The Innocence Project of Texas

Tonight, a ground-breaking documentary about a pastor who oversaw more than 90 Texas executions will be premiered on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). The movie, which is called “At the Death House Door,” follows pastor Caroll Pickett as he recalls his work in a prison ministry and the oftentimes distressing obligation of acting as friend and confidant to condemned men and women set to die by lethal injection.

One of the prisoners to whom he ministered was Carlos De Luna, convicted of killing a gas station cashier — indeed, this project began when the Chicago Tribune approached James and Gilbert to make a film about a pair of Tribune reporters who were trying posthumously to prove De Luna’s innocence; they make a compelling case.

That story winds through Pickett’s as a kind of secondary but crucial counter-melody. Although the pastor met him, as was the custom, only on the day of the execution, he felt instinctively that De Luna was innocent. That feeling, and the 11 minutes it took the prisoner to die, signaled the beginning of the end of Pickett’s career in the penal system.

Read the rest of the L.A. Times Review by clicking here.

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