Kenneth Foster

In August 1996 Michael LaHood was shot dead on the driveway of his
parents’ house by Mauricio Brown. Sitting in a car 70 feet away sat
Kenneth Foster, who was driving Mauricio Brown that night. In July 1997
both Kenneth Foster and shooter Mauricio Brown were found guilty of
capital murder and sentenced to death. Brown was executed by lethal
injection in 2006 while Foster’s execution was scheduled for August 30th
2007.
 James Robertson
James Robertson wants to die on death row. A lifetime long criminal who
first went to jail for robbery and attempted assault when he was 16, he has
spent his time in prison committing a string of violent crimes that by 2008
culminated in a rap sheet totalling more than 100 years of prison time owed
to the state. After 20 years in prison, he was moved to a specially
monitored department where he decided to murder his cellmate Frank
Heart to “get on death row”. Robertson strangled Hart to death with a pair
of socks tied together. Charged with the murder of Frank Hart, Robertson
spent the following three years engaged in a battle to be sentenced to
death. Finally, in December 2012 he was placed on death row.
 Justin Dickens
A robbery gone wrong or a deliberate execution? In May 1995, 17 year-old
Justin Dickens attempted to rob the Mockingbird Pawn and Jewellery Store
in Amarillo, Texas. A parentless teen, Dickens claims he did it in an attempt
to pay back local drug dealer Dallas Moore for drugs which he and Moore’s
wife, Martha, had stolen and consumed together. Whilst attempting the
robbery Dickens shot and killed Francis ‘Allen’ Carter. Dickens has always
claimed that the gun fired accidentally when Carter, a school teacher and
Vietnam veteran, had attempted to wrestle the gun from him. However, at
trial, Prosecutor James Farren painted a very different picture claiming that
Dickens deliberately shot Carter, unprovoked and from a distance. Justin
Dickens was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death
 Miguel Venegas
In 1991 three men, were murdered as they slept by 17-year-old Miguel
Martinez and 16-year-old Miguel Venegas. In April 1992 Martinez was tried
alone as his co-accused, Venegas, had escaped custody and fled to
Mexico. Martinez was tried for capital murder using the Texas 'Law of
Parties' as the prosecution argued that although Venegas had struck the
fatal blows, Martinez was "party" to the planning and execution of the
crime. Martinez was found guilty and sentenced to death. At 17 years-old,
he became the youngest person to be sent to Texas' death row. Miguel
Venegas was eventually recaptured but despite his role in the murders, his
age at the time of the killings (16), meant he would not face the death
sentence. Instead he accepted a plea deal and a 41-year prison sentence.
 David Lewis
In 1986, while undertaking the burglary of a house in Lufkin, Texas, David
Lee Lewis was surprised by the return of the homeowner, 74-year-old
Myrtle Ruby. Lewis, who was armed with a sawn-off rifle, fired at Ruby and
shot her dead. Having left distinctive footprints outside the crime scene,
Lewis was arrested shortly afterwards and confessed to the crime. US
Federal law prohibits States from executing the mentally disabled, which is
defined as somebody with an IQ score of below 70. David Lewis’ IQ score
has been officially recorded at ‘between 71 and 85’ meaning he is
classified as “borderline” mentally impaired. His defence also argued that
with alternative testing methods his IQ could be proven to be lower than 70.
However, the prosecution contended that Lewis should receive a death
sentence on the grounds that he posed a future danger to society. They
presented the jury with confessions that Lewis had displayed violent
behaviour in a previous burglary incident; he had allegedly stabbed an
individual when he was confronted while burgling another property only
three months before Myrtle Ruby’s murder. David Lewis remains on death
row more than 30 years
after the murder of Myrtle Ruby. His lawyers continue to insist that he is “is
intellectually disabled and cognitively impaired” and have recently appealed
the death penalty conviction on these grounds.
 Deandre Buchanan

