TV Spotlight: I Am a Killer

If you're a true crime buff, there's no shortage of Netflix content to keep you entertained, and they recently added an interesting show called I Am a Killer. In each episode, we meet a death row inmate and hear his side of the story. More than 8,000 people have been sentenced to death in America since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and we meet ten of these people in I Am a Killer: James Robertson, Kenneth Foster, Justin Dickens, Miguel Angel Martinez, Charles Thompson, David Lewis, Deandra Buchanan, Robert Shafer, Joshua Nelson, and Wayne Doty. We don't often get to hear from the killers on these types of shows, so it's fascinating to hear these men tell their stories. I've only watched the first four episodes so far, but what struck me was how normal some of these men seem. I was expecting them to come off as truly evil, but in most of the episodes I've seen, the inmates appear to be regular people who feel genuinely remorseful about what they've done. As someone who has lost people she cared about to murder, I generally don't feel much sympathy for killers and criminals, but I feel bad for Kenneth Foster (episode 2), who didn't actually kill anyone and was sentenced to death anyway, thanks to the Texas Law of Parties (his sentence has since been commuted to forty years in prison) because he was the driver on the night one of his friends decided to shoot and kill someone. Foster isn't completely blameless since he and his friends were driving around looking for people to rob that night, but the fact that someone can be convicted of capital murder without actually killing someone is pretty scary. (I could understand him being charged as an accessory since he was driving the car, but giving him the same sentence as the guy who actually committed the murder was ridiculous.) I Am a Killer is a compelling look at the mind of a killer, and I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes. If you enjoy true crime, you should definitely check out this series.

I Am a Killer on Netflix

My rating: 8/10