Chapman is just one of a growing number of wrongfully convicted inmates who have been cleared thanks to criminal justice reforms and new DNA testing laws put in place over the last decade. But oftentimes the hardship doesn’t end there.

In 2007, the New York Times interviewed 137 former prisoners exonerated by modern DNA testing methods and found that half were “struggling — drifting from job to job, dependent on others for housing or battling deep emotional scars. More than two dozen ended up back in prison or addicted to drugs or alcohol.”

According to a 2009 report by the Innocence Project, an organization devoted to exonerating the wrongfully convicted, an astounding 40 percent of people exonerated by DNA testing have received zero compensation, due in part to the 23 states around the country that do not offer assistance to the wrongfully convicted. That leaves exonerees like Alan Northrop, who lost 17 years behind bars in the state of Washington, with little to no help in rebuilding their lives.

Even in states that do offer compensation, the amount is often woefully inadequate in helping exonerees reestablish themselves, though compensation varies by state ranging from $20,000 in New Hampshire regardless of the years spent behind bars to $80,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment in Texas.

Most state compensation statutes, however, include conditions for eligibility. Last year, Texas refused to compensate Anthony Graves the $1.4 million he would have received for the 18 years he spent on death row because the judge did not include the words “actual innocence” on the document ordering his release. Texas reversed its decision only after nationwide media attention led to a massive public outcry.

In North Carolina, the exonerated are eligible to receive $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment capping out at $750,000 but only if they are granted a pardon of innocence by the governor who is not required to give a reason for her decision. Chapman filed a pardon request in 2009 but a decision has yet to be made. The office of North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue did not respond to a request for comment.

Chapman’s experience is consistent with statistics from the Innocence Project that show it takes an average of three years to secure compensation. Meanwhile, the wrongfully imprisoned face an uphill battle almost immediately upon release, starting with where they will sleep that night and how they will get their next meal. Only 10 states even offer the kinds of services — housing, transportation, education, healthcare, job placement, etc. — crucial to helping exonerees transition back into society as free citizens.

Chapman was not notified he was going to be released until the day he was freed. On April 2, 2008, a guard told him to “Pack up” and 10 minutes later he was out the door.  No one asked if he had a ride or a place to stay.

Luckily he had help from Pamela Laughon, a college professor and chairwoman of the psychology department at the University of North Carolina, who spent eight years working on Chapman’s appeal as a court-appointed investigator. The two immediately clicked when they met and have been inseparable since.

Laughon told Salon she was shocked her client was released with just 10 minutes’ notice and no ride or money. “Years ago they used to let them out with at least a bus ticket,” she says. Nevertheless, the two had already decided that if and when Chapman was released he would live with Laughon until he got on his feet.

That meant Chapman would have to move to Asheville, N.C., which worked out for the best because he did not want to return to Hickory. “When I go back to Hickory the hair on my neck stands up,” says Chapman. The town reminds him of the trauma from his trial when family members testified against him and the time he spent incarcerated instead of watching his two young sons grow up.

Laughon was happy to help. “I had lawyers calling me from all over the state asking me if I was nuts. I spent eight years trying to get this man released. There was no way I was going to drop him off at a homeless shelter or the projects where he grew up,” she told Salon.

With Laughon’s assistance, Chapman set up a checking account, got a driver’s license for the first time, found housing, learned how to use a cellphone and more.

She helped him manage his finances, which quickly dwindled given that he hadn’t received an income in 15 years. Over a decade in prison led him to mishandle the money he did have because, Chapman says, “I was so unused to having things that I wanted to buy everything. I went shopping crazy.” It was moments like this that having Laughon’s support was crucial to Chapman’s ability to readjust to society as a free man.

Laughon also went on job interviews with him to help explain his background to prospective employers. “I’m a college professor and chair of a department, so I have some cred,” she says. “He’s a black guy in the south. If he told an employer ‘by the way I was wrongfully convicted and spent the last 15 years on death row,’ people would look at him like he was crazy and laugh.”

With help from one of Laughon’s students, Chapman found a job at a hotel a few weeks after his release. Four years later, he still works there, which he says is the longest he’s ever held a job.

Still, life is a struggle. Laughon argues that Chapman needs the compensation because, “He’s stuck in minimum wage, being paid the lowest legal amounts you can pay a human being.”

The pardon of innocence pending before Gov. Perdue is important to Chapman not just for the compensation but also because it would be an official declaration of innocence. Laughon calls his current predicament “a no man’s land between not being guilty or innocent.”

Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, a pastor in Hickory and third vice president of the North Carolina NAACP, points out that without an official declaration of innocence, “His family is still at odds with him, not knowing whether he’s a criminal or not. The stigma of being a felon is still on him.”

Spearman went on to compare wrongful conviction to a crime in and of itself. “To be incarcerated, locked up for 15 years wrongfully, is to me a criminal act and the state needs to make up for that,” he told Salon. “The government needs to go head over heals to make sure these men receive apologies and make sure that they can get on with their lives meaning compensation, education, whatever they need to survive.”

Jean Parks, an active member of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (her sister was murdered) and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty in Asheville, agrees that Chapman needs be pardoned but feels that monetary compensation for the wrongfully convicted does not go far enough. “Money should be a part of it to help cover for lost wages and lost opportunities but the state’s response should go beyond that,” says Parks. “It should include an official apology and some social services to help the person get reacclimated to society, find a job, and reestablish oneself as a productive member of the community.”

Laughon argues that states should provide a “life coach” to do for the exonerated what she did for Chapman, which she describes as “somebody that’s going to navigate all the many day-to-day things like managing a bank account, how paychecks will be taxed, and the other kinds of life skills you and I do second nature.” She believes her experience with Chapman serves as a successful case study of the “life coach” approach.

In the meantime, Chapman has an interview with the clemency office on May 30, a signal that Gov. Perdue will likely come to a decision soon. He is determined to stay positive no matter what the outcome and insists he has no bitterness toward the people who put him on death row. “I can forgive. That doesn’t mean I have to forget,” says Chapman.

He upholds that principle by traveling across the state when he can to speak about his exoneration and bring awareness to the flaws in the criminal justice system. He admits he was not aware of the death penalty before his conviction but “now that I do know, I’m going to do everything I can to put an end to it.”

Since his exoneration, Chapman has written a book called “Life After Death Row.” His next book, “Within These Walls,” will be released later this year and includes his diary entries from death row. He says, “It’s going to be a tear-jerker.” Chapman will also be featured in an upcoming episode of B.E.T.’s “Vindicated,” a documentary-style television show that tells the stories of exonerated prisoners.

If he receives compensation, Chapman hopes to open a bed and breakfast. He also dreams of one day opening a shelter for at-risk women.

Chapman acknowledges that none of this would be possible without someone like Laughon in his life. “When I first met Pam it was like meeting an old friend for the first time. To this day, she’s like my big sister,” he says. “She’s been there for me from start to finish. I don’t think I would have made it without her.”

A new investigative report by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review reveals that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989, was likely innocent as well. The full report, titled “Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” can be viewed at CHRLR’s newly launched interactive website where readers can view all of the evidence cited in the article.

DeLuna, a poor Latino man described as having the intelligence of a child, was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez, a 24-year-old single mother who was stabbed to death with a folding knife in 1983 while working behind the cash register at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Lopez called 911 when her killer entered the store, leaving behind a recording of the encounter. She is heard answering a series of yes or no questions asked by the dispatcher about the creepy customer with the knife in his pocket and then whispering that he’s “standing right here at the counter” and “can’t talk,” followed by “Okay. This? Eighty-five,” in response to the customer. After more questions from the dispatcher, Lopez is heard pleading for her life and the line cuts off.

For all that, however, “Anatomy of Injustice” is also a blistering indictment of the death penalty. Assuming, dear reader, that you are yourself an opponent of capital punishment, it will only further cement your objections. It’s also a great book to hand to your less reflective or informed friends and relatives, the ones who may still support executions. Bonner, a Pulitzer-winning reporter who has long covered the issue for the New York Times and other publications, delivers a crackerjack feat of storytelling that steadily administers the truth about capital punishment like a slow, toxic IV drip.

