Steve James At the Death House Door

At the Death House Door is a very intimate portrait of Minister Carroll Picket. Was your and Peter’s relationship with him this close from the onset?

Carroll Pickett is a very open and friendly man, so we got along well from the start. I think he did check us out on the Internet though, prior to meeting us. He is a fervent tennis player, even though that’s not in the film, so what we all had in common was a passion for sports. Also, I think it was the right time for him to do this; he was ready for it. Before we asked him about the De Luna tape, I don’t think he’d listened to any of the tapes. They had served their purpose as soon as they were made.

So they were only used by him to get things off his chest right after the executions. In the film I think he said that he only started listening to the tapes in the last year…

Yes, that’s right. He is a very closed man and had a therapist once, also a clergyman, but apart from that therapy he never really dealt with his experiences because he didn’t talk about it. We would be with him when he listened to the tapes and in between we would talk about what we’d just heard. I think for him being confronted with those tapes again after all these years was very therapeutic. It was also striking to see how his opinion had changed over time, since now he is a fervent opponent to the death penalty. When he was talking to us about Cuevas (the man who killed two women from Pickett’s congregation- JH) he sounded very calm and forgiving, but when we listened to the tape he had made right after Cuevas’ execution- that was a whole different story!

He has come to terms with this anger over the years…

Definitely. But sometimes during the interview, we would feel his anger again, for example when he said: "I wanted to go over and bash his head in. I’m sorry, I take that back, it’s not Christian". I found that a striking remark. Later on in the film, when he’s sitting around the table with his family, one of his daughters asks him: "What if I were raped and stabbed and died a horrible slow death, how would your reaction towards the killer be then?" He answers: "I would want him to be locked up in solitary prison for the rest of his life, which is even worse than death." This is a very human reaction. I think his feelings are ambivalent, both angry and forgiving.

Did the scene you just mentioned, in which Pickett and his children sit around the table, happen spontaneously or did you orchestrate it?

Well, to Pickett his family is very important. It always was, but they have been through a lot because of his duties. Often they get together in the Dallas area, so we went along to such a family meeting. During that day, his children started asking him all these questions about his work as a Minister and that is when we found out that they had never really talked to him about it before. Since he is such an introverted man, he never told them about any of it. Also, I think for the children- they all knew what he was doing, but I imagine that they didn’t want to hear any details from their father. It would have been too heavy…

Do you think that now your film is finished and shown to the public, it is a statement against capital punishment?

What do you think, is it?

There is no explicit message in your documentary, but everybody in it has either always been against death penalty, or they used to be in favour of it but changed their minds. If it is indeed a statement it’s a very subtle one.

Actually we have spoken to people who have changed their minds about capital punishment after seeing this film. Minister Pickett is someone who had a lot of reasons to be in favour of the death penalty, since his grandfather and two women from his congregation were murdered and also because of his very conservative and disciplined upbringing. Someone said to me: "Pickett looks like all those men who are in favour of death penalty!" But he changed his standpoint against the odds and that’s what makes people think.

Jessica Hartman