After Innocence
After Innocence
| 23 October 2005 (USA)
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A moving account of the experiences of men exonerated after years, and sometimes decades, in prison following newly found DNA evidence.

Reviews
Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
PWNYCNY The problem with this movie is not the subject matter, which is compelling, or the way in which the movie is presented, which is straight forward. Rather, it fails to offer a suggestions for improving what is obviously a flawed judicial system. Miscarriages of justice occur. They occur throughout history. Books have been written on this subject; it has been dramatized and discussed, e.g., The Count of Monte Christo, Judge Dredd, indeed Jesus Christ himself was crucified although found by the chief magistrate to have done nothing wrong. The judicial system is imperfect and the machinery of justice has some loose nuts and bolts which effect its operation. Most of these wrongly convicted gentlemen whose cases are discussed were found guilty based upon the evidence presented at their trials. It was the admission of additional evidence years later, after the their trials were concluded, that caused their convictions to be later reversed. That this country has an appeal system that allows the admission of new evidence after a trial is adjourned and sentence pronounced is a sign that may be the system is in fact working properly, that even years later, a court is willing to give a case a second review.
EXodus25X After Innocence is an eye opening look into the imperfections of the United States justice system. Without going any further I would like to remind everyone of how superior that same system is in compared to other countries in the world. I realize that means nothing to the men in this film that have been unjustly convicted of horrible crimes. It is very emotional to listen to these men tell there story and to see how their time in prison has changed them. The fact that the prosecuting lawyers or the state or someone is not responsible for some kind of reimbursement for these men after they are released is absolutely ridicules. As one man said, they had taken away the key years of his life, the years he either gains a college education or establishes a career. I do think it is extremely honorable of the prosecuting attorneys, judges and in some case prison wardens who have given heartfelt apologies to these men and I admire those men for that because I feel it can give them hope in society and it's people again. But an apology can't feed you or get you out of living under your parents roof at the age of 40. With all that said I do feel that some of theses men have turned this horrible experience into a crutch, a crutch that they lean on and use as a consistent excuse for not being able to get their life back in line even years after. People have and will always go through tribulations in there life and men are defined by what they do after that not by how much they live in the past. I understand that a lot of people may be mad at me for saying such a thing but I'm just expressing my opinion and if you didn't like that you won't like this. In a couple of these cases I honestly don't know if I buy into the innocence, as my friend pointed out, that is the point of this film, that people judge based on how the person looks or acts and not on the facts of there case. I agree with that completely and I try as hard as I can to be fair and objective, but I do feel that of all the men who have been acquitted of crimes the odds say that at least a few of them are guilty. Then with all the media attention and people in your face constantly talking about your innocence I believe that a guilty man would start to really believe his innocence. I'm not going to go into who I think and why because I don't think documentaries always represents men completely fair and I don't have all the facts, just opinions. Overall though I believe most the men are completely innocent of their crimes and I totally buy into the theory that victims can't always be accurate in their descriptions of their assailants and can be traumatized by the situation or just down right lie. So with all that a very interesting documentary that will hopefully open the eyes of people in a position to change the problems of our justice system.
rberg This movie introduces you to a handful of men who have been freed from long prison terms after being exonerated. As shocking and heartbreaking as this movie is, it gives no hint of the scale of the problem. While it is a powerful experience to get to know these men, I found myself urgently wondering what percentage of the prisoners who get DNA tests turn out to be innocent. A little web surfing led me to this quote from William Sessions (former director of the FBI):"In early 1988, the FBI Laboratory Division created a DNA testing lab; by year's end, testing was completed in 100 active cases. I was fully expecting the results to confirm the careful investigative and evaluative work that had gone into the decisions to prosecute these suspects. Instead, I was stunned by the results. In about 30 percent of the cases, the DNA gathered in the investigation did not match the DNA of the suspect. Fifteen years later, this rate remains virtually the same. Approximately 25 percent of DNA tests do not produce a match."Now, it would certainly be reasonable to suppose that this rate of failure of our justice system's "careful investigative and evaluative work" is a similar 25% to 30% in the rest of the cases where it hasn't been scientifically checked by DNA testing. With two million Americans in the prison system, if 25% of them are innocent, then we have 500,000 innocent Americans in jail.After Innocence is a very good film but I think its impact could be much greater if it gave some context to these seven individuals by talking, even briefly, about how many other wrongfully incarcerated Americans may be moldering away in prison. The only hint of this in the film is a shot of a bank of filing cabinets at the Innocence Project that contains thousands of requests for help – all unopened.
mikewelch7 Bringing to light recent exoneration's made possible through newly admissible DNA evidence, Jessica Sander's "After Innocence" is a very compelling and important documentary.The film focuses on the Project Innocence group, a team of lawyers dedicated to freeing those imprisoned unjustly. This film focused on several Project Innocence cases, where individuals were sentenced, largely based on eyewitness identification, and without physical evidence. Through the use of DNA, the lawyers are able to have their subjects released.As the film relates, being released from prison is not the end of the inmates' struggles. They return to society with nary an apology (much less restitution for unjust imprisonment) from the state's where they were incarcerated. The exonerees then deal with a whole host of complications (such as getting their records expunged of their crimes) after they are released, partly due to the lack of provision for such releases on behalf of the judicial system, and partly due to the uncertain status they are accorded by society.This film was well received at the 2005 Sundance festival. At the end of each showing, the exonerees stood for question and answer sessions, which were highly memorable for all involved.I highly recommend this film, and hope to see it picked up by a film distributor for general release in 2005.