Many people felt uneasy about Johnny Frank Garrett and his pending execution. The state, however, had no such qualms.

The state was Texas and the year was 1992, 11 years after Garrett had been arrested for the brutal murder of a Catholic nun on Halloween night in 1981. Retarded and just 17 at the time of the murder, Garrett professed his innocence up until the day his execution was carried out.

“The Last Word,” a 90-minute documentary directed by Albany attorney Jesse Quackenbush and featured at several film festivals, tells Garrett’s story and how after his death DNA evidence and an admission from the real killer cleared his name. Unfortunately, the findings came too late to help Garrett, as did a softening of Texas death penalty standards in 2002 because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling arguing that the execution of retarded people was unconstitutional.

“I was familiar with a couple of the appellate lawyers who handled the case and they were quite frustrated that nothing could be done for this kid,” said Quackenbush, an Amsterdam native and Canajoharie High grad who has spent much of the last 20 years working in Texas as a criminal attorney. “They felt this kid was innocent but they couldn’t prove anything. DNA evidence was still in its infancy in the 1980s when this case was tried. So there was nothing they could do. This is a perfect case example for how the system has failed.”

Interviewing real killer

Although Quackenbush never had the opportunity to talk to Garrett, he did meet and interview Leoncio Perez Rueda, a Cuban refugee who admitted to the rape and mutilation murder of Sister Tadea Benz, a 76-year-old nun who was attacked as she slept in her room at the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo, Texas.

“The original suspect was a Cuban refugee, but a hair sample and fingerprints didn’t match those at the crime scene,” said Quackenbush. “They let him go, but as it turned out it was his roommate who was the actual killer.”

Snippets of Quackenbush’s meeting with Rueda are in the documentary, along with interviews with district attorney Danny Hill, Amarillo police chief Jerry Neal and other key players in Garrett’s arrest. The film, narrated by Tom Kane, the voice of Yoda in “Star Wars, suggests that “a death-penalty obsessed district attorney and his lap-dog medical examiner, ladder-climbing cops, bloodthirsty media, enraged and fearful jurors, incompetent defense attorneys, politicized judges, witch-hunting religious zealots and an iron-fisted governor with national ambitions melded together as perfect ingredients for a plate of government sponsored murder.”

While Quackenbush is against the death penalty, the main issue in the film isn’t about whether capital punishment should be legal in this country.

‘The system is broken’

“As an attorney practicing in Texas for almost 20 years, I know that the system is broken,” he said. “I’ve seen all the deficiencies. Innocent people are being executed. I’m not preaching to the choir about the death penalty. I’m trying to reach all those people sitting on the fence, those people who think there are enough safety nets available for the accused.

“Whether you believe in the death penalty or not, I’m trying to get people to realize that we’re making too many errors,” he said. “The movement against the death penalty is pretty much at a standstill. The question my film asks is ‘What margin of error is acceptable?’ People don’t realize we have too many crooked cops who need to hang a crime on someone, and we have too many incompetent defense lawyers. The false assumption is that we have intelligent people, smart lawyers running the system. Well, my film might change your mind about that.”

Quackenbush’s jump from criminal attorney to filmmaker was a relatively smooth one. A political science/journalism major at the University at Albany (class of 1984) before going to law school at the University of Houston, Quackenbush worked as an intern with director Peter Berg on “Friday Night Lights” and Kimberly Peirce on “Stop-Loss.” He also got to know Quentin Tarantino when the “Pulp Fiction” director made “Grindhouse” in 2007.

“I worked on the set with three great directors in my spare time,” said Quackenbush. “I started out planning to get into a radio or television broadcasting career when I was going to Onondaga Community College [in Syracuse] before I went to UAlbany. That was originally my passion. But then I became wrapped up in the law and political science, and know I’ve found the time in my career when I can put all those things together. I really enjoyed making this movie and I loved the technical aspects of doing a documentary. Now I have four or five ideas in my head. So I may do another one.”

Can be viewed on Web

“The Last Word” has had screenings at the 2008 Buffalo Film Festival and the IndiFlix Film, and is currently part of the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival. The film can be viewed by visiting myfestival.indieflix.com.

“People can go on the Internet and watch the film and then vote on it,” said Quackenbush. “We were one of 10 feature films to make the Seattle Festival, and this is an opportunity for people to get a free peek at it.”

Quackenbush is hopeful his documentary will be picked up by PBS or some other major network for viewing later this year. The movie will also be available soon on DVD.

“It’s only about 2 percent of people on death row who still proclaim their innocence,” said Quackenbush. “I don’t think we need to go back and rehash all of the cases in Texas where the death penalty was used, but there’s a high probability that some of those people were innocent. What I’m concerned about are the people who are on death row now that may be innocent.”

Since 1976, Texas has carried out 405 executions, more than three times as many as any other state in the country. And, in Dallas County alone, 13 convicts scheduled to be executed have instead been exonerated because of DNA evidence.

Factors get in the way

“There are so many reasons why the criminal justice system has failed,” said Quackenbush. “In Garrett’s case, they even had the pope [John Paul II] call [Governor] Ann Richards and ask her to stop the execution. They begged her but I think for political reasons she didn’t. You’re dealing with that, you’re dealing with overzealous prosecutors and in Garrett’s case, a community that was terror-stricken, and you’re dealing with politicized judges who realize that the American public is 65 [percent] to 35 percent in favor of the death penalty.

“The judges aren’t going to change the law. What we have to do is get more people to examine the way they feel about the death penalty, and make them realize we don’t always get it right. There aren’t enough safety nets to protect the innocent. So we have to get them to change their mind about the death penalty.”