In a society with capital punishment, someone must perform the executions. There’s a paradox inherent in the act of killing to punish killing. In Patty Dillon’s powerful documentary There Will Be No Stay, we meet the people who live with that paradox most personally:
- a Georgia warden who has given the order to commence executions;
- a Texas chaplain assigned to keep the condemned placid on the gurney ;
- and two South Carolina correctional officers who have plunged the vials for lethal injections and mashed the buttons for the electric chair.
The effect that capital punishment has had on these men – connected to neither the victims or perpetrators, is profound and thought-provoking.
Filmmaker Dillon (who also narrates) starts with an anti-death penalty point of view, but There Will Be No Stay is anything but a screed. Having the sense to keep the movie focused on these four personal stories makes it stronger stuff.
There Will Be No Stay is filled with chilling statements like “Our eyes would meet…my eyes would be the last he would see on this planet” and “73% of Texas is in favor of execution. I can tell you that 73% of people who have witnessed an execution are NOT in favor”. And there are lots of factoids about the workaday aspects of contemporary American executions. (Alarmingly, South Carolina offers no training in the operation of the electric chair – the guards just have to wing it.)
I saw the deeply affecting There Will Be No Stay at Cinequest 2015.