Gladiator Days: Anatomy of a Prison Murder Review

Oh my goodness - this documentary removes any doubt about the effectiveness of our current justice system. Gladiator Days: Anatomy of A Prison Murder, documents the journey of an HBO film crews journey various maximum security facilities in the US. During their visits, the crew conducted interviews with guards, inmates and prosecutors - there are several familiar clips shown at the beginning - (the CA yard wars, riots, guard brutality, etc.). These clips are used to frame and prepare the viewer for the main topic, which is the death of an inmate inside Central Utah Prison at Gunnison, Utah.  Disturbing and difficult to watch this is an important film that exposes prison for what it truly is - hell on earth -- where you are just as likely to be beaten or raped as you are to receive a letter from home.

Unlike many documentaries, GDAPM provides the back-story, telling how each of the players in this horrific human drama would one day find themselves in the same place, at the same time, with the sand of life's meter quickly disappearing. This all began in 1986, in Nevada, Troy Kell and his friend, William were asked by a female friend, Sandy Shaw to put a stop to a man that was "harassing her & her family, continually trying to get her to pose nude, etc." William stole a gun from a neighbors house, provided Kell with the gun. Sandy Shaw and her two friends, drove out into the Nevada desert with Cotton Kelly. (It's important to note that William nor Troy knew the victim and would have had no reason to confront, nor assault him, if not for the female codefendant, Shaw). Because of Sandy Shaw's actions...repeatedly returning to the scene of the crime to show off the corpse to her friends, this terrible crime was dubbed the "Show & Tell Murder" by the local media.

After being housed in Nevada's maximum security prison for several years, Kell was selected for transfer to Utah as part of a prisoner exchange. It's here, at Central Utah Prison (in Gunnison, Utah) that Kell became acquainted with Eric Daniels. Daniels had been sent to prison on forgery charges, aligned himself with white supremacists (which he has numerous tattoos displaying this ideology) and subsequently was placed in solitary confinement for rioting with other prisoners...a mere six months later he actively participated in the planning and execution of the attack that resulted in the death of another inmate.

The entire attack was captured by the security camera, located inside the control room area of the prison. Because of the subject matter it's often to difficult for viewers to look beyond the violence, but in this case, it imperative that we do so, there are highly questionable issues that deserve a closer look. For example, why are three, maximum security inmates allowed to be in close proximity to each other, unsupervised? Especially having already had a verbal altercation? Why is an inmate that is on restricted "lock-down" allowed out of their cell? With multiple forms of nonlethal weapons available to the guards inside the control room, why were none of these utilized to stop the altercation? And the most disturbing of all -- the time denoted on the camera -- from the initial blow of the attack at 11:34:59am to medical, emergency, CPR being administered to the victim - ??

I recommend this documentary to anyone interested in criminal justice, prison reform, human behavior, psychology, true crime and other related topics. Although it is easy to turn away and shield ourselves from such brutality, to do so will only allow the underlying issues that caused this tragedy to continue and that will result in many more deaths. Prison is supposed to be hard, that's true, but the way the system is structured, it is creating killers as opposed to punishing criminals. 

Gladiator Days is a documentary that exposes the true-grit reality of prison life and how one rash, emotional decision, even as a teenager effects your entire life. This documentary should be used to open the eyes of at risk youth - taking an unfiltered look at what life inside prison is really like - not the overblown, glorified myth that has infected the music/video games/music videos and gang cultures that so permeates the today's culture.