The story begins with the discovery of a body in 1982: Handsome, well-off Dorothy Edwards, a 76-year-old widow and resident of rural Greenwood, S.C., who “could have passed for 56.” Her battered corpse was found in her closet by a neighbor. He helpfully pointed out to the police a beeping alarm clock, a full pot of automatically brewed coffee and an open copy of TV guide — all conspicuously pointing to a time of death — before suggesting that the 23-year-old man who’d recently washed Edwards’ windows seemed a likely culprit. Within days, the police had arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a soft-spoken, docile laborer of very limited intelligence, with the feeblest excuse for probable cause: Edwards had written Elmore a check and one of his fingerprints was found on the windows she’d paid him to clean. Do I even need to tell you that Edwards was white and Elmore black?

After that came a mockery of criminal investigation followed by a mockery of justice. The police failed to photograph the bed where they claimed Edwards had been brutally raped or to retain the bedsheets as evidence. Other evidence passed through an unusually large number of hands (some of them unaffiliated with the investigation), or disappeared and then eventually reappeared (or not). No one bothered to check out that so-helpful neighbor who discovered the body and recommended a suspect. The medical examiner delivered a convenient but highly improbable time of death in a report that an expert would later liken to the work of a “first-year intern.”

As for the public defenders initially assigned to Elmore’s case, one was a racist who referred to his client as “a red-headed nigger.” The other was, in the words of a detective convinced of Elmore’s guilt, “drunk through the whole trial.” The judge made no secret of wishing to wrap things up quickly. He allowed the father of a prosecutor’s best friend to sit on the jury and incorrectly informed the jurors that those who didn’t support the death penalty were obligated to recuse themselves. He also plainly indicated that he considered Elmore to be guilty. The locally powerful lead prosecutor engaged in a colorful array of misconduct. In a week, Elmore was sentenced to death.

Elmore’s advocates succeeded in overturning his conviction twice. He was awarded two additional trials. In the first he was assigned the same incompetent defense attorneys (Bonner describes it as a “video replay” of the original trial) and in the second (which was allowed to contest the sentencing only) a committed but inexperience defender was unable to outwit a wily, unscrupulous prosecutor to mitigate the penalty. Elmore’s case changed that young lawyer’s views on capital punishment by showing him a legal system plagued by outright finagling: “not human error,” he told Bonner, “but human manipulation … We don’t have the right as a civilized society to pass this judgment.”

Eventually, Elmore’s case came to the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center and Diana Holt, a freshly minted attorney at age 36. Holt had overcome a childhood and youth marred by sexual abuse, drugs and divorce. She was convinced of Elmore’s innocence and the further she and her colleagues pursued inquiries that should have been made by his original defense team, the more convinced they became.

Bonner is clear that most convicts on death row are guilty; at issue is not whether they committed the crime, but whether mitigating circumstances — in particular, mental deficiency — argue for life without parole. That death sentences will be appealed is taken for granted, but what Bonner underlines is the institutional defensiveness and inertia that makes those sentences so difficult to overturn. South Carolina judges were extremely reluctant to admit that South Carolina state attorneys and law enforcement could be negligent or deceitful, or their fellow judges remiss. A state attorney (like the one assigned to Elmore’s appeal) might one day expound on a prosecutor’s solemn duty to pursue justice not just victories, then battle fiercely to uphold a conviction even he can see is unjust.

Perhaps most appalling to the average citizen, the emergence of persuasive evidence of innocence after a conviction is often irrelevant to the appeals process. A condemned man’s defenders must instead rely on persuading judges that his constitutional rights were violated during his arrest or trial. “Innocence alone does not entitle a defendant to a new trial,” Bonner explains. While there are good reasons for this principle, it has led to such grotesqueries as a state lawyer arguing before the Missouri Supreme Court that an innocent man ought to be executed even if the court found “absolute” evidence exonerating him of the crime. (To their credit, the justices on that court ruled that “It is difficult to imagine a more manifestly unjust and unconstitutional result than permitting the execution of an innocent person.” Conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court apparently disagree.)

