The Pardon | |
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Directed by | Tom Anton |
Written by | Tom Anton Sandi Russell |
Produced by | Tom Anton Blair Daily Jacqueline George Sandi Russell |
Starring | Jaime King Jason Lewis |
Cinematography | Matthew Irving |
Distributed by | Monterey Media (US) |
Release date |
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Running time | 114 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Pardon is a 2013 drama film directed by Tom Anton. Filmed in Shreveport, Louisiana, it stars Jaime King as Toni Jo Henry, a woman who overcomes a tragic beginning but was executed for murder, and John Hawkes as "Arkie" Burke, Henry's partner in the crime.
The picture is based on an actual case tried in Louisiana in the 1940s. Adapted from the true crime book Stone Justice by Evelyn L. Morgan and Debi King McMartin.
With all the picturesque glamour of the 1940s, The Pardon recounts the unlikely true story of Toni Jo Henry (Jaime King), a woman tried three times and executed in Louisiana, 1942.
Surviving a legacy of childhood abuse, which lands her in the art deco brothels of the time, Toni Jo briefly discovers love and happiness when she marries the dashing boxer Cowboy Henry (Jason Lewis). Cowboy is soon after sent to prison, leaving the bereft Toni Jo to embark on an ill-fated mission with Cowboy's sometime partner Arkie (John Hawkes). A grisly murder and a series of sensational trials where she pleads her innocence instantly makes the beautiful Toni Jo into a celebrity. Facing conviction after conviction, will she find true redemption in the face of the crimes for which she is accused?
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom predates the formation of the UK, having been used within the British Isles from ancient times until the second half of the 20th century. The last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging, and took place in 1964; capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and finally abolished in 1969. Although unused, the death penalty remained a legally defined punishment for certain offences such as treason until it was completely abolished in 1998; the last execution for treason took place in 1946. In 2004, Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights became binding on the United Kingdom; it prohibits the restoration of the death penalty as long as the UK is a party to the convention.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York, United States. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Midtown Manhattan on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 2007.
The Melbourne gangland killings were the murders of 36 underworld figures in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, between January 1998 and August 2010. The murders were retributive killings involving underworld groups. The deaths caused a power vacuum within Melbourne's criminal community, and rival factions fought for control and influence. Many of the murders remain unsolved, although detectives from the Purana Taskforce believe that Carl Williams was responsible for at least ten of them. The period culminated in the arrest of Williams, who pleaded guilty on 28 February 2007 to three of the murders.
Jaime King is an American actress and model. In her modeling career and early film roles, she used the names Jamie King and James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents, because her agency already represented another Jaime—the older, then-more famous model Jaime Rishar.
Margie Velma Barfield was an American serial killer who was convicted of one murder but eventually confessed to six murders in total. Barfield was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment and the first since 1962. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
Bangkok Hilton is a three-part Australian mini-series made in 1989 by Kennedy Miller Productions and directed by Ken Cameron. The title of the mini-series is the nickname of a fictional Bangkok prison in which the main protagonist is imprisoned, a mordant reference to Hanoi Hilton, the nickname for a prison used by North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Edith Jessie Thompson and Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters were a British couple executed for the murder of Thompson's husband Percy. Their case became a cause célèbre.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett was a 23-year-old pregnant American woman who was murdered in Skidmore, Missouri, in December 2004. The perpetrator, Lisa Marie Montgomery, then aged 36 years old, strangled Stinnett to death and cut her unborn child from her womb. Montgomery was arrested in Kansas the next day and charged with kidnapping resulting in death – a federal crime. Stinnett's baby, who had survived the crude caesarean section, was safely recovered by authorities and returned to the father.
Lena Baker was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945. Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electrocution.
John Ashley Brown Jr. was an American from New Orleans who was convicted of first-degree murder and incarcerated on death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary for 12 years. He was one of six inmates featured in the 1998 documentary entitled The Farm: Angola, USA. He was executed in 1997 for the murder of Omer Laughlin in New Orleans in 1984.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents say that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
George Junius Stinney Jr. was an African American boy who, at the age of 14, was convicted and then executed in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 – Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8 – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed by electric chair in June 1944, thus becoming the youngest American with an exact birth date confirmed to be both sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Robert Lee Willie was an American serial killer who killed at least three people in Louisiana from the late 1970s to 1980. He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Faith Hathaway and was executed in 1984.
Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished in all future cases.
Judith Maryanne Moran is the matriarch of the Moran criminal family of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, involved in the Melbourne gangland killings.
Toni Jo Henry was the only woman ever to be executed in Louisiana's electric chair. Married to Claude 'Cowboy' Henry, she decided to break her husband out of jail where he was serving a fifty-year sentence in the Texas State Penitentiary for murder. Together with Harold Burks, she took a ride with Joseph P. Calloway, whom they then robbed and murdered. Toni Jo Henry was convicted and sentenced to death. After three trials, she was executed by electrocution on November 28, 1942. Her case generated several popular books and films including A Savage Wisdom and Stone Justice.
Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin were brothers and prominent Black farmers who lived in Chester County, South Carolina. They were executed via the electric chair in 1915 for the murder in 1913 of 75-year-old John Q. Lewis, a Confederate veteran of Blackstock, South Carolina. The Griffin brothers were convicted based on the accusations of a small-time thief, John "Monk" Stevenson. Stevenson, who was found in possession of the victim's pistol, was sentenced to life in prison in exchange for testifying against the brothers. Two other African Americans, Nelson Brice and John Crosby, were executed with the brothers for the same crime. However, some in the community believed that the murder might have been the result of Lewis's suspected sexual relationship with 22-year-old Anna Davis. Davis and her husband were never tried, possibly for fear of a miscegenation scandal. The Griffin brothers, who were believed to be the wealthiest Black people in the area, sold their 138-acre (56 ha) farm to pay for their defense against the accusations.
Charles Cahill Wilson was an American screen and stage actor. He appeared in numerous films during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the late 1920s to the late 1940s.