This riddle is related, I think, to America's sickening attitude toward collateral damage, that grisly euphemism for all the tens of thousands of innocent people we've murdered in Iraq and our other many wars. But why? How can we have such a cavalier attitude toward the destruction of innocent life? In other free, developed societies, the public takes it as a given that liberty and the death penalty can't possibly coexist. During the intermission, my wife asked me if I thought anyone who saw this play could possibly still support the death penalty. Directed by Tish Miller, this production is hands-down one of the finest pieces of social theater I've ever seen in Albuquerque.īlank and Jensen braid these stories together in such a way that the viewer is forced to consider both the connections between each of the exonerated and their vast differences. Blank and Jensen took several of these interviews, along with court transcripts, and compiled them into their award-winning play, The Exonerated, which is currently running at the Adobe Theater.

Luckily, they were exonerated years later after new evidence came to light. One of the most poignant is the irrefutable fact that innocent people are all too often imprisoned-and in some cases even murdered-by the state.Ī few years ago, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed dozens of people who were accused of crimes they didn't commit and placed on death row. The American public's widespread support of the death penalty is a badge of shame for multiple reasons.

The exonerated play pdf files