The Execution of Wanda Jean
Produced and Directed by Liz Garbus
Produced by Rory Kennedy
THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN chronicles the life-and-death battle of Wanda Jean Allen. By telling one woman's story, the film becomes an unforgettable exploration into one of America's most controversial moral and political dilemmas: the death penalty. THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN is an unflinching investigation of the role that poverty, mental health, race, and sexuality play within the criminal justice system.
Wanda Jean was sentenced to death in 1989 after she shot and killed her lover, Gloria Leathers, outside an Oklahoma City Police Station. The film finds her eleven years later, her execution date just months away. With chilling intimacy, the filmmakers follow Wanda Jean's final months on death row, as she and her legal team prepare for her clemency hearing, as she and her family, friends, and spiritual advisors have their final visits. At her Clemency hearing, her attorneys argue that during her original trial, her defense failed to present crucial and potentially life-saving evidence: Wanda Jean had borderline mental retardation and brain damage. But the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which in its thirty-year history had never granted clemency, denies Wanda Jean's plea. The film chronicles Wanda Jean's final weeks as step-by-step her legal team exhausts every option to save her life.
At the same time, THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN tells the story of the victim's family. Remarkably, Ruby Wilson, Gloria Leathers' mother and the only witness to Wanda Jean's fatal shooting of her daughter, is able to forgive Wanda Jean, relying on her strong religious beliefs. As the days run out for Wanda Jean, however, forgiveness takes a back seat to punishment. On January 11, 2001, the State of Oklahoma executed Wanda Jean Allen, the first black woman to be put to death in the United States in the modern era.