In Bonner’s expert hands, the twists and turns of Elmore’s appeals, and the gradual discovery of the travesties in the original investigation and trial by Holt’s team, make for excruciatingly suspenseful reading. Perhaps some observers might object to the application of true-crime-style narrative devices to an issue so grave. But we love crime novels and courtroom dramas for the same reasons that we ought to care about the perversion that is capital punishment in America; all of us, deep down, want to see justice done. If it takes a Hollywood story line to get us to pay more attention to the contrast between our favorite fictions and the world we live in, then that seems fair enough.

Nor does Herzog directly address the question of how people like that should be punished, or whether it accomplished anything for the state of Texas to put the jug-eared, boyish Perry to death, eight days after Herzog interviewed him. You might call “Into the Abyss” a forensic film about murder in America, and it’s definitely and perhaps intentionally reminiscent of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” But while Herzog does explore the gruesome details of the crime, he is ultimately more interested in the emotional and philosophical forensics of the Conroe case. He wants us to confront the fact that Perry and Burkett (who was spared execution and is now serving a 40-year sentence) were human beings despite their terrible crimes, and also to face the human damage they inflicted on an entire community.

With his usual uncanny skill as an interviewer and eye for eccentric detail, the director of “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “Grizzly Man” and the Oscar-nominated “Encounters at the End of the World” talks to the murderers and to their victims’ families, to a longtime Texas executioner who now has second thoughts and to a death-house chaplain who is brought to tears by recounting a golf-course encounter with a squirrel as a metaphor. Both Michael Perry and Jason Burkett proclaim their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence, and while I don’t support the death penalty either, I’m grateful that neither of them is walking the streets. “Into the Abyss” goes from farce to tragedy, sometimes in the same moment, as when Herzog interviews the, um, intriguing young woman who married Burkett in prison and mysteriously became pregnant by him. (He isn’t permitted conjugal visits; they evidently found a way to smuggle out a viable semen sample.)

There is no farce, however, in Herzog’s conversation with Jason Burkett’s father, Delbert, himself a convicted murder who is literally housed in a prison across the street from his son. When Herzog hounds Delbert Burkett to discuss an incident when he and Jason were transported together on a prison bus, handcuffed wrist to wrist, I at first felt angry at the director. Why not leave the poor old bastard alone? He’s evidently suffered enough. But finally Herzog’s tough-love therapy turns out all right. Delbert Burkett may never have another chance to tell the world that he’s a man with a moral vision of the universe, not a murderous monster, that he was capable of imagining a family life that didn’t turn out this way, and that he felt authentic guilt and shame.

Herzog is an avowed atheist, but in a certain sense his films, especially in recent years, have become highly spiritual in focus. Thanks to its subject and its characters “Into the Abyss” is suffused with a Christian religiosity that the director treats with great respect. Although he’s lived in the United States for many years, Herzog remains an outsider, an observer, who comes to a quintessentially American event like the Conroe murders with no judgment and no preconceptions. In our telephone conversation, he refused to bash America for our high rates of crime and incarceration, and spoke eloquently about the openness with which the state of Texas handles executions. Texas has put 11 people to death so far this year, and executed 18 last year, including Michael Perry, who died by lethal injection on July 2, 2010.

Werner, it isn’t quite accurate to call this a film about the death penalty, is it? I mean, that subject certainly plays a role, but it’s not your central concern.

Yes, that’s true. In many cases people make films that try to prove the innocence of an inmate. For example, in the case of Errol Morris’ film ["The Thin Blue Line"] the inmate was actually released. And recently there was the case where the three young men in West Memphis got out. [As seen in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's "Paradise Lost 3."] Well, that’s a very fine or legitimate kind of film; it has a real issue and that’s the guilt or innocence of someone.

In my case, I’m not after guilt or innocence, and all the people with whom I talk know it in advance. I tell them, this is not my business. Guilt or innocence is a question that can be solved only by a court of law and by a jury. And in this case, Perry-Burkett, guilt, in my opinion — and I’ve read all the court transcripts and read the entire case file — was pretty much beyond doubt. Both of them maintain their innocence, and I give them the chance to do so and say so.

