I found this documentary hard to watch, not just because the daughters of the men on death row are so emotional and expressive with what they’re going through, but also the fact that I believe their fathers deserve to be there.

My Dad’s on Death Row follows two young women who both have fathers that are on death row in Texas, one for shooting five men who made fun of the man’s manhood, but people believe he doesn’t deserve death row because he is mentally disabled, and the other being a man who killed his two daughters while his ex-wife listened to their murders on the phone because he wanted to hurt her. The third daughter, the one in the documentary, was not with other two when they died, but has to deal with the fact that her sisters are gone forever.

I cannot begin to imagine putting myself into the shoes of these women and what they’re going through knowing that their father is going to be murdered by the state, and also the fact that the day that he dies is going to be something that they have knowledge of and is not just going to be a sudden event that most people would have to deal with. There will be a lot of buildup to that moment and the horror and nightmares that these women must deal with on a daily basis up to that moment must be unbearable. Also the fact that with their fathers being on death row they have no physical contact with them, so not even being able to hug their fathers goodbye in their final moments is heart wrenching to imagine.

But at the same time the crimes that these two men committed are horrific, especially the second man with his two daughters, how could he bring these two wonderful young children into the world and then kill them off in such a callous way out of spite? I can’t even begin to imagine what was going through his head, and the fact that he nearly got away with not being killed on death row shows how calculating and cold he really is. While I feel sorry for his daughter and everything she has to go through, I feel she is finding some peace in that, while her sisters may be gone, so is the man that killed them.

All through my life I have been against death row because so many innocent people have been killed by it, which is an absolutely terrifying thought to imagine, that you are being killed for something that you never even did. But for these two men having the evidence and the fact that we know that they committed these crimes almost guaranteed the fact that they should be punished for it, and while I think in some ways death is an easy way out because they will suffer for a moment in the execution and then be gone forever, having them suffer every day behind bars like we have in the UK may be a better way for them to go because then every day they have to live knowing what they did and it will haunt them until they randomly die at some point.

This documentary is very frustrating and I don’t really know what we expected to get out of it, I don’t know what Netflix expected our responses to be as audience members because while you feel sorry for the women and the fact that they’re going to lose their fathers, the fact that they did something so inhumane really desensitised you to their pain because the justice of what they’re doing is more important than one person’s hurt. These men deserve to pay for the crimes they committed and that’s the end of that. If they interviewed more remorseful people or people who had less evidence against them maybe that would be more intriguing, hoping that they were able to be saved from death row, but the fact that these men did what they did meant that I had no care for them and was just whittling down the minutes until they were murdered.

What do you think of My Dad’s on Death Row?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding