"After Innocence" is a documentary torn from the headlines. It reports that more than 150 convicts in the U.S. have had their
sentences overturned after being proven innocent by DNA evidence. The film wants to know what happens next, when these innocents are returned to society. You see, if you serve out your sentence and are released, the government helps you out with job training, health care, and so on. But if your sentence is overturned because it turns out you shouldn't have been convicted in the first place, the government pretends the whole embarrassing thing never happened, and you get nothing. Except it DID happen, and when you fill out job applications, you have to answer "yes" on the part where it asks if you've ever been convicted of a crime. ("Were you later released because DNA proved your innocence?" is not a follow-up question, unfortunately.) "After Innocence," directed with compassion and outrage by Jessica Sanders, focuses on a half-dozen men convicted of various combinations of rape and murder. In each instance, DNA evidence recovered at the crime scenes was eventually subjected to tests not available at the time, and the men were exonerated. Some are bitter about it, others are philosophical. After a while the anecdotes become the same, which is too bad, since they individual stories are so very human in their nature. Perhaps a more in-depth focus on fewer men, rather than glimpses at several, would have been better.
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