Really intriguing documentary project here titled Scenes Of A Crime, which is scheduled to be released in New York on March 30 and Los Angeles on April 13.
The synopsis for the multi-film-festival-played award-winning film reads:
Through one vivid example, SCENES OF A CRIME explores how modern – and currently legal – interrogation techniques (including lies, threats and psychological coercion) can produce confessions that may not be reliable. When Adrian Thomas walked into a Troy, NY police station about midnight in 2008, he didn’t know he was being video-recorded. His four-month-old baby lay brain dead in a pediatric ICU. The doctors suspected abuse, and Thomas was the main suspect. And so began a psychological battle: the detectives repeatedly lied to – and threatened – Thomas, saying that if he told them “what happened,” police would view it as an accident, without jail time. After dozens of denials (and many hours), Thomas confessed to throwing his son against a bed – just as detectives had demonstrated for him. Soon after, Thomas recanted, but then faced a huge task: proving his confession was false. The film includes perspectives of detectives, lawyers, witnesses, jurors – and the suspect himself. Medical evidence showed Thomas’s son was misdiagnosed: his “skull fracture” didn’t exist. And a defense interrogation expert found defects in the police methods – but prosecutors were able to block him from testifying in court. Ultimately jurors had to weigh defense arguments against the video-recorded spectacle of Thomas sparring with detectives, slowly walking a path toward confession and self-destruction.
Like I said, intriguing, and I'd love to see this; at the center, a nearly 10-hour interrogation that culminates in a disputed confession, and an intense, high-profile child murder trial in New York state.
The critically-acclaimed film is directed by Grover Babcock & Blue Hadaegh – veterans of independent documentaries, television programs and series. Their work has appeared on Discovery Channel, PBS, Travel Channel, Sundance Channel and others. Their prior independent feature documentary, A Certain Kind of Death, won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW and other festivals in the U.S. and internationally before being broadcast on the Sundance Channel and Canada’s Documentary Channel.
Scenes Of A Crime begins its one-week run in New York starting on March 30 at Cinema Village, and in Los Angeles starting April 13th at Laemmle’s Music Hall. After those playdates, nothing revealed yet, but stay tuned…
Watcht the trailer below:
