On Thursday 20th, Jamie Meltzer’s premiered his documentary True Conviction at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
The film chronicles the work of three exonerated men: Christopher Scott, Johnnie Lindsey, and Steven Phillips who served over a decade in prison for crimes they did not commit. They have created an organization in Dallas, Texas for those who were wrongfully convicted to help them to get out of prison. This real-life crime drama chronicles of these brave men has they embark quest for justice. Check out our exclusive Q &A with the director and cast themselves:
Q: How did you decide to do this project and how did you find the subjects?
Jamie Meltzer: Michael May who’s a journalist who works at NPR now, previously worked for the Texas Observer had written a story about the Dallas exonerees. He told me about this group of over 30 exonerees in Dallas who supported one another and who had met in a support group and helped each other through the tough transition with this experience that they could only understand. He brought me down and let me witness a support group session. From the moment I was there, a few minutes in it was so emotional. The resilience that these guys had and their spirit they had to want to turn something they had into something positive and bring change. It deeply affected me and I was onboard right there. I got in at the beginning of this whole idea of the investigation, that was 2012 and I’ve been along for the ride ever since.
Q: Was it important to focus on the subjects rather than the cases?
Jamie Meltzer: It was a challenge. The cases were really compelling. I wanted to bring light into what these guys were investigating and the cases of injustice they covered. Of course that was super important but there has been a lot films about wrongful convictions and investigating cases but what was really unique is they were doing this from a grassroots level and so their stories were really important. I was seeing the struggles they were having in their life and they were using this experience for a positive change which seemed to unique about this story. This is what we ended up focusing on. And the edit room was focused on their stories and of course you want to focus on the cases but it’s sort of a balancing act.
Q: How did you begin this initiative to advocate for those who were wrongly convicted?
Johnnie Lindsey: We would have a group meeting every month and we would sit and talk. We would share the difficulties each one of us was going through. I met Chris when he got out. Every time there was an exoneration, the exoneree would met at the courthouse and we would give that individual a hundred dollars to start a loan and this is how I met Chris. And through the group meetings he came to me and said he had an idea. He went on to explain to me what his dream was which was aligned with my dream because I wanted to make a difference when I got out of prison. There was nobody there to help me. My cry was fallen up to death ears. It’s a lonely feeling when you have no one you can reach out to. This made me more determined to work with him. When he told me the name of his organized was House of Renewed Hope, that hit the nail on the head. I had to be a part of it by any means necessary. We don’t get paid for anything we do, we do it our own and this is why I thought the film ‘True Conviction’ it was right on time.
Jamie Meltzer: One thing that seems is consistent in all these cases is that the prosecuting attorney gets rewarded for putting anyone in prison- it doesn’t matter if they aren’t guilty. There’s no punishment if they are wrong. The punishment always falls on those who get wrongly convicted. So there is something about the system, hopefully in a perfect system should be solved. Hopefully their cases can help illuminate the problem although the answers seem to be very difficult.
Q: How do you know which cases to take?
Christopher Scott: First of all we have good bullsh*t meters. You can’t bullsh*t the bullsh*t. Basically what happens is, they write to the organization and every other week it may be 100 cases waiting for us to read over but it’s so ironic that out of a 1,000 cases we get maybe one or two that possibly has enough merits for us to try to go forward and work on the case. The majority of the time it’s a needle in a haystack with these cases. What we do is and read a lot of cases. We will take that one case and give it 100% of our attention because we can’t not work on 4 or 5 cases at one time so the one that gets that undivided attention, we all gravitate around it and all go out there and track down leads and pushing the prosecutor. That’s the most important part of the film, we love to put the prosecutor in the hot seat. “You want to prosecute us? Ok, we out now.” They sign a paper that says “Ok, I will do this for ya’ll” “We be like all yeah, this what we doing!” We have this type of opportunity to show them what it feels like to be wrongly convicted for something we haven’t done.