Procedure 769 - The Witnesses to an Execution

On April 21, 1992, Robert Alton Harris, who had been convicted for killing two 16-year-old boys, was put to death in the gas chamber of San Quentin State Prison in California. Twenty-five years had passed since a death sentence in California had been carried out by this method, technically known as Procedure 769. Forty-nine witnesses watched the execution from behind a window. What drove these people to attend an event of this kind and how did they deal with the experience? Eleven of the witnesses, both friends and enemies of the convict, give their account. Among them are Harris's brother Randall and his cousin and confidant Leon, but also the parents and a sister of the victims. They all give a meticulous description of the events on that early morning in April 1992, but as the film progresses it becomes clear that they have all seen something different, depending on their relationship to the killer. This makes the film a disconcerting study of the functioning of human observation and memory.