The Execution of Wanda Jean

Posted by Aldo Pusey on Saturday, August 17, 2024

Documaker Liz Garbus shifts from American incarceration in "The Farm: Angola, USA," to the specific case history of a condemned woman in her new and less memorable work, "The Execution of Wanda Jean." Pic tracks the final three months of Wanda Jean Allen, the first black woman to be executed in Oklahoma since 1954.

Documaker Liz Garbus shifts from the all-encompassing view of American incarceration in “The Farm: Angola, USA,” to the specific case history of a condemned woman in her new and less memorable work, “The Execution of Wanda Jean.” Tracking the final three months of the life of Wanda Jean Allen, the first black woman to be executed in Oklahoma since 1954, Garbus and her crew come back with an account that will be extremely useful to anti-death penalty activist groups and auds already opposed to capital punishment. For those in the middle or on the other side of the issue, pic will seem either unsure or like a stacked deck, pre-programmed to depict Allen as a victim of the state. A perfect fit for HBO’s tough-minded profile, docu has enough built-in drama and tension to propel it to specialty theatrical release.

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Early minutes are filled with graphic cards describing Allen’s crime, which happened on Dec. 1, 1988. After a domestic dispute with her lover, Gloria Leathers, Allen continued to fight with Leathers in the local police station’s parking lot. Allen shot Leathers in the stomach, as Leathers’ mother, Ruby Wilson, watched. Five days later, Leathers died, and Allen was charged and convicted of first-degree murder.

“Mentally, I just wasn’t there,” Allen says to Garbus’ camera, and indeed, her co-counsel Steven Presson and brother and legal investigator David Presson intend to show in their last-chance hearing before the Oklahoma clemency board that crucial evidence of Allen’s mental impairment was never offered in her original case. The Pressons appear to be Allen’s last reliable allies, since many in her immediate family are too unstable to provide Allen with the moral support she craves in her last defense.

David, who emerges as Allen’s dedicated knight in shining armor, has to deal with Allen’s volatile relatives (though not her mother, Mary, who remains stoic and clear) and with a state system that almost never grants clemency to condemned murderers.

Allen’s case is undermined in two ways. In the early ’80s, she had killed a friend in a similar dispute, and served four years for manslaughter. (It was in prison where she met Leathers, also doing time.) Assistant state attorney general Sandra Howard also shows written evidence of Allen’s threats to kill Leathers and suggestions that Allen tended to dominate and stalk Leathers, which, with Ruby’s eyewitness testimony, made Allen’s case difficult at best.

Ironically — and buttressing pic’s case against the death penalty — Leathers’ family, including Ruby and brother Greg Wilson, say they are past hating Allen 12 years after the murder, and don’t want her executed. After an inevitably failed clemency hearing, the Pressons and co-counsel Robert Jackson race to secure a stay on the grounds that the state misinformed the clemency board that Allen had attended high school and college, thus proving her mental fitness. Appeal after appeal is denied, the Allen family grows more distraught, while Allen — at least on camera — keeps up a chipper demeanor.

A last-minute visit by Jesse Jackson comes off here as a grandstanding publicity stunt, while it is David doing the hard phone work. Garbus and editor Mary Manhardt build excruciating tension as the final hours tick by before the lethal injection, with David unable to get in a last phone call to Allen.

In the end, pic gives lip-service to those in favor of Allen’s execution (like Greg Wilson, who is finally relieved that Allen is gone), but holds its heart out for those, like David, firmly opposed to it. At its best, Garbus’ account quietly depicts a set of wasted lives, and a closing image of Allen’s plywood casket carted away by a bulldozer is emblematic of the tragedy. Camera coverage and sound are consistently excellent.

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The Execution of Wanda Jean

  • Production: An HBO presentation of a Moxie Firecracker production. Produced by Liz Garbus, Rory Kennedy. Supervising producer, Nancy Abraham. Executive producer, Sheila Nevins. Directed by Liz Garbus.
  • Crew: Camera (Filmlook color), Tony Hardmon; editor, Mary Manhardt; music, Wendy Blackstone; sound, Judy Karp; sound editors, Margaret Crimmins, Greg Smith, Dog Bark Sound; associate producer, Chandra Simon. Reviewed on videotape, Los Angeles., Jan. 8, 2002. (In Sundance Film Festival -- competing.) Running time: 87 MIN.
  • With: With: Wanda Jean Allen, David Presson, Steven Presson, Mary Allen, Ruby Wilson, Rev. Robin Meyers, Rev. Bill Allen, Sandra Howard, Greg Wilson, Marla Allen, LaSandra Allen, Robert Jackson, Bob Carpenter, Steven Allen, Dr. Martin Krimsky, Jesse Jackson.

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