News and Developments 2007: Multimedia

PBS Broadcasting will explore the problem of inadequate represenation in death penalty cases in "Death Is Different" on September 7th as part of the investigative program EXPOSÉ. The show focuses on Stephen Henderson's (pictured) examination of the quality of representation in 80 death penalty cases in 4 states.

 In 1984, Deborah Sykes, a young white newspaper reporter, was sexually assaulted and murdered just blocks from where she worked in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Though no physical evidence implicated him, Darryl Hunt, a 19-year-old black man, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. Such a crime is often punishable by death.

Ten years later, DNA testing proved that Hunt did not rape Sykes, and cast serious doubts on his involvement in her murder, but he spent another decade behind bars before being exonerated. The eye-opening HBO documentary THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT tells his riveting story - and the story of those who fought to clear his name.

More than a decade in the making, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT examines the roles of race and fear in a community and in the criminal justice system.

THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT will premiere on Thursday, April 26 at 8 pm on HBO.

View the trailer to the film.

Find out more about the film.

A special screening will be held in Washington, DC on April 24.
See Innocence.  

"Sacco and Vanzetti" is an 80-minute-long documentary that tells the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were accused of a murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a controversial trial. It is the first major documentary film about this landmark story, which came to symbolize the bias against immigrants by some in America. At the time of their execution, millions of people in the U.S. and around the world protested on their behalf, and now - nearly eighty years later - the story continues to have great resonance.