Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.
Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004, followed by the publishing of twelve satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed that was commissioned for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, provides the incendiary framework for Daniel Leconte's provocative documentary, It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks.
A compelling look at the choices that lead to incarceration and the reality of being locked up in Pelican Bay State Prison.
In July 2016, Seth Rich, a young staffer working for the Democrats, was shot in the back in a Washington street at 4am. The police said it was a robbery but nothing was stolen - his watch, phone and wallet were found with him. The murder took place during one of the ugliest and most vicious presidential campaigns in American history. Within weeks of his death, stories emerged that Rich was behind the Wikileaks leak of thousands of damaging internal emails detailing the inner workings of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign - and that his murder was no random robbery.
In August 1969, Charles Manson's followers killed seven people on his orders. Why? Explore a conspiracy of mind control, CIA experiments, and murder.
The two very different families of "Paris Is Burning" star Venus Xtravaganza unite to honor her and reopen her unsolved murder case.
Los Angeles District Attorney’s office professes to protect the residents of Los Angeles County by prosecuting violent and dangerous criminals and seeking justice for all. But there is a dark side to the LA DA’s operations, when it is utilized by powers-that-be to persecute whistleblowers, violate the civil rights of U.S. citizens and stop investigations of criminal elements.
Black Box BRD steps back into German history, showing the Federal Republic of Germany of the 70s and 80s. The country is polarized due to the power struggle of the German state and the "Red Army Faction". Society is torn, the fronts are irreconcilable. The life stories of both Wolfgang Grams and Alfred Herrhausen are tragically linked to this era. Grams is the one who takes up arms for moral rigor; Herrhausen however seizes power and dies when powerful.
In 1999, teen Rocío Wanninkhof is murdered. Her mother's ex-partner, Dolores Vázquez, is suspected. Did she do it? A second victim reveals the truth.
Cicada is the immersive story of a five-year-old child who witnessed a murder. Daniel P Jones confronts a traumatic memory in an incendiary, visceral monologue.
With never-before seen home video, this film recounts the paranoid downward spiral of John E. du Pont and the murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz.
The true-life story of a Harlem's notorious Nicky Barnes, a junkie turned multimillionaire drug-lord. Follow his life story from his rough childhood to the last days of his life.
Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.
There are 100,000 US citizens in solitary confinement across the country, a staggering number prompting comment from both President Obama and the Pope. Situated in rural Virginia, 300 miles from any urban center, Red Onion State Prison is one of over 40 supermax prisons across the US built to hold prisoners in eight-by-ten-foot cells for 23 hours a day. Filmed over the course of one year, this eye-opening film braids stark prison imagery, stories from correction officers, and intimate reflections from the men who are locked up in isolation. The inmates share the paths that led them to prison and their daily struggles to maintain their sanity.
No Mercy, No Remorse takes viewers back to the winter of 1993, with a journey into the deeply disturbing world of Paul Charles Denyer, the then 21-year old who is currently serving three life sentences for the Frankston murders.
For three months, the journalist Jesús Quintero visits more than thirty prisons and interviews more than a hundred prisoners in order to discover what life is like for those who live in them.
Reflects a depressing and hopeless reality by following some of the members of "la dieciocho", the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.
Never-before-seen testimony is included in this documentary on Emmett Louis Till, who, in 1955, was brutally murdered after he whistled at a white woman.
An unflinching documentary of those dealing with mental illness in the criminal justice system and a profile of families who tragically fell victims to that system.