Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 25, 2006 0:55:22 GMT -5
Troubling movie follows 7 men after DNA gets them out of prison
After 23 years in solitary confinement on death row, Nick Yarris walks
around his old neighborhood, pointing out the house where he grew up. He
says he feels like Ebenezer Scrooge, visiting his past.
"I'm the ghost of my own life," Yarris says, and it's hard to disagree as
you watch him make his way in the world, ignored and almost invisible.
Yarris and 6 other ghosts haunt "After Innocence," a devastating
documentary about men who spent years in prison for crimes they did not
commit. Freed after DNA evidence exonerates them, these 7 men now drift
through the outside world like lost souls among the living.
Director Jessica Sanders follows the men as they try to reconstruct the
lives they left behind all those years ago. Her account is a stinging
indictment of the criminal justice system; one of the most troubling
revelations of this deeply troubling film is that most states offer the
men no compensation for the loss they suffered. Few even get a simple
apology.
Photos of the men in their early 20s, when they were convicted, shown
alongside the middle-aged, wary men they are today, show that the loss
could never be repaid in any case. How do you give a man back what one of
them calls "the prime years of my life . . . the years when you're
establishing yourself" with marriage, children, a career?
Anyone would be filled with rage and bitterness at such an unjust twist of
fate, yet the men maintain a heartbreaking stoicism. In their
thousand-yard prison stares, the stiff hugs they give their lawyers, you
can see exactly what incarceration did to them. It robbed them of the
ability to express, and maybe even feel, emotion. (One man, Dennis Maher,
who spent 10 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, does get teary
a few times, but he quickly wipes the tears away and regroups.)
The lawyers the men hug work for the Innocence Project, the organization
started by Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld, whose dogged labor and
insistence on admitting DNA evidence has led to the exoneration of 175
men, to date. They maintain that there are thousands more innocent men
wasting away behind bars: One disturbing shot shows file cabinets in their
offices that are stuffed with letters from inmates, most still unopened by
the overwhelmed staff.
The seven cases the film explores are devastating, but none more than the
case of Wilton Dedge, who is still in prison when the film begins, even
though his lawyers have had his exculpatory DNA evidence 3 years.
Prosecutors, unwilling to admit their mistake, have spent those 3 years
fighting to keep the new evidence out of court, even though it proves his
innocence beyond a shred of doubt, let alone reasonable doubt.
Dedge was convicted on eyewitness testimony, which Scheck says is the
culprit in the great majority of the wrongful convictions. Sanders tracks
down a rape victim whose testimony convicted one of the men; amazingly,
the 2 are now friends and work together to bring attention to the issue.
"After Innocence" plays at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at
the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd.,
216-421-7450. Tickets, $8 at the door.
(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)
After 23 years in solitary confinement on death row, Nick Yarris walks
around his old neighborhood, pointing out the house where he grew up. He
says he feels like Ebenezer Scrooge, visiting his past.
"I'm the ghost of my own life," Yarris says, and it's hard to disagree as
you watch him make his way in the world, ignored and almost invisible.
Yarris and 6 other ghosts haunt "After Innocence," a devastating
documentary about men who spent years in prison for crimes they did not
commit. Freed after DNA evidence exonerates them, these 7 men now drift
through the outside world like lost souls among the living.
Director Jessica Sanders follows the men as they try to reconstruct the
lives they left behind all those years ago. Her account is a stinging
indictment of the criminal justice system; one of the most troubling
revelations of this deeply troubling film is that most states offer the
men no compensation for the loss they suffered. Few even get a simple
apology.
Photos of the men in their early 20s, when they were convicted, shown
alongside the middle-aged, wary men they are today, show that the loss
could never be repaid in any case. How do you give a man back what one of
them calls "the prime years of my life . . . the years when you're
establishing yourself" with marriage, children, a career?
Anyone would be filled with rage and bitterness at such an unjust twist of
fate, yet the men maintain a heartbreaking stoicism. In their
thousand-yard prison stares, the stiff hugs they give their lawyers, you
can see exactly what incarceration did to them. It robbed them of the
ability to express, and maybe even feel, emotion. (One man, Dennis Maher,
who spent 10 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, does get teary
a few times, but he quickly wipes the tears away and regroups.)
The lawyers the men hug work for the Innocence Project, the organization
started by Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld, whose dogged labor and
insistence on admitting DNA evidence has led to the exoneration of 175
men, to date. They maintain that there are thousands more innocent men
wasting away behind bars: One disturbing shot shows file cabinets in their
offices that are stuffed with letters from inmates, most still unopened by
the overwhelmed staff.
The seven cases the film explores are devastating, but none more than the
case of Wilton Dedge, who is still in prison when the film begins, even
though his lawyers have had his exculpatory DNA evidence 3 years.
Prosecutors, unwilling to admit their mistake, have spent those 3 years
fighting to keep the new evidence out of court, even though it proves his
innocence beyond a shred of doubt, let alone reasonable doubt.
Dedge was convicted on eyewitness testimony, which Scheck says is the
culprit in the great majority of the wrongful convictions. Sanders tracks
down a rape victim whose testimony convicted one of the men; amazingly,
the 2 are now friends and work together to bring attention to the issue.
"After Innocence" plays at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at
the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd.,
216-421-7450. Tickets, $8 at the door.
(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)