watch as the days tick by and his public defender and lawyer, English born Clive Stafford Smith desperately tries every avenue to appeal and over turn the sentence of death by gas chamber. Johnson fought and lost an eight year appeal against a conviction for murder. We hear how the confession was extracted and signed under duress.

By the end of the film no one, guards and inmates alike are left in doubt of his innocence and it gradually becomes obvious that it's a near certainty that an innocent man ends up dying as a result of this state sanctioned murder.

The film is unique in it's intimacy. We not only get a look at the Mississippi justice and penal system in all it's appalling rawness, but we watch the effect of the wait for news of Jones's appeal on his family, his jailers, his fellow inmates, his lawyer and finally the man himself.

Clive Stafford Smith is seen receiving the news that all appeals have failed and the camera follows him as he walks to tell his client that all hope is gone. It is chilling to watch as Smith puts his arm around Jones, head bowed and delivers the verdict.

Jones exhibits remarkable bravery and composure in the face of this nightmare unfolding around him. The tragedy of watching him, surrounded by his family as he eats his last meal, still believing that a reprieve is at hand is almost unbearable. It doesn't bear to think about this young man's last moments, killed for a crime he denied committing right up to the very end of his life.

A harrowing document of a gross miscarriage of justice. Witness the prison warden more or less admit that he is not sure of Jone's guilt. We witness too the effect of the cyanide gas as it is tested on a live rabbit, and can only imagine the agony Jones went through after all hope is gone and he is put to death. It takes him twelve minutes to die we are told by the warden, at a press conference on a typically steamy Mississippi May night.