You see, it’s not an issue film for or against capital punishment. I, the filmmaker, am not in favor of capital punishment. I respectfully disagree with this practice. But let’s face it — as a German I should be the last one to tell anyone how to handle justice!

You interviewed both of the convicted murderers in this case, but it’s important to note that you also spent a lot of time with family members of the victims. In fact, the film is dedicated to Lisa Stotler-Balloun, whose mother and brother were both killed, and Charles Richardson, whose younger brother was one of the victims.

What is quite often overlooked in the fascination with senseless, monstrous crimes is the side of the families of the victims. I really wanted to give them a voice, and I wanted to show the repercussions of these senseless murders. That’s why they’re in there. It was very moving and compelling to me, and ultimately the film is dedicated to Lisa and to Charles Richardson, who both lost family members and are still suffering, are still living as if in a void. Their voices are very important in the film.

When you say they’re living in a void, is that what the title “Into the Abyss” refers to?

In a way, yes. Wherever you look, there is another abyss, and you as an audience can look into the deepest recesses of the human soul. Literature or poetry often tries to look deep inside ourselves, and many of my films offer this kind of vertical look into our condition. I have said, as a joke, that “Into the Abyss” could have been the title for many of my films!

What was it that drew you to this case in particular?

I think it was the senselessness of the crime. A triple homicide so senseless that it gives you vertigo. You see, there are murders — a shootout with police, or somebody stalks a young woman, sexually assaults her and murders her — where you can sense there was an aim. It doesn’t make it better or worse, but sometimes the utter senselessness of a murder is so staggering, like in this case. And then, of course, all the ramifications. For the families of the victims it was very, very intense. It’s a film about families of victims of violent crime, and it’s a little bit of an American gothic. When you listen to the young man [a former acquaintance of Jason Burkett] who was stabbed with a screwdriver, and who was illiterate until very recently and struggled out of it — it’s a wonderful, wonderful story, a great achievement.

Well, yeah. It struck me that you’re telling a very intimate story about people’s lives in a part of the country that isn’t often shown in the movies, and where most people who go to see documentary films have probably never been.

Yeah. Cinema doesn’t normally look at these parts of the country and these types of people. But it’s good that they have a presence, they have a voice. When you see a man like Fred Allen, who was the former captain of the tie-down team in the death chamber, who would strap you to the gurney. And after 125 executions, of which he was a proponent, he has a breakdown and cannot do it anymore. He has such a wonderful presence and credibility and integrity. I have the feeling this man is a national treasure.

That’s an extraordinary interview. It sort of sneaks up on you, the fact that this very ordinary, macho-seeming Texas guy has been profoundly traumatized.

He describes it very well. In a way, the fact that he cannot really describe what happened to him is even more compelling. He speaks about the fact that he started to shake uncontrollably and I asked him how bad a shake. He looks at me and says, “It was a shake.” It’s very good.

I know you’ve said repeatedly that you don’t believe in God. A lot of the people you’re interviewing here do believe in God, and there’s a strong element of spirituality in this film.

Well, I try to look into the deepest recesses of the human soul. It’s always then that the real spirit of human beings is becoming evident. You see, when you have exactly 50 minutes on death row to have a conversation with someone who is expecting his execution, there is no small talk. You go immediately as deep as it gets.

You open the film by interviewing the death-row chaplain, who at first seems like this strange, kind of off-putting guy with weird hair and a bad suit. And then it all changes.

Yeah, well I met him for only 25 minutes in my entire life. When he arrived at the cemetery he tapped at his wristwatch and said, “Quick, quick. I have to be at the death house in 40 minutes.” So you don’t have any time for introductions. He appeared to be someone almost like a TV preacher, speaking about the beauty of creation and how we have a forgiving, loving God who in paradise awaits everyone. I thought, no, I need to crack him open. So very cheerfully, from behind the camera, I ask him to tell me about an encounter with a squirrel. And all of a sudden he unravels. Fifteen seconds later he is close to tears. He unravels, and you look deep inside him. And this question about an encounter with a squirrel, that’s something you really do not learn in film school. How does it function? It’s inexplicable. That’s why I’m a filmmaker.

