Brother's Keeper (film)

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Brother's Keeper
Directed by	Joe Berlinger Bruce Sinofsky
Starring	Connie Chung, John Teeple
Release date(s)	January, 1992
Running time	104 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Brother's Keeper is a 1992 documentary directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The film is about the alleged 1990 murder in the village of Munnsville, New York.

In a rural farming community near Syracuse, New York, four brothers lived in a dilapidated house (some might have called it a shack). William, Adelbert, Lyman, and Roscoe Ward were barely literate, had no formal education, and farmed land that had been in their family for generations. William Ward, who had been ill for years, died in his sleep. Adelbert was accused of killing him, perhaps by smothering. After a trial Adelbert Ward was acquitted, largely because the New York State Police violated Adelbert's rights by coercing him to confess (which he later denied) and by having him sign a written statement which he was unable to understand due to illiteracy.

The moving documentary depicts the brothers as gentle, shy, harmless, toothless, uneducated, and undeniably likable "rural folk," with Adelbert as the victim of investigatorial overzealousness and perhaps even corruption (maybe arising from an effort to get the Wards' land) in the State Police. The viewer is left with the impression that Adelbert may indeed have smothered William, not out of malevolence, but rather mercifully, having grown up on a farm where sick animals are put out of their misery and not realizing that society condemns the same treatment of humans.