College
Democrats to present After Innocence February 8
 Mount
Holyoke’s College Democrats are pleased to present
a screening of Jessica Sanders’s recent documentary After
Innocence. The Sundance Award-winning film will air Wednesday,
February 8, at 7:30 pm in coordination with Mount Holyoke’s
Black History Month programming. The screening will take place
in the Great Room, Blanchard Campus Center.
After Innocence,
described by the New York Times as “calm,
deliberate and devastating,” follows the lives of seven
different men who were wrongly convicted of rape and murder and
released
years later after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The film
convincingly illustrates this embarrassing fallibility of the
legal system, while simultaneously discussing the lack of compensation
received by exonerated prisoners. Although the men in the film
spent years—and in some cases decades—behind bars,
their freedom was met with nowhere near the amount of guidance
and support received by paroled prisoners.
The film presents “no
shortage of heartbreaking footage” as
it examines the financial and personal losses, as well as the
humiliation, experienced by these freed men as they try to
rebuild their lives.
It is, according to the Village Voice, “both riveting
and disturbing.” Variety offered a similar review, praising
the film’s “remarkable stories that highlight injustice,
courage, and endurance.”
After Innocence was made in collaboration with the Innocence Project, a legal
clinic that
has helped to exonerate more than
l50 people
freed through the use of DNA testing in the last decade.
The project has evolved into the Innocence Network, a nationwide
group of law
schools, journalism schools, and public defenders’ offices
devoted to this crucial task.
Related
Link:
MHC
Black
History Month Events
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