Talk a little bit about Delbert Burkett, Jason’s father, whom you interviewed in prison. He seems so full of regret and wisdom at this point in his life. I feel tremendous compassion for him, and at the same time you have to say: It’s kind of late for that, isn’t it?

He’s such a tragic figure in a way, the whole human tragedy somehow comes across. When I ask him about being on a prison bus with his son, handcuffed wrist to wrist with him, and I asked him how it felt, after so many years, to feel the hand of your son. And he said, “No, I can’t.” I say, please, explain it to us. He again says, “No, I can’t.” I keep insisting and what he finally says is very profound and very tragic. What is also significant is that it’s not only him. I’ve heard it many times from other death-row inmates who are not in this film, but will be in other television films. Asking them about children, and how we should raise children, and they always talk about small family values, which we have a tendency of deriding easily. No! It’s something wonderful and serious, and death-row inmates tell you about family values more convincingly than anyone else ever could.

It’s a basic tenet of sociology: Even people who have violated social codes, generally speaking, still believe in them. You go into death row, and maybe you expect hardened, vicious criminals who hate society. But it isn’t like that.

They are all much more compelling than any preacher or anyone who educates you. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s at least a statistical fact that I have come across.

The film can’t possibly answer this question, but it does make you consider the fact that we live in such a violent society, compared to other developed nations.

No, I would say America is, let me put it in quotes, “average.” Of course, let’s say that per capita there are too many people in prison, but that’s another story. When it comes to capital punishment, all the real populous nations in the world have capital punishment: China, Japan, Russia, Pakistan, you name it. I simply respectfully disagree with the practice, in my case because I come from a quite different historical background. That’s the only reason; I don’t even have a philosophical argument. I only have a story, and that’s a story about the barbarism of the Nazi time, when there was an excessive amount of capital punishment. There was euthanasia, where you would be killed by the state for being insane or retarded, and on top of that there was the genocide of 6 million Jewish people. End of story. I cannot be an advocate of capital punishment. For me, it’s a question of principle: A state should not be allowed to kill anyone for any reason. The only exception would be warfare.

OK, but only a few nations execute more people than we do, and I don’t know that any of them are democracies. Possibly South Africa. And then, even by American standards, Texas is a special case.

I’m sorry, I’m not in the business of Texas-bashing. Being quite convinced as a state about the justice of capital punishment, Texas makes it more transparent than any other state. And you should not forget that Texas is the only state in the United States where a jury can find you guilty of first-degree murder, of capital murder, and then in the punishment phase can let you walk free. Of course there have to be massive mitigating circumstances, and you must have never committed a previous felony. So there are rules, but they can convict you of murder and let you walk.

Well, it’s interesting that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice allowed you to interview Michael Perry, and also allowed you to film inside the execution chamber. Which is a tremendously chilling piece of footage.

Exactly, yes. They make it transparent, they do not hide it. They tell you, this is how we do it, these are our procedures, you have access. They are not hiding anything.

Did you have any emotions about shooting inside the death house? Or were your concerns purely technical at that point?

That’s a good question, but again, I had exactly 50 minutes. You have to perform from the first second, you have to deliver. You have to hit the right tone. There’s not much time for emotion and reflection. That comes later, during the editing, and then that footage became so intense that both my editor and I started smoking again. We would scramble out into the street every hour and a half or so and hang onto a cigarette.

What distinguishes death-row inmates, and what makes their perspective unique, is that they know exactly how they will die and exactly when they will die, and we do not. That makes the conversation so intense, but it’s very much about us as well. Secretly, it’s about us.

About how we face death and mortality, you mean?

Yes, but not only that. How we face life, how we forget to cherish the fantastic privilege that we can open and close a door behind us. That we get to see the magnificence of the world, of creation. It can be an abandoned gas station or a cow in a field, and the film makes it clear that these moments are priceless. They are a phenomenal gift, and we overlook it. My senses toward the world are very, very sharpened by this.

We learn a great deal about Jason Burkett’s family and background in the film, but very little about Michael Perry, beyond your interview with him.

