Facing Life: The Retrial of Evan Zimmerman, a new true-crime documentary that will premiere Monday, June 5, on the A&E television network, will have an advance special screening Thursday, April 27, at the University of Wisconsin Law School. The event is hosted by the Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies and the Frank J. Remington Center, and is free and open to the public.
The screening will be at 6 p.m. in Room 2211 at the Law School. A discussion will follow with the film-makers and with students and faculty who were involved in the case.
Facing Life documents Zimmerman's decision to face the possibility of life in prison rather than accept an offer of freedom that would falsely brand him as a murderer.
When Zimmerman's former girlfriend, Kathy Thompson, was strangled on her wedding night in February 2000, her husband had a perfect alibi – one that made Evan Zimmerman the perfect suspect. . Although Zimmerman proclaimed his innocence and police had no physical evidence against him, Zimmerman was investigated, arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for life.
Three years later – with help from law students and professors at the University of Wisconsin Innocence Project – Zimmerman won a new trial on appeal, and with it a second chance to clear his name. But before the retrial, the prosecution offered him a deal: to plead guilty to a lesser charge and go free.
Facing Life documents one man's choice to reject a tainted freedom in an effort to prove to his family, friends, and everyone else that he is not a murderer. Film-makers Shane DuBow and David Boodell follow Zimmerman and his defense team through their final trial preparations and then on to a startling conclusion in court – one that speaks both to the high cost of imperfect justice and to the difficulties of fighting convictions secured without the use of DNA.
Zimmerman was represented at his retrial by LaCrosse Attorney Keith Belzer, who was appointed by the State Public Defender’s Office, and lawyers and students from the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
Submitted by on April 27, 2006
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