Death Row Stories

An elderly white widow is brutally murdered in Greenwood, South Carolina, and Edward Lee Elmore, an African American handyman, is quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. Elmore's execution seems inevitable until Diana Holt, a tenacious legal intern, comes across his case and devotes her life to saving his.

With no prior criminal record, former Sacramento law school student Gloria Killian seemed an unlikely person to mastermind a brutal home invasion and murder. But the testimony of a career criminal led to capital charges and a guilty verdict. Her cause seemed lost until Joyce Ride, the mother of Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, became intrigued by her case.

27-year old Army vet Joe D'Ambrosio was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Tony Klann, whose body was found floating in a Cleveland creek. No one listened to Joe's pleas of innocence until Father Neil Kookoothe began investigating the case...and discovered a shocking cover-up.

Rookie police officer James Duckett is sentenced to death for the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl in the tiny town of Mascotte, FL. Fourteen years later, Marshall Frank, a seasoned homicide detective, gets a letter from Duckett and becomes convinced of his innocence. But Frank's efforts to exonerate his fellow cop lead him down an unexpectedly sinister path.

When a wealthy young businessman is shot dead during a mugging in New Orleans, cops and the DA pursue a petty criminal named John Thompson and secure his conviction on capital murder charges. Two successful Philadelphia lawyers agree to represent him but soon discover that the legal rules they've lived by don't necessarily apply in the Crescent City.

In 1987 Kris Maharaj, a wealthy British businessman, is sentenced to death for a double homicide in a luxury Miami hotel. The case seems open and shut until an idealistic attorney named Clive Stafford Smith uncovers powerful evidence supporting an alternative explanation of the killings - one that shines a light on the city's booming drug trafficking and money-laundering operations.

The wife and two children of an Air Force captain are murdered in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Army sergeant Tim Hennis is sentenced to death for the crime. After his conviction, evidence emerges causing many to question his guilt, beginning a journey through the American justice system with twists and turns both bizarre and unprecedented.

After seventeen years on death row for mass murder at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in Aurora, Colorado, Nathan Dunlap's fate resides in the hands of one man: Governor John Hickenlooper. With a re-election campaign looming, the governor's decision will reverberate far beyond Colorado's Death Row.