Dream/Killer

Andrew Jenks's documentary is one of a growing number of films and miniseries (including The Thin Blue Line, the Paradise Lost trilogy, and Making a Murderer) about individuals who may have been wrongly incarcerated, often as a result of police and prosecutorial misconduct. Dream/Killer recounts the case of Ryan Ferguson, a young Missouri man who was convicted (on the basis of eyewitness testimony) in 2005 of the 2001 murder of a newspaper reporter and then sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ferguson was freed only in 2013 after newly-discovered facts were submitted to the court of appeals and witnesses recanted, most notably the man who claimed to have been with Ferguson during the killing and had pled guilty himself. Interviews with Ferguson and news footage of the original trial provide context, but the story is told primarily through the recollections of Ferguson's father, Bill, who refused to accept the verdict, doggedly collected exculpatory evidence, mounted what was virtually a one-man publicity campaign to win public support for his cause, and engaged the help of Kathleen Zellner, a high-profile attorney with a record of success in exoneration appeals. Zellner here speaks eloquently about how the legal system is stacked against overturning verdicts—even when the evidence of wrongful conviction is overwhelming. Making a compelling argument for better justice in the legal system (the prosecutor in the original trial remains a judge in Missouri despite abundant indications that he acted improperly), this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)