Death Row Stories Episode Rating Graph

Throughout the history of capital punishment in America, states have reviewed and revised execution methods in the interest of finding a more "humane" option. Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma are among the states where lethal injection executions have gone horribly wrong. What's life like for those executioners who are paid to end the lives of others...especially when it doesn't go according to plan?

In 1986, a fire engulfed the home of newlyweds in Paris, IL, with them inside, but the fire was intended as a cover-up: The couple had been stabbed to death before the arson. Flawed evidence. Conflicting accounts. Leads that were never followed. Recantations. How does a double homicide case become too politically sensitive? And how did an innocent man end up on death row for almost 20 years?

A man is found dead in his rural Mississippi home, shot four times with his own 9mm pistol. His 19-year-old son names his hospitalized mother, Michelle Byrom, as the mastermind of the murder, claiming she hired the boy's friend to shoot her husband, and promising to pay him from the life insurance payout. Sentenced to death, Michelle spends 14 years awaiting execution - until a determined team of lawyers unearths a dark history of domestic and sexual violence, and a confession that points to an alternate suspect.

When petty criminal John Thompson is convicted on capital murder charges, two successful Philadelphia lawyers agree to represent him, but soon discover that their legal rules don't necessarily apply in New Orleans.

Two construction workers are brutally attacked in San Antonio. One survives and is able to identify his assailant. Ruben Cantu was a 17 year old from Texas who was executed after being convicted of the brutal murder - a conviction based on a questionable evidence. Did they execute the right man?

Joyce Ride, the mother of Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, becomes intrigued by the case of former Sacramento law school student, Gloria Killian who has no prior criminal record and was found guilty of a brutal home invasion and murder.

Evidence emerges causing many to question the guilt of Army sergeant Tim Hennis who is sentenced to death for the murder of the wife and two children of an Air Force captain; a bizarre and unprecedented journey through the American justice system. First, jurors ruled him guilty. Then he was declared innocent. Later, another court's verdict was guilty. The remarkable story of Timothy Hennis and the stabbing deaths of a mother and two small girls is full of shocking legal twists and turns. Experts call it a one-of-kind murder mystery that has yet to be fully solved.

The shooting of a newspaper carrier in rural Mississippi lands Marlon Howell on death row. Convicted on the word of two co-defendants and the identification of an eyewitness with a checkered past, Marlon maintains his innocence.

Sabrina Butler, a 17-year old African-American woman, arrives at a Mississippi hospital with her baby dead on arrival; nurses and doctors suspect foul play, and Sabrina cannot give straight answers about what happened to her baby.

After Shreveport pizza delivery man Jarvis Griffin is shot and robbed outside his car, police round up eyewitnesses and tape their interrogations. 16-year-old Corey Williams becomes the prime suspect, and under questioning, police extract his confession. Prosecutor Hugo Holland handles the case for Caddo Parish, the county with the most death penalty convictions per capita in America, and Corey becomes the youngest person on Louisiana death row. But when a dogged team of defenders takes on his case, they learn that that not only is Corey’s confession questionable — but that hidden police interviews with other eyewitnesses point to another suspect.