`Angel On Death Row': A Different Documentary

Tuesday night, the PBS series "Frontline" takes a behind-the-scenes look at "Dead Man Walking," the powerful Tim Robbins film that just won his significant other, Susan Sarandon, her first Oscar as Best Actress.

However, this "Frontline" is a significantly different type of behind-the-scenes look (9 p.m., Channel 9).

The normal "making of" Hollywood documentary of this type would line up, as its three key interviews, Sarandon, Robbins and Sean Penn, who plays the convicted killer, Matthew Poncelet, being spiritually advised by Sarandon's Sister Helen Prejean.

But "Angel on Death Row," this "Frontline" presentation produced and directed by Ben Loeterman, doesn't talk to any of those high-profile stars. Instead, it talks to the real Prejean, and to investigators, parents and survivors connected with the real-life events dramatized in "Dead Man Walking."

One quickly delivered surprise in "Angel on Death Row" is that the movie's Matthew Poncelet actually is an amalgam of two different convicted murderers ministered by Prejean.

One was Elmo Patrick Sonnier, who, like Penn's character in "Dead Man Walking," was the nun's first contact with a prisoner, and had been sentenced to death for complicity in the brutalization and execution-style murder of a teenage couple.

The other was Robert Lee Willie, on whose appearance Penn based his greasy, goateed look in "Dead Man Walking," and whose last words are approximated in the movie - though, according to one witness to the execution, in decidedly less hostile tones than in real life.

In addition, the crimes for which Willie was convicted included not only a brutal double murder similar to the one by Sonnier, but a lengthy sadistic attack, lasting more than a day, of a different teen couple. That couple's story has an added element, however: They both survived.

One survivor, at the time identified by the media only as "a 16-year-old girl," speaks out on "Frontline," and identifies herself in a public forum for the first time. Her name is Debbie Morris, and whatever your views on the death penalty, she is all but guaranteed to both impress and surprise you.

"Angel on Death Row" balances the nun's presence and mission, as does the film, by visiting with the female victim's grieving parents. In real life, they are Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey, the mother and stepfather of Faith Hathaway, the girl slain by Willie and his partner three days before they abducted and tortured Debbie and her boyfriend.

And in real life, they're still very angry, and resent life sentences for murderers that allow them to interact with loved ones, something the parents of victims can no longer do.

"At Christmastime her bed is empty," they say simply, and sadly.

This documentary, though, is full - of compassion, surprises and a laudable balance.