Yoav Potash’s documentary “Crime After Crime” shows that the justice system isn’t always just.
In 1983, an African-American woman named Deborah Peagler was locked up for life in the murder of her boyfriend, who, she says, had beaten her and forced her into prostitution when she was 15.
At her trial, prosecutors used the threat of the death penalty (for which she wasn’t eligible) to get her to plead guilty for her connection to the murder, which was committed by two gang members.
Twenty years later, two attorneys took on her case, uncovering long-lost witnesses and new testimony from the men who actually committed the murder and perjured evidence.
On their side was a 2002 California law allowing new looks at cases involving battered women.
She was finally freed in 2009, and died of cancer 10 months later.
Potash’s film tells an important and disturbing story, but his presentation is uninspired and non-cinematic. It’s best left to TV.