The Exonerated

The Exonerated
Format Drama
Directed by Bob Balaban
Produced by Greg Schultz
Steven Tabakin
Karen Wolfe
Written by Erik Jensen
Jessica Blank
Starring David Brown Jr.
Brian Dennehy
Danny Glover
Delroy Lindo
Aidan Quinn
Susan Sarandon
Music by David Robbins
Editing by Andy Keir
Country United States
Language English
Original channel CourtTV
Original airing January 27, 2005
Running time 95 minutes

The Exonerated is a made-for-cable television film that dramatizes the true stories of six people who had been wrongfully convicted of murder and other offenses, placed on death row, and later exonerated and freed after serving varying years in prison. It was based on a successful stage play of the same name written by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank and first aired on the former CourtTV cable television network on January 27, 2005. It is directed by Bob Balaban was produced by Radical Media.

Actors played the roles of the five men and one woman. It stars David Brown, Jr. (the only cast member to have appeared in the stage play) as Robert Earl Hayes, Brian Dennehy as Gary Gauger, Danny Glover as David Keaton, Delroy Lindo as Delbert Tibbs, Aidan Quinn as Kerry Max Cook and Susan Sarandon as Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs.

The script was based on the exonerees' personal experiences as well as court records and media accounts.

Jessica Blank, who is married to Erik Jensen, got the idea for the play when she moved from Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York City. She and Jensen attended a conference about the death penalty and listened to stories about wrongful convictions and confessions gained via torture, threats and deception. The couple spent the summer of 2000 interviewing exonerees throughout the United States and adapted the stories of six people into a script.

The play was first presented in New York City; the final performance was in Minneapolis in 2002.

For their efforts, Jensen and Blank received the Champion of Justice Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The exonerated

At the end of the movie, each actor is voiced over by the real life exonerees and then fades to show them as their current selves at the time of filming.

Aidan Quinn reprised his role as Kerry Max Cook in the staging of The Exonerated at the Dublin Theatre Festival in Dublin, Ireland, in October 2006 as well as the stage version in New York City. David Soul took over the role of Gary Gauger for several of the Dublin performances.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.texnews.com/texas97/cook111297.html
  2. ↑ "Illinois Death Penalty", PBS Newshour, February 4, 2000.
  3. ↑ http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/exonerations/Hayes_FL.htm
  4. ↑ 952 F.2d 1282: Sonia Jacobs a.k.a. Sonia Linder.
  5. ↑ Sunny Jacobs & Peter Pringle (June 26, 2013). "Sunny Jacobs & Peter Pringle". SunnyandPeter,com. Archived from the original on 2013-07-23. Retrieved July 23, 2013. Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs and Peter Pringle each served years on death row—Jacobs 17 years in the United States and Pringle 15 years in Ireland.... Their wedding in late 2011 was perhaps the first of its kind: the union of two exonerated death-row inmates.
  6. ↑ http://www.deadlinethemovie.com/characters/david_keaton.php
  7. ↑ http://itrs.scu.edu/bfl/delbert.html

External links