Stack wrote two books on the death penalty before making his foray into documentary filmmaking. "Both are very heavily tilted against it, taking a hard look at the ‘innocence issue,' which in my estimation is… the signature debate point in [regards to] the death penalty that both the political left and the political right can agree upon. No one in their right mind wants to see an innocent person executed," Stack told By Any Means Necessary.
Stack hopes that his documentary will take its viewers beyond the "innocence issue," or criticism of the death penalty that focuses on the possibility of executing innocent people. "The systemic issues that we're dealing with, there's certainly racist overtones — very obvious racist overtones, classist overtones. There is an old expression: ‘nobody with capital gets capital punishment.' If you can afford a good lawyer you can beat the system," Stack said.
"Whether there are mistakes or not — even if it's very clear that the individual is guilty, can't we be better as a society in terms of the way we treat violent outliers?" Stack pondered.
Stack said that the objective of the documentary is to enlighten people on these issues, but to also stimulate discussion on a "a controversial issue that most people don't even want to think about."
"You know, I think the death penalty is emblematic of the worst of us and as a society, as individuals… how do we want to treat these very, very difficult issues? With compassion or not?" Stack said. "I come back to the idea that what we're trying to do here is get people thinking and get people talking about a subject they don't want to talk about… I believe it was [US Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall who said ‘the more people think about this issue, the more they'll come to the conclusion that the death penalty is not a just sentence.'"
"In the Executioner's Shadow" begins screening this week at American University in Washington, DC.