International Human Rights Day
- News
- 10 Dec 2014
To mark International Human Rights Day 2014, the Death Penalty Project is hosting the UK’s first screening of an award-winning animated short film, ‘The Last 40 Miles’ by Alex Hannaford.The film is based on a true story of a condemned man as he takes his last journey from his solitary cell on death row in the east Texas town of Livingston, to the execution chamber 40 miles away in Huntsville.
Director of the film, Alex Hannaford said, “I am grateful for this opportunity to screen ‘The Last 40 Miles’ with The Death Penalty Project in London. I covered capital punishment as a journalist in Texas for more than a decade and in that time I saw public support for it plummet. Today more than 60% of Americans would choose life with or without the possibility of parole over execution. As part of the team behind this short film — with its underlying themes of race, mental health and poverty — I hope it will get more people talking about this ultimate form of ‘justice’.”
Today, and every day, we will continue to highlight miscarriages of justice, to promote the restriction of the death penalty in line with international minimum legal requirements and to protect the most fundamental right of all, the right to life.
Photo credit: Justin Norman (Flickr/Creative Commons), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode
