Oscar Forester
Cinematography

I watched one of the many episodes of the series I am a Killer. It goes into the details of being on death row, and why some people have chosen that path after different sentences began to add up and poor treatment lead them to want to be put in such a situation. The episode started out with an interview with James Robertson, a man who has fought to be put on death row due to this mistreatment that eventually drove him insane. He was kept in an enclosed room without windows for over twenty years. And with very little exposure to the outside world and other people, he decided the death penalty was his best option. His crimes started when he was only a child when he began stealing at 12 years old. As Robertson got older, his crimes became more and more severe. Before he was 18 was sentenced to 12 years in jail, but it is crimes in prison that got him sent where he is now. But it's not about what he did that resonated with me, it was about the way our prison system is run, and how improper treatment and humiliation caused him to request and fight for the death penalty. It was not until a family member reached out to him where he felt legitimate joy for the first time in his 37 year sentence. It was a cousin of his that stuck with him through the court battles and the pain of prison. They wrote notes back and forth and soon were allowed to see each other, with the rest of the cousin's family. And during the interview, he even admits that the family has given him new hope for life, but he still needed to be on the row. I just found it sad how a small sentence mixed with abuse turned it into a life sentence and eventually death row. I learned that throughout the film that it is actually very common for people to want to be put on the row due to their mistreatment in prison. Now, death isn't the only reason for this, people on the row are subject to better food, more free-living conditions, and what surprised me the most was that the people are actually a lot calmer and humane. Probably because they know that this is it for them, and they don't see a point in acting the same way, but either way I was surprised. Overall the documentary made me think about how we need to make improvements to the way in which our prisons are run, and the treatment of the people being held there. We learned in psychology that there is actually a reason in which guards are so mean, and that is due to the simple fact that they have power. Power is the root of evil and rarely the other way around. So when a guard is a face to face with a helpless prisoner, their first instinct is to treat them poorly, and this needs to change.