On November 7th 2000, Deandre Buchanan was arrested near the scene
of a triple homicide. Angela Brown, the mother of Buchanan’s two infant
daughters, his stepfather and his aunt, had all been shot dead by
Buchanan. In a recorded police interview, Buchanan claimed he had
smoked a joint which had been laced with an unknown drug and that he
had subsequently become convinced that everybody at the party were
attempting to kill him. He described shooting both his step-father and aunt
inside the house before chasing Angela Brown outside and shooting her
dead as she held their children in her
arms. Since that interview, Buchanan has consistently maintained that he
has no recollection of what had taken place at the time of the shootings. In
April 2002, Buchanan went on trial for the murders of Juanita Hoffman,
William Jefferson and Angela Brown where he claimed that he had suffered
a drug induced psychotic episode. Prosecutor Kevin Crane dismissed this
claim of diminished responsibility on the grounds that any drugs Buchanan
had taken had been consumed voluntarily. Crane also argued that
Buchanan had deliberated over the killings when he reloaded the gun on
more than one occasion and as such the killings constituted first degree
murder.
 Wayne Doty
In March 1997 Wayne Doty shot his colleague, Harvey Horne II, five times
in the face over what Doty claimed was a dispute about drugs. Doty was
given life in prison but 14 years later killed again. While in prison Doty
tricked fellow inmate Xavier Rodriguez into being tied up before strangling
him unconscious and then stabbing him 23 times with a homemade knife
claiming Rodriguez had stolen tobacco from him. At his trial Doty
represented himself encouraging the jury to sentence him to death, which
they duly did. In October 2015, four years after his sentencing, Doty
became the first Florida death row inmate to request the electric chair.
Today, he remains on death row but only following a resentencing, which
occurred during the filming of this documentary.
 Charles Thompson
A crime of passion that ended in a double murder conviction. In 1998,
Charles Thompson handed himself into police in Houston, Texas, for the
shooting of his former girlfriend, Denise Hayslip, and her new partner
Darren Cain. Both had allegedly been shot during a fight at Hayslip's home
in which, according to Thompson, Cain had attacked him with a knife while
Thompson claimed he had simply sought to defend himself. Cain was shot
dead at the scene while Denise Hayslip, who according to Thompson had
been accidentally hit in the jaw with a bullet, was taken to hospital for
treatment. Thompson was initially charged with one count of manslaughter
and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. However,
when Denise Hayslip died in hospital six days later Thompson's charges
were upgraded to double murder - a capital charge for which he faced the
prospect of a death sentence.
Thompson has continued to argue that he acted in self-defence and that
Hayslip's death was due to medical error as she entered the hospital with
non-life-threatening injuries.
Robert Shafer

In 1990, 19-year-old Robert Shafer and 16-year-old David Steinmeyer handed themselves
into police in St Charles, Missouri and confessed to the killings of two men; Dennis Young
and Jerry Parker. Shafer and Steinmeyer claimed at first that they had hitched a ride with the
victims who they claimed attacked them and that they killed in self-defence. However, two
years later, in July 1992, Robert Shafer confessed to killing both men stating that he and
Steinmeyer had in fact been planning a robbery and had selected two men they believed were
gay, so would be easy to rob. Shafer told police they had approached Parker and Young,
asked for a ride and then attempted to rob them at gunpoint. After a scuffle broke out they
had ordered the two men to drive them to a remote location where Shafer had executed them
both. After confessing, Shafer requested the death penalty. Despite having requested the
death penalty, just three weeks after arriving on death row, Shafer sought the help of an
attorney to appeal his sentencing.
Joshua Nelson

In 1995, 18-year-old Joshua Nelson and 16-year-old co-defendant Keith

Brennan were charged with the murder of their friend Tommy Owens in
Cape Coral, Florida. The pair had brutally beaten and slit their friend’s
throat with a box cutter. Nelson told investigators that they had decided to
kill Tommy so that that they could steal his car and escape from their
troubled home lives. Nelson even walked the police around the scene of
the crime, a remote stretch of road about an hour from their home and told
them in detail how they had killed Tommy. At trial, it was revealed that
Nelson had been subjected to a sustained period of sexual abuse by his
step-father and had been thrown out of the family home on the day of the
killing. It was also claimed, but not proven, that a week before the murder
Tommy Owens had sexually assaulted Keith Brennan’s girlfriend. However,
a clear motive for the killing was never offered. Although Joshua Nelson
was sentenced to death in November 1996, Keith Brennan avoided a death
sentence due to his age. Nelson remains on Death Row more than 20
years after his conviction despite having launched various appeals. Nelson
has now spent more than half of his life on Death Row.