Well, the reason was that he was executed eight days after my conversation with him. I had no chance to speak with him again. Unfortunately his father had just died, and his mother refused to appear on camera. Months after the execution I cautiously asked again, and she categorically declined. I did not want to bother her any further. You have to leave them in peace; you have to know when to push and when not to. So we did not have anyone from the family who could tell us about him.

He’s an enigma, which may serve the film in some ways.

Yes, but you also see a real human being. He seems completely oblivious to his situation. He tells me about a canoe excursion he took to the Everglades when he was 13. At the end he thanked me, he said, “Man, I didn’t sense that I was in a cage and I was gonna die in eight days. I was free like a child for an hour.” When he tells me about seeing alligators and monkeys in the Everglades, it’s as if he were not locked away in a tiny cage.

I must say, however, that of all the men and one woman I have seen on death row, my instincts tell me he was the most dangerous of all of them.

That’s fascinating. Well, it’s very difficult to connect the person we see you speaking to — who seems like a kid, really — to the horrible crimes he apparently committed. Brutally murdering an old woman to steal her car. It’s incomprehensible.

Yeah. And of course I allow him, and allow everyone, to be a human being. It’s so easy to say, and I hear it all the time, “They are monsters. Just get rid of them.” No, the crimes are monstrous but the perpetrators are human. And they never lose the humanness that is in them.

“Into the Abyss” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow.

I looked for right-wing responses to the execution and found that it simply wasn’t much of a story on their side. The National Review Online and the Weekly Standard seem wholly uninterested in it, leaving the defense of the execution to the conservative movement’s left-baiting id. Like Ann Coulter, who endlessly repeated the shibboleth “cop-killer,” and former HuffPo troll Greg Gutfeld, who focused, as always, on the true villains in this story: Hollywood celebrities who surely only adopted a cause because it’s fashionable. (It is fashionable to oppose the execution of a man whose guilt is in doubt!)

Erick Erickson wrote a couple of posts on Davis last night, including an open thread asking how the execution would affect “the horserace” and one revisiting the prosecution’s case and declaring it airtight, without actually addressing any of the flaws in how that case was put together and presented. There was evidence that implicated Davis — he might have been guilty! — but the point, the entire argument, is that by no means was this man so patently, self-evidently guilty that Georgia should feel comfortable killing him. The point is doubt, but one side believes “doubt” is a moral failing.

The New Republic, meanwhile, reprinted an old magazine piece criticizing death penalty opponents for focusing on death-row inmates whose guilt is in doubt rather than “devoting more time and energy to more significant … problems with capital punishment.” (There’s a case to be made that anti-death penalty activists should behave more like antiabortion organizations, attacking the policy by lobbying for state-by-state piecemeal restrictions rather than campaigning nationally for a blanket ban. There is also a case to be made that they’re already doing this, with notable success in most states that aren’t part of the old Confederacy.)

The sad fact is, the Davis case is an example of the system working precisely as it was designed to work. This is why the Supreme Court and the Georgia Board of Pardons denied his pleas for clemency. There was no violation of the rules governing capital punishment — the rules simply don’t protect people who may have been wrongfully convicted, if a jury was convinced by meager and questionably obtained “proof.”

Here it devolves again into debates between tribes that aren’t speaking the same language. The liberal argument that it’s hypocritical to call yourself pro-life and support the death penalty is facile — an evangelical Christian quite easily distinguishes between an innocent person killed before birth and a man who had a chance at life and failed to live righteously — and while the argument that those who don’t trust the government to regulate business or provide healthcare shouldn’t trust it to put men to death is a bit more compelling, guilty verdicts are meted out by juries of citizens, not “bureaucrats,” and even the most staunch anti-government conservative respects the state’s right to enforce “law and order.”

So, sadly, I don’t think the execution of Troy Davis will have much effect on the national “conversation” about the morality of capital punishment or the glaring flaws in America’s system of justice. Because while it’s very reasonable to argue that “we” should only kill someone if we’re really, really, really sure they did it, the modern American conservative is really, really, really sure about everything.