After hosting several events for the Chicago International Documentary Film Festival, Block Cinema screened the last four films on Friday night.
Narrated by musician Ani DiFranco, “Fighting for Life in the Death-Belt,” was one of those films. The documentary follows legendary, anti-death penalty lawyer Stephen Bright as he tries to save Wallace Fugate, a convicted murder.
Bright and his staff from the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta were followed by a crew of filmmakers for about six weeks in the summer of 2002.
Fugate admitted he had shot his wife during a domestic dispute, but claimed it was an accident. The film documents how Bright, along with Center lawyer Sanjay Chhablani, an assistant law professor at the College of Law at Syracuse University, tried to save Fugate — who received a day-and-half trial and 27-minute sentencing hearing.
Co-director Adam Elend, 28, said the film is different from others because it documents the story of someone who is factually guilty, but not given a fair trial.
“A lot of people have spent a lot of time on the greater moral issue of the death penalty,” Elend said. “But we wanted to focus on the injustices of the process.”
The film also was screened on Saturday in in Chicago. Bright, Former Gov. George Ryan, administrators from NU’s School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, and some of Illinois’ exonerated attended.
Despite Illinois’ active death penalty reform movement, most activists still believe the capital punishment system is flawed. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1979, 18 of the 289 people sentenced to death were exonerated. A moratorium on the death penalty established in 2000 remains in effect.
The Center on Wrongful Convictions is nationally recognized, as is the Southern Center for Human Rights. NU’s Center has been involved with exonerating 30 individuals, including 11 from death row.
In January the Center on Wrongful Convictions represented three of the four Chicago men pardoned by Gov. Rod Blagojevich after were exonerated with the help of Northwestern law professors and DNA testing.
The co-directors of the film, Adam Elend and Jeff Marks, discussed their movie and answered questions after the documentary to a crowd of 25 where Marks, 33, said that in the Southern states, death penalty cases are routine.
“There are definitely those states who love (the death-penalty) and want to keep it,” Marks said.
Weinberg junior Ellen Stolar said she came to the viewing because she is interested in the justice system and documentaries. The fusion of the two provided her an opportunity to learn more, Stolar said.
“I came to see how selfless the people who work in such agencies are,” Stolar said.
The documentary was introduced by Dan Fields, Communications junior, who is a projectionist coordinator at Block Cinema.
“It’s part of showing things you couldn’t see normally,” he said.
Reach Ashima Singal at [email protected]
