Conviction (2010)

Action, Biography, Crime, Drama
Bailee Madison, Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis, Ethan Cutkosky
The film is based on the true story of Betty Anne Waters (Hillary Swank), a single mother who works tirelessly to free her wrongfully convicted brother, Kenny. The story unfolds in flashbacks, and the film opens with the scene of the brutal 1980 murder of Katharina Brow in Massachusetts. We soon see that, in many ways, Betty Anne's life revolves around her brother, who is now in jail for the murder. Despite Kenny's knack for getting in trouble, they have always been close.Two years after his release as a suspect in the 1980 murder of Katharina Brow in Ayer, Massachusetts, based on newly discovered evidence from two witnesses, Kenny is arrested, and he is tried. The evidence presented at Kenny's trial was entirely circumstantial. In 1983, Kenny was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The three main witnesses against him are Sergeant Nancy Taylor (Melissa Leo) from the local police department, his ex-wife, Brenda (Clea DuVall), and his ex-girlfriend, Roseanna (Juliette Lewis).Three years later, Betty Anne lives with her husband, Rick (Loren Dean) and two sons, Richard and Ben. She is frantic that she has not heard from Kenny, who calls her every week, and she is finally told that he tried to commit suicide in prison. Betty Anne decides to go back to school and become a lawyer so she can exonerate him, but her husband is skeptical and not supportive, and eventually they split up.As Betty Anne struggles with being a working mother going to law school at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, we see flashbacks of her life growing up with Kenny. Their mother was callous and uncaring, allowing her nine children (by seven different fathers) to grow up almost feral. Kenny and Betty Anne were very close and used to break into neighborhood homes together just to feel like part of a normal family, until they were sent to separate foster homes. She continues to visit him, working in a bar while going to school, until her sons decide to move in with their Dad. Struggling in school, demoralized and exhausted, she stops going to classes, until a friend from school (Minnie Driver), comes to her house and prods her to just get up, get dressed, and get back to class.In her study group, Betty Anne learns about the new field of DNA testing and realizes that this could be the key to overturning Kenny's conviction. She contacts attorney Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project. The backlog of cases will mean waiting more than a year unless she can pass the bar and find the blood evidence from Kenny's trial herself to have it tested. At first, she is stonewalled, then told the evidence was destroyed, but she refuses to give up, and she and her friend Abra (Minnie Driver) embark on an odyssey to recover any evidence that might still be stored away somewhere. At the time of the trial, Kenny's blood type was shown to be the same as the killer's. DNA testing, however, did not exist.In the process, Betty Anne learns from an acquaintance who is now a police officer that Nancy Taylor was fired from the police department for fabricating evidence in another case. This deepens Betty Anne's suspicions about Kenny's conviction and the evidence presented at trial. Finally, the DNA results come back and establish that the blood was not Kenny's. Betty Anne and Kenny are overjoyed and think he is about to be released, after 16 years in prison, but Martha Coakley, of the District Attorney's office, refuses to vacate the conviction. The office claims that there was still enough evidence to convict Kenny as an accomplice, and Kenny is convinced that no matter what, the authorities will find a way to keep him in prison to avoid admitting that his prosecution was botched. Betty Anne is heartbroken but again refuses to give up.Betty Anne, Abra, and Barry Scheck visit the other two trial witnesses; Kenny's ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend. Both tearfully confess that Sergeant Nancy Taylor (who was the arresting officer) coerced and threatened them into perjuring themselves at Kenny's trial. With an affidavit from Kenny's ex-wife and the DNA evidence, Kenny's conviction is vacated, and he is freed from prison after 18 years in June 2001. Betty Anne is able to persuade his daughter, Mandy (Ari Graynor), (whom he had only known as a small child), that he never stopped trying to reach out to her while he was in prison despite his ex-wife's efforts to estrange them. He is able to reconnect with his daughter and is reunited with his sister and her sons.The epilogue states that Betty Anne secured a large civil settlement from the City of Ayer for Kenny's wrongful conviction eight years later, but former Sergeant Nancy Taylor was immune from the crime because the Massachusetts statute of limitations had expired. Katharina Brow's real murderer has not been found. The epilogue ends with a picture of the real Kenny and Betty Anne Waters.
  • 2010-09-11 Released:
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  • Tony Goldwyn Director:
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