- An argument typically put forth in favor of the death penalty is that capital punishment works as a deterrent against future crimes. Tacitly, this assumes that potential criminals are sufficiently rational that they apply some sort of cost-benefit analysis to their actions and, assuming also that they value living long lives, choose to avoid behavior that could lead to their own premature demise. Honestly, I don't know whether or not this ever happens, and I'm apparently not alone: the National Research Council announced earlier this year that the impact of the death penalty was inconclusive. What I do know is that none of the criminals in Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss would have been swayed by this, or any other brand, of logic.
- The facts of the case are these. A nurse named Sandra Stolter was baking cookies in her quiet, gated community in a small Texas town when somebody entered her home and murdered her with a shotgun. The killers proceeded to dump her body in a nearby lake and then returned to the scene of the crime, where they encountered her son Adam and his friend Jeremy. After luring them into the woods, the perpetrators gunned down the two boys, one of whom tried to run away. The ultimate aim of this triple homicide appears to have been to steal Mrs. Stotler's red sports car. A week later, two adolescents named Michael Perry and Jason Burkett were arrested for the crimes. Jason received a life sentence and Michael got the death penalty.
- Given such a remarkably heinous act and the truly disturbing archival crime scene footage shown in the film, you'd think Into the Abyss would fail as an anti-death penalty polemic. In fact, the film works tremendously well, largely because of Herzog's unique talent for finding precisely the right people, getting them talking, and, for once, not attempting to dominate the narrative with his own voice. Instead, he sits by quietly as the prison chaplain (Richard Lopez) struggles to reconcile Jesus' teachings with the idea of putting people to death. Relatives of victims (Lisa Stolter-Baloun and Charles Richardson) recite stunning inventories of the tragedies their already strained families have experienced over the years. The film's most painfully somber admission comes from the warden (Fred Allen) who worked on death row itself. One day, he executed a female inmate and realized he couldn't do it anymore.
- And then there are the convicted killers themselves. There's little doubt in my mind that at least one of these young men, and probably both of them, were responsible for the murders. Their stories don't add up, however, with each one suggesting that it was primarily the other at fault and neither being able to provide anything resembling a rational explanation for what happened. Michael's goofy grin and friendly mannerisms make him seem like a nice guy. Jason's powerful stoicism becomes even more sympathetic once we meet his father Delbert, a lifelong jailbird, and his wife Melyssa who fell in love with him while Jason was in prison. Few people, including Herzog, would argue that these men should get out of jail anytime soon. After seeing this film, I would hope that more people would wonder what killing them accomplishes. Of course, by then it will be far too late for Michael. He was killed by lethal injection on July 1, 2010, eight days after the film was made.
