Numa pequena cidade do interior americano o jovem universitário Jonathan Parer (Peter Berg) vê em um pesadelo sua família ser chacinada por Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi), um técnico de TV. O crime acaba realmente acontecendo e Jonathan convence seu pai adotivo, o policial Don Parker (Michael Murphy), a prender Pinker. Após cometer outros crimes Pinker é preso e condenado à cadeira elétrica. Ao ser executado, entretanto, o assassino consegue fazer com que seu espírito sobreviva como energia, sendo capaz de tomar corpos humanos e deslocar-se por meio das ondas de TV.
In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
Liberal district attorney decides to seek the death penalty for a man who slaughtered a family at Christmastime, then drank their blood. He escapes, though, and starts killing again.
In 1747, a handsome but rebellious Scotsman named Richard Abdee is auctioned off as a slave on a Caribbean island controlled by French and British sugar-planters. When caught having sex with his owner's wife, Abdee is given 100 lashes with the dreaded "dragonard" whip. This sentence is meant to be fatal but Abdee survives and later joins in a slave revolt which puts an end to the island's era of savage whippings.
An LA police officer is murdered in the onion fields outside of Bakersfield. However, legal loopholes could keep his kidnappers from receiving justice, and his partner is haunted by overwhelming survivor's guilt.
A hugely successful DA goes into private practice after sending a man to the chair -- only to find out later he was innocent. Now the drunken attorney only seems to represent criminals and low lifes.
Ruth Ellis lives with her ten-year old son Andy next to a night club. One night she meets David Blakely, and they start a love affair. However, for David with his upper-class background, it is impossible to uphold the relationship. He breaks up with her, something which makes Ellis, obsessed by him, very upset.
Um repórter/escritor, auxiliado por seu futuro sogro, conspira para conduzir o assassinato de uma dançarina burlesca com provas forjadas como parte de um esforço para banir a pena de morte. O repórter investigativo Tom Garrett, licenciado de seu trabalho no jornal, trabalha em seu segundo romance. Como está tendo problemas para escrever o segundo, seu chefe e futuro sogro, o editor de jornais Austin Spencer, sugere que ele escreva um livro de não-ficção sobre a pena capital. Eles acreditam que o promotor público do estado, Roy Thompson, sempre manipula os júris para garantir vereditos, levando pessoas inocentes para o corredor da morte. O plano é plantar provas que condenem uma pessoa inocente num caso de assassinato, Tom será a pessoa inocente. Vão documentar todas as evidências plantadas, tornando-as públicas após a apresentação do veredicto para reverter e, esperamos, levar à discussão dos méritos da abolição da pena de morte.
Albert Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) tentou evitar, mas terminou seguindo os passos de seu pai e tornou-se carrasco em 1934. Aos poucos seu conceito cresce, devido ao uso sofisticado e frio de seus métodos, o que o faz ser o mais respeitado e temido carrasco da Inglaterra. Quando abandonou a profissão, em 1956, Pierrepoint tinha mais de 600 execuções em seu currículo.
The end of the 14th century. Parents send the eldest son Jan to study in Hamburg, and the youngest - Klaus - to the monastery. No sooner had the children moved away from their homes, as on Klaus'es eyes the robbers kill their parents and burn the house. Only thanks to the loyal monk Wigbold Klaus managed to survive the shock. A few years later Klaus Störtebeker finds his brother Jan and his long-time friend Elizabeth Pren in Hamburg. From her, he learns that she is expected to marry Simon von Wallenrod, whose father Klaus suspects of killing his parents. But the Pranks and the Wallenrods are rich and respected people, and Klaus is a poor man. And now he becomes a pirate...
A história de Gary Gilmore, um assassino condenado que fez lobby por sua própria execução.
A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.
A cheating husband is charged in the poisoning death of his invalid wife, in spite of other women and suicide also being suspected.
A freestyle biopic of Ikki Kita, the ultranationalist intellectual whose ideas inspired the failed military coup in 1936.
Barefoot Bobby Briggs, the legendary running back for the Austin Steers was today sentenced to die for his role in the armed robbery/murder at a downtown Stop 'n Go convenience store... It's five years later, and Bobby's appeals have all but run out, and the Austin Steers are - once again - on the march to the Superbowl, with a lock on the playoffs, when their wide receiver has a season ending injury. With their playoff hopes in shambles, the Governor of Texas controversially offers Bobby a furlough -- from death row -- to help rescue the Steers' post-season hopes, and even play in the Superbowl.
Based on a true story, James Coburn portrays a military lawyer assigned to defend a confessed psychotic killer. Set in the context of WWII and the uneasy US-Australian military alliance. The accused killer claims to have killed 3 women in order to possess their voices. Despite the defense lawyer's concerns that the killer is not fit to stand trial, the US military presses forward with the case and its desire to have the killer executed in order to strengthen the shaky alliance.
When a brilliant crime writer investigates a 40-year-old murder, he confronts a small town's worst fears.
A crusading reporter plans his own arrest and conviction for first degree murder, trying to show that the death sentence should be outlawed when based on circumstantial evidence alone, but his plan goes awry.
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
A documentary film about Martta Koskinen, the last executed woman in Finland during the war in 1943. Martta was a Seamstress who lived in Helsinki during the Second World War. She was one of the post-civil war (in 1918) generation for whom the war had meant a disappointment in the system and failure in unity of the Finnish nation. The legacy of the civil war had left systems of persecution in place for those with socialist ideals. Martta and her fellow revolutionaries were determined to continue the resistance movement although they knew that at worst it could cost their lives. Martta was imprisoned twice before she was shot. She was an idealist, whose seemingly harmless, naive beliefs in peace and justice were the most dangerous traits a person could have at the time.