Death Row Exonerees displayed ten gripping video portraits of survivors of the American justice system.
World-renowned photographer Martin Schoeller filmed each person in his signature close-up style with audio overhead playing each exoneree’s interview with the artist, recounting their experience.
Schoeller collaborated closely with Witness To Innocence, a non-profit organization led by exonerated death row survivors who work to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
In Schoeller’s artist statement, he remarked:
I want to present viewers with a harrowing, interactive account of the stories of innocent people forced to endure government-sanctioned horror in nightmare conditions. These women and men bear dignified witness to the unacceptable costs of a misguided system of laws in desperate need of revision and a prison system that focuses on punishment, rather than on rehabilitation.
Two-thirds of the world have either formally abolished the death penalty or have ceased to use it. In 2016, the United States executed the sixth highest number of people in the world; the only countries that executed more were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan. In the United States, Black people are disproportionately represented on death row and among those who have been executed. Black people make up 13% of the population, but they make up 42% of death row and 35% of those executed. Moreover, the race of the victim affects who receives the death penalty; homicides of white people are more likely to result in the death penalty.
[As of 2020] Since 1976, 170 people that were sentenced to death have been exonerated, revealing the enormous misgivings of this system. In October 2018, a Gallup poll revealed that Americans who believe the death penalty is applied fairly fell below 50% for the first time. Despite this trend, only twenty-two states have abolished the death penalty. Twenty-eight states still have the death penalty.