Final Statement

On October 26, 1997, Susan Eubanks shot and killed her four boys and shot herself in an act of extended suicide. As a child, Susan watched her own mother murdered and subsequently grew up motherless and abused. On that October day, in a psychotic break, she believed that she and her children would be safer to together in death than life. She survived her own suicide attempt and was tried for the capital murder of her children. She was found guilty of first-degree murder and the jury sentenced her to death. Before the judge imposed the sentence, Susan was allowed to deliver a final statement in court. Although edited to shorten the length of her original statement, this film, Final Statement, are her words. Falling somewhere between narrative and re-enactment, Final Statement endeavors to dramatize her tragedy, what lead up to it, and her plea for social responsibility.