Review – Deadline (2004)

In the last days of his term in office, Illinois Governor George H. Ryan decided to commute the sentences of everyone on the state’s death row. This documentary chronicles some of the hearings leading up to the decision. And as usual with productions of this ilk, we spend a lot of time with the apparently wrongfully convicted, the mentally disabled and the insane. Though some of the talking heads make some excellent points about the nature of capital punishment as practiced in the United States, the almost total absence of counter argument throws the integrity of the case into question. Mildly amusing