American Violet tells the tragic story of the American Criminal Injustice System where people who are poor are swept into the criminal justice system on low-level crimes and offered plea bargains when they should not have been arrested in the first place: Allen L Roland
Nearly 95% of all cases resulting in felony convictions never reach a jury. They are instead settled through plea bargains in which a defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence ~ even though they may be innocent.
PBS's FRONTLINE June 2004 did an expose ( THE PLEA ) on the implications for a justice system that relies on pleas to expedite justice and found the system deeply flawed and unjust. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/etc/synopsis.html
Mary Stone was one of thousands who wrote letters to Frontline on their 90 minute film ~ " I work as a court clerk in a rural northern California county, in the family law branch of the court. Even in that court, I see what appear to be grievous miscarriages of justice. I believe that if you look squarely at the cumulative injustice - in family court, traffic court, child support, civil and criminal courts - you cannot avoid confronting the basic dysfunction of our justice system. Its bad enough that it exists to the degree it does, but the web of woes that arises from it is exponentially worse. There IS an elephant in our living room."
And that elephant is that we live in a society where Black men have a one in three chance of being imprisoned at some point in their lives and we imprison 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average.
The recently released movie AMERICAN VIOLET graphically tells the story of the Criminal Injustice System in action.
Based on true events during the 2000 election, AMERICAN VIOLET tells the astonishing story of Dee Roberts (critically hailed newcomer Nicole Beharie), a 24 year-old African American single mother of four young girls living in a small Texas town who is barely able to make ends meet.
While police drag Dee from work in handcuffs, dumping her in the squalor of the women’s county prison, the powerful local district attorney (Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe) leads an extensive drug bust, sweeping her housing project with military precision. Dee soon discovers she has been charged as a drug dealer.
Even though Dee has no prior drug record and no drugs were found on her in the raid, she is offered a hellish choice: plead guilty and go home as a convicted felon or remain in prison, jeopardizing her custody and risking a long prison sentence.
Despite the urgings of her mother (Alfre Woodard), and with her freedom and the custody of her children at stake, she chooses to fight the district attorney. Joined in an unlikely alliance with an ACLU attorney (Tim Blake Nelson) and a former local narcotics officer (Will Patton), Dee risks everything in a battle that forever changes her life and the Texas justice system.
A must see expose on the American Criminal Injustice system and its implications for all Americans.
American Violet - Official Trailer / Three minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv8Jq09qU1Q
