'Death' at the door; a look into mind of egomaniac

By Aaron Rich

Daily Arts Writer

To be considered the Clara Barton of criminals awaiting the death penalty might sound like a respectable distinction. And, in theory it is. But for Fred Leuchter, this distinction is laid out rather ironically.

Leuchter, the main subject in Errol Morris' new documentary "Mr. Death - The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.," helps to ease the pain of condemned people. He has been obsessed with executions since he was a young boy. His father worked in the state prison in Massachusetts, where Leuchter remembers fondly exploring as a child. He recalls being in the room where Sacco and Vanzetti lived in the night before their executions (he makes no comment on their culpability).

Making a career out of his passion, Leuchter became a designer, or redesigner, of execution equipment. Beginning simply with basic devices, he reworked the electric chair of the state of Tennessee making it more suitable for men with bigger builds and adding useful gadgets like a collection system for bodily fluids that are released as the prisoner dies.

Leuchter makes it clear that he is in favor of the death penalty. He is not in favor of torture, though, and he feel that death machines not designed by him are generally inhumane (ergo the Clara Barton analogy).

With this in mind, Leuchter accepts offers from many different states to develop a reliable lethal injection machine. Later he renovates the state gallows in Delaware and works on a gas chamber. He makes it clear that gas chambers are the least reliable method of quick and painless death. It is likely, he says, that with most systems the executioners will receive lethal doses of the gas as well as the condemned.

Soon, Leuchter gets involved with a trial in Ontario based on one man's assertion that the holocaust did not happen and that what are commonly considered Nazi gas chambers for executing hundreds at once, are actually bunkers and air raid shelters. Leuchter is employed to get to the root of the "question" and decide if the gas chambers are what the world has come to accept.

Leuchter's findings are a mix of poor science and bravado. He concludes that the chambers are not real and that there was no way for the Nazis to kill so many Jews. Immediately he is thrown into a sea of hate. He loses work and goes on tour reading his report to holocaust revisionist and neo-Nazi groups.

This film marks an interesting turning point in Morris' work as for the first time, he shows a story revolving around an entirely pitiful, in evil, man. Before, sorry characters would appear for a few moments, they would be supporting faces in his stories or they would serve as comic relief.

Leuchter is different. We get the sense that he is aloof beyond normal convention. This leads him to get caught in traps he did not see on his horizon, though they were readily apparent (as in getting involved with neo-Nazis).

We wonder if his holocaust conclusion is entirely based on the questionable scientific evidence or if it rests largely on Leuchter's assumption that he is the only human capable of designing a workable gas chamber. Leuchter is, in effect, insulted by Nazi high technology.

This true-life tale works as a dynamic social and psychological expose. Morris makes us ask why state governments would let a man with only a little specific experience design certain execution devices (what do the workings of an electric chair have to do with the workings of a trap door in a gallows?).

This is not a story about whether the death penalty should be legal or not and it is definitely not made to question the truth of the holocaust. It is about the inherent evil in humans - the ability to rationalize badness by diluting oneself. This relates to Adolf Hitler as much as it relates to Fred Leuchter.