Purchase a Copy of The Exonerated on DVD
Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover,
Brian Dennehy, Aidan Quinn, and Delroy Lindo portray five of
the six people (the sixth is played by newcomer David Brown,
Jr.) who were convicted of crimes they didn't commit and spent
years on various death rows before their cases were re-examined
and new evidence led to their being set free. Performing a script
pieced together from actual court transcripts, depositions,
letters, and interviews, each of the six, some of them accompanied
by a spouse, recounts his or her story from beginning (crime,
arrest, and conviction) to end (i.e., exculpation and readjustment
to the outside world, where they must "practice to be human
again").
Some of the material is pretty shocking, reflecting outrageously
inept and/or prejudicial work on the part of law enforcement,
legal representatives, and/or court officials; for instance,
the lawyer for Kerry Max Cook (Quinn), who was locked up for
over 20 years on a patently bogus rape-murder conviction, was
a former district attorney who had twice prosecuted him in the
past.