Between July 14th 2020, and January 16th 2021, the Trump Administration took thirteen lives during a federal execution spree that was entirely unlike anything before. Before this, the last federal execution was of Louis Jones in 2003, under the Bush administration, who, in total, executed three people, including Timothy McVeigh and Juan Raul Garza.
Someone present for all of these executions was Billie Jerome Allen. He arrived on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1998, a little over a year after the St Patrick’s Day robbery at the Lindell Bank and Trust in St Louis, Missouri, in 1997 that resulted in the death of a security guard. Billie was arrested in the early hours of the following morning after the day of the crime. The people who knew Billie were shocked and in utter disbelief that the young boy they knew for being quiet, artistic and respectful could have gotten caught up in something so destructive. Billie, too, was shocked that at just eighteen years of age, he was facing a death sentence for a crime he did not commit.
Eye witness testimony, an alibi and DNA results all exonerate Billie of this crime, yet this evidence has never been heard in court. Billie Allen has been on federal death row for 25 years because judges refuse to look at the evidence that shows a man has spent a quarter of a century on death row for something he did not do.
Billie’s story is not uncommon. For every nine executions in the US, one person has been found innocent and exonerated of the crime. As common as they are in reality, they are familiar on screen. Myself and a team of three other people went to St Louis, Missouri, in July 2022 to meet with the people who raised Billie, along with his childhood teachers and friends, to paint a better picture of the man that has had a life stolen from him.
To rewind slightly, Billie’s sister and fiercest advocate, Yvette Allen, reached out to me in 2020 when the executions were taking place. I had been vocal about my opposition to the death penalty on social media. She had noticed and also saw that I am a filmmaker and asked if I could help her with a video she was putting together to raise awareness of her brother’s story. From there, I connected with Billie himself, speaking to him through the prison’s email system as well as through phone calls.
Billie and I could have known each other for years because we instantly connected over our love of film and writing, our outlook on life and how we express ourselves as artists. He’s a painter with a radiant ability to translate his frustration for his situation through the canvas, a gift that was God-given from a young age, we learned while spending time with his art teacher, Russell Vanecek. His mother had the same praise for him, and everyone we spoke with had high praise for his ability as a young artist.
As a young filmmaker, it’s easy to forget that the medium is powerful. Film has been changing hearts and minds since its inception, and it has the power to connect people across the world, break lines of division and heal society. Storytelling is in our blood as humans, and with the rise of high-budget Blockbusters – those movies are great, too – we can forget that in the small and personal, there is excellence.
My co-directors and producers, Maurita Cardone and Rebecca Waer, and I funded the film ourselves. We have all known Billie for years, and he pieced this team together to tell his story. Mori Rothman joined us in the role of cinematographer, another connection Billie made with the outside from behind prison walls. He created this team despite his situation and has guided us through what it means to tell someone’s story who does not have access to tell it themselves. There is this idea or commonly used sentiment that filmmakers who tell stories of prisons are “giving voice to the voiceless”, but this is not true. Those incarcerated people have a voice and use it often. There are platforms like Life Inside via The Marshall Project and other spaces where we can hear stories from incarcerated people across the US. The key is, is how and if we choose to listen.
When someone entrusts you as a filmmaker to help share their story, you must listen to how they want to tell it. Forming faith with your contributors is necessary, and it’s a conversation we had consistently throughout pre-production and one we continue to have now the film is heading to post. We were transparent with Billie about every step of the process, and he was the same with us about if he had an idea or a particular approach we could take. In a conversation I’d had weeks prior with Billie, he told me he recognises that media can take advantage of incarcerated people, something we were also conscious of as filmmakers. With the federal execution spree garnering much media attention that has since dispersed, we discussed our approach and how we wanted Billie to have agency over his story. Each of us had the individual experience of pitching the story in other mediums, met with the response that it “wasn’t urgent enough” or the more nonchalant sting of “this happens all the time”. For us, those responses were precisely the reason to tell the story. Stories of life or death should not be met with apathy. Billie’s story matters.
Sometimes you have to tell the story even if no one is giving you the funding, the platform or the backing you feel you need. We’d had conversations with people who wanted the sellable version of the story, but we didn’t compromise on the mission. There are too many pieces of sensational media about those who have endured torture on death row and plenty more about those who have endured it while innocent. Those stories must be authentic, human and filled with compassion.
If we stray too far from that, we end up feeding into narratives that perpetuate the system.
To hear from Billie Allen you can see his first ever interview on federal death row below
To support the campaign and learn more about Billie Allen’s case visit the website.
Billie Melissa is a screenwriter, director and activist from the UK currently living in New York City. Her short fictional directorial debut I Love You, Guys!, which featured in Film Stories Magazine, is set to be released in 2023. Billie Melissa is currently a graduate student at The New School in New York where she is also an Impact Entrepreneurship Fellow working with families impacted by capital punishment in the US to tell their stories through media. She has also previously worked as a film critic and been a recipient of the Press Inclusion Initiative from Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and the Media Inclusion Initiative at 2022’s TIFF.
