Living Lessons From A Decades-Old Death Penalty Case

Georgia is set to break an unusual record on November 16, 2016 with the planned execution of Steven Frederick Spears. Spears is on death row for the 2001 murder of his ex-girlfriend in Dahlonega. And if he's put to death this evening as scheduled, Georgia will top Texas for the most calendar-year executions in 2016.  
 
It turns out Georgia was influential to how modern public opinion of the death penalty was shaped. That's the story told in a forthcoming documentary about the case of Jerome Bowden. Bowden was executed 30 years ago after 10 years on death row for murder. But his conviction remains a mystery. Georgia officials say many of the details of his case are confidential state secrets. This includes a court appointed IQ test that apparently found Bowden to be intellectually disabled.
 
"American Justice: The Jerome Bowden Story" revisits a 30-year-old death penalty case that was influential in how public opinion of capital punishment was shaped.

We speak with Atlanta Journal-Constitution Alan Judd and Harvard University psychologist Paula Caplan about “American Justice: The Jerome Bowden Story.”