Before watching Clemency, director Chinonye Chukwu’s meticulous dismantling of the death penalty in America, it is worth reading President Trump’s infamous 1990s full-page ad in The New York Times that pronounced, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” Trump wanted New York to reinstate the death penalty for The Central Park Five, all of whom later proved to be innocent. In the ad, Trump addresses Mayor Koch, “Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse them or understand them. I am looking to punish them.” Again, it’s worth noting that when asked if he regretted the ad Trump said, “You have people on both sides of that,” he said at the White House. “They admitted their guilt.”
Later in the ad, Trump recalls an incident he witnessed when he was young between two bullies and a waitress in a diner, “Two cops rushed in, lifted up the thugs and threw them out the door, warning them to never cause trouble again. I miss the feeling of security New York’s finest once gave citizens of this City.” Maybe they deserved it, but then again you can’t help feeling that Trump was the kind of guy that wanted the Knapp Commission and Frank Serpico to fail and the ‘Grass Eaters” and “Meat Eaters” to keep the streets safe for his property empire. Just look at his reaction to the Black Lives Matters protests and his latest surge of Federal Law Enforcement into Democrat-run cities; his 1990s strongman wet dream is now a perverse reality, snatching up innocent protestors into unmarked cars.
Clemency’s prison warden, Bernadine Williams, operates within this Trumpian reality but that’s not to say that Obama gets away clean. Her seven years in charge and 12 executions began under Obama’s tenure. Trump is using the death penalty as a cold-blooded election tool after executing Daniel Lewis Lee, who murdered the Mueller family, including their eight-year-old daughter Sarah in 1996. Daniel Lewis Lee was a white supremacist and Trump’s Federal intervention is seen by many as a tactic to negate the many racist charges levelled at him. Obama has famously struggled with the death penalty but didn’t change his position when he was President. In an interview with the Marshall Project he said, “There are certain crimes that are so beyond the pale that I understand society’s need to express its outrage.” Obama also didn’t intervene in the Troy Davis case in 2011, the inspiration behind Clemency.
So when the film begins and Warden Williams, a black woman, stands on the threshold of the death chamber and stares at the upright gurney, a rigid ghost, brown straps, the clinical white sheets, we feel the full weight of American history in that inanimate object, a indestructible Klan member ready to restrain Hispanic and Black inmates whilst the lethal injection inches inexorably towards them. Her 11th execution, Victor Jimenez goes horrifyingly wrong (can they ever go right?) and we are the dread witnesses; both complicit executioners and helpless inmate, trapped within a barbaric system that refuses mercy for criminal and victim alike. When we look at Victor’s face wide eyed with terror, presided over by a paramedic, frantic heart monitor bleeping his final agonies can we ever doubt that no-one, no matter what they have done, should face this state sponsored horror?
Jimenez’s execution is reminiscent of the botched lethal injection in Oklahoma of murderer Clayton Lockett whose case Obama said was, “deeply troubling” and raised hopes back in 2014 of possible reform of the death penalty and the disproportionate amount of black men on death row, many presumed to be innocent. What Clemency does chillingly, is slowly, inch by inch, erode that hope. Williams’ 12th execution is to be Anthony Woods, convicted of killing a police officer. Woods has the experienced lawyer and anti-capital punishment activist, Marty Lumetta in his corner, an enquiry into Jimenez’s catastrophe and new evidence emerging that could exonerate him. Even Williams’ stoic pragmatism is unravelling as she realises that her quiet attention to detail is no substitute for genuine compassion. Dare we dream that Woods actually has a chance to be reprieved? Or does his futile attempt at bouncing a basketball during his caged exercise point at the reality of his situation?
Where Clemency is at its most devastating is when it reveals the horrendous psychological toll on all those involved, inmates, victims and public servants alike. No doubt Williams entered her profession with reform in her mind but the grotesque, Kafkaesque system she operates in is so unforgiving she is crushed by the deadly bureaucracy. There is no room for the compassion she painfully tries to show Woods when waiting with him for his son to visit. A cold glass of water is the closest she gets to telling him her real feelings. Everyone around her is deserting the sinking prison hulk, either retiring or searching for new employment, decent human beings too traumatised to continue at the whim and fancy of Presidents and Governors.
Even her husband, Jonathon, a teacher is giving up the fight. He can see Bernadine’s soul being sucked out her over the course of their marriage. He decides to retire, “I give more to my students than myself and us.” Public service is all-consuming and the Woodard’s small family provide a classroom to the grave service, how many promising students has he lost to gang violence or to domestic and sexual abuse. How does an English teacher end up being a social worker, policeman and surrogate parent? Who trains you for that when all you want to do is expose young minds to the wonder of words? Who trains a civil servant who lives in a normal neighbourhood, in a normal house, who lives next door to you, to preside over the death of young men? Surely that ultimate responsibility should lie with Presidents and Governors? Surely, they should look those young men in the eye when they administer the lethal injection or switch on the electric chair?
Clemency is not essential viewing; it is required viewing, the cast are universally stunning; Wendell Piece as Jonathon, quietly exasperated in his defeat, Richard Schiff as Marty Lumetta, crestfallen at the futility of his life’s work, Aldis Hodge as Anthony Woods, transcendent and forgiving, and finally Alfre Woodward as Bernadine. It would be too crass to describe her performance as Oscar worthy, she is the embodiment of distilled rage and sorrow, her extended close up towards the end of the film is undoubtedly the finest acting of the decade.