Hello and welcome to the last episode of the Intelligence for 2019. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

At around this time, the economist selects its country of the year. We take a tour around the

foreign department to find out which nation our journalists think has improved the most in 2019.

And the Democratic Republic of Congo has some of the worst roads on the planet, so commodities

such as beer travel down the Congo River.

Our correspondent endures a long and loud journey between the brewery and far-flung bars.

But first, as the year draws to a close, our top story takes a step away from the news to get an unusual look into America's criminal justice system.

There are more than two and a half thousand people on death row in the United States.

Drive 40 miles north of Houston, Texas, to the city of Conroe,

and you'll meet a man who offers some of them hope.

His name is Richard Raina, and he is a death row sleuth.

Our Midwest correspondent, Adam Roberts, spent some time with him.

So Richard Rayner is a handsome grandfather figure.

He has slick black hair, his muscular arms showed a Rolex on one arm.

He had gold-rimmed glasses on.

He's a jovial man.

He's quick to chuckle when we talked.

He is a hardworking loner.

He works on his own.

He loves reading books about crime.

His office is crammed with souvenirs of cases he's worked on newspaper clippings

and thick piles of case files, manila enveloped with documentation.

...