After Innocence

I have not seen very many documentaries. Most of the ones  that I have seen have been for a history class. History does not spark my interest so it was hard for me to find many documentaries interesting. However I did watch Blackfish a year ago and it changed my mind about them. I found Blackfish to be very interesting and saddening. Overall my view on documentaries has not been very good, but there is a select few that will spark my interest.

One key way that documentaries can help a writer is because it gives the writer a different perspective. Documentaries tend to show a view that is not common to most people and it tends to open the viewers eyes about things that are happening in our world. Another key way that documentaries can help a writer is because documentaries are full of important information that can be used to have a strong paper.

I watched the documentary After Innocence. It was a full of useful information that I can use later in my job in the criminal justice field. It was very moving and taught me many things. It showed me that just because an eye witness can seem to be 100% positive that the suspect in question committed the crime doesn’t mean that the suspect actually committed the crime. I found this documentary to be very sad because in some of the cases some of the legal teams realized that one of the prisoners were guilty, but the process to release them seemed to be so slow. One would think that the process would be fast, but this is not the case. I also found it very sad that some of them still had their record even though they were exonerated. Also the wrongfully imprisoned seemed to struggle so much once they were released. I felt so bad for them because so much of their life was wasted in prison and then they get out and then they continued to struggle with things.

This documentary will help me as a writer because showed me that there are different sides to every story and I just need to take the time to listen. Too many times I just want to hear the part of the story that I think is right without hearing the other side. I think this is one reason why some of the people were wrongfully imprisoned. I know that now things are different with DNA and how it can be used now and is more effective and that eye witness accounts are now known to be inaccurate, but it is always good to keep in mind that some people are truly innocent and to make sure all the right steps are taken before imprisoning someone.