Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Movei: "The Wronged Man" Moved Me To Action

I just saw "The Wronged Man" on Lifetime and had to write about it right away. It's based on the true story of Calvin Willis's wrongful conviction of raping a child. The movie was very good but knowing it was based on a true story really upset me because of the terrible injustice. This man was innocent all along but was held in prison for more than 21 years. Had it not been for a very conscientious paralegal who came across the file and went to fight for this man's freedom, he would still be in prison. The case was closed but she felt an injustice had been done and took action to correct it.

Appeals went on for several years and were all denied. No DNA test was ever done so she took on the task of raising the money for it to be done years later which was very expensive. She applied to "The Innocence Project" to get the DNA test done for Calvin Willis and out of many, many applications, his was chosen. Even after the DNA results confirmed that Calvin Willis was innocent, it still took six months after that before he was actually released. This really riled me up! When he finally was freed, the State apologized. Whoopie! Again, this riled me up some more.

While Calvin was in prison all that time, his wife left him and remarried. His kids grew up and they only visited him in prison. He was beat up by his fellow inmates because of the crime he was convicted of and all he got from the state of Louisiana was an apology. That is just so wrong! The scary thing is that this could happen to anyone. Hopefully not as likely now that DNA is normally used but the testing is expensive so maybe it wouldn't be done in probono cases.

This was such a good movie and I've read The Innocent Man by John Grisham on this subject as well and each time I feel helpless and angry that our justice systems condemns innocent people all the time and they lose years of their lives. That is why after watching this movie I was eager to go to www.mylifetime.com and find out what you can do to help through The Innocence Project. Finally, there is something I can actually do to help those people who have been wrongfully convicted! I encourage you to check it out as well. There's even a trailer about the movie there.

Did anyone else see this movie? What did you think of it?

Tweet This

Tweet Me from Karen & Gerard Zemek

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

I have not seen it but I usually like movies based on true events. The justice system fails a lot of people, surely he sued the state or something? I do not believe in sueing just to get money for something but gosh he deserves something more than a lame apology!

Sandra said...

I read everything Grishams writes... even the dumb book A Painted House...

An Innocent Man was good.. and sad... and it really got me riled up too...

I'll have to catch this movie...

BeadedTail said...

I haven't seen that movie but sounds like one I would like to see. My husband is reading The Innocent Man right now and I plan on reading it after tax season.

Mrs4444 said...

I've never seen it, but your review is excellent. Well-done.

Post a Comment