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A Killer Uncaged review – life after death row

Can a person ever truly change? This three-part series follows a Texan prisoner who had his death sentence quashed – and his victim’s family, who believe he will kill again

Don’t let the title of A Killer Uncaged (Sky Crime) put you off. While it sounds like your average inflammatory, exploitative true-crime documentary, this three-part series is actually a balanced and nuanced look at capital punishment and the moral complexities of justice in the US, and Texas in particular.

“Thirty years ago, I killed a man,” says Dale Wayne Sigler, in an interview given when he was still behind bars. Softly spoken and emotional, he gives a crisp, but devastating account of his early life. He says his mother was “a child having children”; his father was violent and abusive. Sigler was molested when he was 10. His early adult life was a mess of drugs and petty crime. He lived on the streets. In 1990, he robbed a Subway sandwich shop at gunpoint. When the shop assistant, John William Zeltner Jr, fled to the back room in fear, Sigler shot him six times, killing him. Then he took $400 from the till.

After a tipoff to the police, Sigler confessed to the crime. In 1991, he was sentenced to death. Itamar Klasmer, the series’ director, is careful at all points to ensure that, while this is Sigler’s story, it also leaves room for Zeltner, his victim. Tommy Lenoir, one of the homicide detectives assigned to the case, explains why it was considered to be more serious than a robbery gone wrong. He calls the shooting “execution style” because Sigler shot Zeltner so many times. Greg Miller, from the prosecution team, described it as “particularly heinous” and “pretty cold-hearted”.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3i8cnHv
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