Fourteen days of May is a documentary directed by Paul Hamann. The program chronicles the last days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an American prisoner convicted of rape and murder. Johnson declared his innocence and claimed that his confession was made under duress. He was executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber on May 20, 1987.
The documentary crew, access to the warden, the guards and a chaplain, and Johnson and his family, filmed the last days of Johnson’s life in detail. The film opposes the death penalty and argues that the death penalty is applied disproportionately to African-Americans convicted of crimes against whites. The program has the lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney said the death penalty.
Fourteen Days in May won the British Film Institute Grierson Award and an award at the Festival dei Popoli. It has been shown in many countries but has only appeared in an abbreviated form in the U.S. on HBO. Hamann repudiated this abbreviated version.
It was in direct response to this documentary, that the organization was created lifelines, organizing pals for death row inmates.
