The Lady Bird Diaries<\/a>) employs expressive black-and-white illustrations by comic book artist Dawud Anyabwile (Brotherman) that capture a kid\u2019s-eye-view of the unfolding horror. They also impart a fitting sense of heroism in the face of the ungodly.<\/p>\n\n\tWatkins, Stewart and Chestnut were 16-year-old graduates of Harlem Park Junior High who happened to have visited their old school on the Friday when 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett was shot dead for his blue satin Georgetown jacket. They knew Duckett, and also his classmates Bishop and Edward Capers, who were with him when he was attacked by an older boy. Everyone knew everyone in West Baltimore, a tight-knit, predominantly Black neighborhood. \u201cIt was the village raising us and loving us,\u201d Stewart says, recalling a lively and idyllic childhood and a strong sense of community. Coates concurs. \u201cThis case,\u201d he says of Duckett\u2019s murder, \u201cis the break.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCommunity spirit gave way to suspicion and fear. A couple of excerpted newscasts quote a chilling statistic about Harlem Park Junior High: It was an \u201c87-door school,\u201d and none of those doors was kept locked during the day. Kids were scared, parents were worried, and the shocking crime instantly became a high-profile case, meaning, of course, that there was high pressure to convict.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the fast-moving investigation, teens were questioned without their parents or an attorney present. Moving beyond the scope of Gonnerman\u2019s 2021 article, Porter\u2019s film includes excerpts from 2022 depositions for the exonerated men\u2019s federal lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department, which resulted in a landmark settlement. The deposition videos reveal mind-boggling nonanswers by the BPD\u2019s lead investigator on the case, Donald Kincaid. Neither he nor the trial judge, Robert Bell, spoke with the filmmaker, and prosecutor Jonathan Shoup, who insisted on sealing documents that even the judge didn\u2019t read, died in 2016.<\/p>\n
\n\tHow Kincaid became convinced that Watkins, Stewart and Chestnut were responsible for Duckett\u2019s death is a mystery. But Bishop and Capers (seen in a deposition interview from jail, where he\u2019s serving a 28-year sentence for unrelated crimes) both recall his threats of physical violence and imprisonment if they didn\u2019t get on board with the official story. They insisted there was one shooter, and it wasn\u2019t any of the three boys they were pressured to identify. \u201cThe more truth I bring out,\u201d Capers says, \u201cthe worse it got. So I just shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey put a lot of effort into hiding the evidence.\u201d Chestnut\u2019s attorney, Barry Diamond, says of the prosecution team. Despite the witnesses\u2019 vague and contradictory testimony, the jury convicted the defendants after less than three hours of deliberation. But the incarcerated trio never gave up. They refused to play the probation game and express remorse for a crime they didn\u2019t commit. After three and a half decades, Chestnut\u2019s dogged pursuit of the case\u2019s police reports paid off. And Bishop\u2019s formal recantation helped to fast-track the overturning of the convictions.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe New Yorker article ends with the Harlem Park Three receiving a letter of apology from Bishop and accepting his words with wholehearted gratitude and respect. The idea of an in-person meeting is suggested, and several years later, Porter arranges it. Perhaps it\u2019s the passage of time, the pointedly neutral setting or the presence of cameras, but nerves seem to get the better of Bishop, and, in response, the pent-up hurt and anger of Watkins, Stewart and Chestnut find urgent expression. What transpires is no kumbaya moment. But who could expect such a neat and simple thing, Porter\u2019s film asks, after all this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In June 2019, Baltimore\u2019s Conviction Integrity Unit received long-suppressed material from a notorious murder case, exculpatory evidence so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[151270,18,117,6319,19,17,327,81227,16999,147983,151271],"class_list":{"0":"post-308972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dawn-porter","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-festivals","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sundance-2026","16":"tag-sundance-film-festival","17":"tag-sundance-film-festival-reviews","18":"tag-ta-nehisi-coates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115975779915179823","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}