After Innocence - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'After Innocence': Riveting stories of the wrongly convicted

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

At first, the documentary "After Innocence" comes off as something you wouldn't like. There's that "sensitive music" the morning shows always play when they're about to do an inspiring segment on someone who's managed to live a full life without a head. Further, the film is frankly TV-sized. Loads of talking heads and hand-held shots of tawdry neighborhoods.

New Yorker Films

'After Innocence'

The verdict: Eye-opening.

Director: Jessica Sanders
Starring: Herman Atkins, Wilton Dedge, Scott Hornoff, Dennis Maher, Vincent Moto
Run time: 95 minutes
Release date: Oct. 21, 2005
Rating: Not rated, but includes adult themes and occasional language.

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Official movie site

But then, the stories start coming, and while they're slightly repetitive, they're also riveting. Filmmaker Jessica Sanders has gathered a group of men who were wrongly convicted for serious crimes they didn't do and, later, were exonerated by DNA evidence. Sentenced for murder, Nicholas Yarris spent 23 years on Death Row before he was freed. After nine years, supposed rapist Vincent Moto still can't get his false conviction expunged from his record, making it virtually impossible for him to find a job. Brought up on charges of aggravated sexual battery, Wilton Dedge sat in a Florida jail for three years after DNA testing proved he was the wrong man — and he'd already been in the slammer for two decades.

Throughout the film, it becomes clear that, in most cases, maintaining the status quo of the system was deemed more important than getting innocent men out of jail. And here's another appalling glitch: Parolees — folks who did the time because they did the crime — have access to social services and helplines once they set foot outside. The exonorees get a drip of cash — $5.37, recalls one of them — and a ride to the bus station.

Much of "After Innocence" focuses on the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic founded in 1992 by the lawyers Barry C. Sheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan.

Statistics show that most false convictions are due to false confessions or misidentification. The latter is the basis for one of the stranger stories. Ronald Cotton, who served 11 years for a rape he didn't commit, has formed a bond with the woman who misidentified him. They now travel together to schools, stressing the importance of absolute accuracy in a lineup situation.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, as the song goes. These men have lost years. Families, Momentum. Connections. A sense of who they might've been if they hadn't been wrongly put away.