Jun
24
2011
Women make-up the fast growing segment of the American prison population. The number of women incarcerated in the US has increased ten-fold about 11,000 in 1977 to 120,000 by 2010. A staggering 80% of incarcerated women are survivors of domestic violence, rape, and other forms of abuse. A new documentary film, Crime After Crime, explores the double injustice visited upon this demographic through the story of Deborah Peagler. Peagler, a young woman from South Central LA, was incarcerated in 1983 for the murder of Oliver Wilson, her brutally abusive partner. At the time of Debbie Peagler’s trial in the early ’80s, there were no mitigating circumstance rules that allowed the judicial system to take domestic violence into account when sentencing women for the murder of intimate partners. In 2002 a law passed in California that allwoed the courts to revisit cases of women who say that the violent crimes they were convicted of could be directly linked to domestic violence. A duo of volunteer attorneys stepped-up to help Peagler gain her freedom through this law. What they uncovered over years of legal battles was not only teh complicated, sympatheic life story of Debbie Peagler, but repeated instances of misconduct y the LA District Attorney’s office.
GUEST: Yoav Potash, award winning Director of “Crime After Crime,” “Life on the Inside,” and co-director of “Food Stamped”
LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL SCREENING INFORMATION:
Premiere Outdoor Screening of “Crime After Crime” on Saturday, June 25th at 8:30pm at Grand Performances on California Plaza
For more information visit:
http://filmguide.lafilmfest.com/tixSYS/2011/films/1963
“Crime After Crime” opens in wider release in Los Angeles July 8th at the Laemmle Sunset 5 and Laemmle Town Center 5. For more information visit http://dev.new.laemmle.com/
