The Final Days Before an Execution in the U.S.

The documentary “A Moment in the Life of Hank Skinner” was filmed in Texas over the course of the “last” 13 days prior to the execution of the titular American, which was scheduled for Mar. 24, 2010 and was eventually postponed to Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011. In the documentary, director Jordan Feldman follows the daily life of Frenchwoman Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, who was allowed to see her husband before his execution. She is a woman of conviction who fights against injustice and who now lives through the agony of waiting created by a suspended sentence. This is what she went through in 2010, we learn from the documentary which Canal+ will broadcast Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons, Hank Skinner claims innocence from the beginning and asks that DNA tests be conducted on the evidence to prove it. the American justice system just denied his request again this week (see Hankskinner.org).

The Story of Thousands of Americans

The judge behind the death sentence was supposed to respond to this request for DNA tests before Hank Skinner could be executed. His refusal led Hank Skinner’s lawyers to appeal the verdict. For that reason, the state of Texas has already made it known that, whatever the results of the DNA analysis, it will not put Skinner’s guilt in question. “This is not only Texas’ problem, but it is the entire United States’ problem,” insists Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner. “This is true social genocide. The judges are not looking for truth, but for quick results in the eyes of the people who elect them, even if that means hiding or destroying proof, or fabricating false evidence. In this documentary, one must certainly not see Hank’s case as an exceptional drama, that’s the opposite of what it is! This story is in fact that of millions of Americans. Poor Americans.”

From 55 hours of rushes filmed at the last minute in 2010, director Jordan Feldman, film editor Sophie Brunet and producer Jean-Xavier de Lestrade of MahaProductions, who won an Oscar for best documentary in 2002 for “Un coupable idéal” (Murder on a Sunday Morning), which follows the trial of a black adolescent wrongly accused of murder in the United States, have created a film in the form of a countdown surrounding Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner. “Actually, I see it as a film about Hank, from my perspective,” she says.