No habeas cases to be argued this week.
In the empty space, I am going to revisit a movie that I talked about a couple of months ago, The Wronged Man. I hope Lifetime doesn't mind if I borrow this image (I don't see why they would, I am giving this movie some nice PR here):
I finally got around to watching it. And it was not as bad as I expected it to be. In fact, it was pretty good. As both a drama and a legal movie.
But that's not why I decided to talk about it again. What compelled me to revisit the movie was the scene in which Julia Ormond laments that the Fifth Circuit denied them a "certificate of probable cause." A certificate of probable cause! Damn that took me by surprise. For those who don't know, a certificate of probable cause was the precursor to the COA, a term created by the AEDPA. For this reason alone, the movie was worth watching. How many movies out there have actually discussed an obscure habeas-related term? I'd say close to none.
Focusing back on the movie itself, what I really liked about it was that it did not romanticize any of the characters (except for maybe Calvin Willis's mother). Julia Ormond's character (Janet Prissy Gregory) allowed her work to get in the way of her personal life. It caused deep rifts in the relationship with her son. She made some other mistakes in her life as a result of her work on the case. She was far from perfect. I liked that. And they held nothing back when showing how Willis acted towards Prissy and the members of his family. At times, he was mean, crude, and ungrateful. It felt very authentic. Of course, some scenes (in particular, the final legal scene) were a bit ludicrous. But overall the legal stuff was acceptable.
I feel very comfortable recommending it. And I wrote this post before I read a somewhat similar review of the movie here (and there's another positive review here).
Hopefully, Lifetime will re-air it at some point. Or go track it down when it comes out on DVD.
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