Best movies like Lost Behind Bars

After an innocent man is executed in a case he was responsible for, a Scotland Yard superintendent finds himself investigating the murder of his key witness.

A night club singer who is the daughter of a small-town crook is tried and convicted of murder.

In 1850, on the isolated French island of Saint-Pierre, a murder shocks the natives. Two fishermen are arrested. One of them, Louis Ollivier, dies in custody. The other, Neel Auguste, is sentenced to death by the guillotine. The island is so small that it has neither a guillotine nor an executioner. While those are sent for Auguste is placed under the supervision of an army Captain.

A cheating husband is charged in the poisoning death of his invalid wife, in spite of other women and suicide also being suspected.

Ryan Harrison, a violin god, superstar and sex symbol does not want to cheat on sexy Lauren Goodhue's husband with her. Mr. Goodhue is found murdered and Ryan suddenly finds himself being the main suspect. After being sentenced to death he manages to flee while being transferred to his execution site. Now, all the world is after him as he stumbles from one unfortunate incident to the next in order to prove himself innocent - by finding a mysterious one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged man...

Buster agrees to pose as a murderer to throw off the police while his room mate, a reporter, searches for the real killer.

The powerful true story of Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who goes to Alabama to defend the disenfranchised and wrongly condemned — including Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death despite evidence proving his innocence. Bryan fights tirelessly for Walter with the system stacked against them.

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.

A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.

Idealistic young attorney Adam Hall takes on the death row clemency case of his racist grandfather, Sam Cayhall, a former Ku Klux Klan member he has never met.

When psychologist Kate Kovic is asked to evaluate the sanity of a young girl on death row who is exhibiting signs of multiple personality disorder, she has only seven days before the scheduled execution to determine whether the girl is faking her condition to avoid the death penalty or if her personalities are in fact the missing clue to the unsolved murders of The Toyman Killer.

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.

A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.

Ruth Ellis lives with her ten-year old son Andy next to a night club. One night she meets David Blakely, and they start a love affair. However, for David with his upper-class background, it is impossible to uphold the relationship. He breaks up with her, something which makes Ellis, obsessed by him, very upset.

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

As investigative reporter Ward Jansen and his partner Yardley Acheman chase a sensational, career-making story with the help of Ward's younger brother Jack and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless, the pair tries to prove violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff.

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.

Barbara Graham is a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars. She has been sentenced for some petty crimes. Two men she knows murder an older woman. When they get caught they start to think that Barbara has helped the police arresting them. As a revenge they tell the police that Barbara is the murderer.

The owner of a coal mining operation, falsely imprisoned for fratricide, takes a drug to make him invisible, despite its side effect: gradual madness.

A prison guard begins a tentative romance with the unsuspecting widow of a man whose execution he presided over.

Carlos DeLuna was arrested in 1993 aged 21 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, and protested his innocence until his execution, declaring that it was another Carlos who committed the crime.

In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.

A psychiatrist is sent to evaluate if a convicted multiple murderer who's awaiting execution on Death Row for eighth year now and whose behavior during that time got more and more erratic is still mentally fit to be executed.

Boozer, skirt chaser, careless father. You could create your own list of reporter Steve Everett's faults but there's no time. A San Quentin Death Row prisoner is slated to die at midnight – a man Everett has suddenly realized is innocent.

An abused 15 year old is charged with a murder that carries the death penalty in this fact-based story.

A man has an affair with his condemned brother's girlfriend while plotting his escape in Tangier.

This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.

An innocent man is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but as he's about to be hanged he accidentally kills his executioner. He now faces a new trial, presided over by a young and inexperienced judge.

A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in Robinson's face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable for Robinson, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.

A psychologist interviews a death row inmate to determine whether or not a stay of execution should be granted.

The lives of two strangers - a struggling mother and a gambling addict - meet in tragedy. Years pass, and they must come to terms with themselves, and one another.

While fighting for a woman who sits on death row, a lawyer happens upon new information which brings into question the motives of a man associated with her client

A newsman tracks down a phantom killer of murder-trial jurors.

The movie tells the story of a woman who struggles and fights to escape the gas chamber being condemned with capital punishment because of her participation in a hold up in which a person was killed.

Ryder Hart is a private investigator and former police officer who is down on his luck and drinks too much. His estranged wife Anita runs a bar and restaurant called the Sunset Grill and is romantically involved with Jeff Carruthers, a detective who worked with Hart. When someone close to them is murdered, Hart and Carruthers team up to try to solve the crime.

Barefoot Bobby Briggs, the legendary running back for the Austin Steers was today sentenced to die for his role in the armed robbery/murder at a downtown Stop 'n Go convenience store... It's five years later, and Bobby's appeals have all but run out, and the Austin Steers are - once again - on the march to the Superbowl, with a lock on the playoffs, when their wide receiver has a season ending injury. With their playoff hopes in shambles, the Governor of Texas controversially offers Bobby a furlough -- from death row -- to help rescue the Steers' post-season hopes, and even play in the Superbowl.

Rod Steiger stars as a vigilante who with the aid of his helper, Isaac Hayes, captures men who he considers evil and executes them in his homemade electric chair.

The murder of an innocent, happy couple leads to a courtroom trial that would sentence the killer to death, but who really did it?

A crusading reporter plans his own arrest and conviction for first degree murder, trying to show that the death sentence should be outlawed when based on circumstantial evidence alone, but his plan goes awry.

The gory ax-murder of one mousy, suburban Texas housewife by another is nearly as shocking as the excuse offered by the bespectacled defendant's attorney: self-defense.

When a brilliant crime writer investigates a 40-year-old murder, he confronts a small town's worst fears.

A man is executed in the electric chair for having killed several women, but due to lightning striking a transformer at the moment of execution, he survives. As soon as he's well, however, they plan to electrocute him again, but now he has become a changed man and the female criminal psychiatrist attributes it to the electrocution wiping out certain brain cells.

Convicted killer Laurence Dvorak grants an exclusive last interview to TV newswoman Alana Powers shortly before his scheduled execution. Urbane and unrepentant, he seems almost mild at first. But Dvorak's real intention is revealed when he takes Powers, her crew and two guards hostage, and demands that the television network broadcast an execution - live.

A prison trustee rescues a despondent executioner from a bar-room brawl, and is blamed for the fight by a tabloid reporter who actually started it, and loses parole, becomes embittered, and gets blamed for murder of guard.

Jonas Candide performs his job as state executioner in early 20th century Mississippi like a combination preacher and carnival barker, persuading condemned men to accept their deaths before electrocuting them on his electric chair. After he's assigned his first woman to execute, however, Jonas' sense of purpose is shaken.

As a woman walks the "last mile" to her execution she remembers back to the incidents that got her framed for murder.

A reporter investigates the story of a young man who may have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to be executed.

Documentary depicting day to day life in Angola Prison mostly from an inmate's perspective. Interviews are with several inmates including one with a life sentence who is about to die.