[Not particularly case related, but might be pertinent to some of the current discussion...]
THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
TWO HBO FILMS EXAMINE DARKER ASPECTS OF MID-SOUTH
Date: January 22, 1996
Section: Appeal
Page: C1
By: Tom Walter
Television reporter Tom Walter is in Pasadena attending a press tour of new programming.
Who is Sheila Nevins, and what is it she finds so fascinating about law and order in our backyard?
Nevins is HBO's senior vice president for documentary and family programming, and she's got two Mid-South projects the cable network will air this summer.
One deals with the trials of the teenagers convicted in the 1993 West Memphis murders of three second-grade boys.
The other documentary is a close-up look at how Memphis police deal with job pressures.
Nevins says Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills will be an unsettling documentary: "It's about poor man's justice...I feel like justice is on trial."
HBO screened it last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who made Brother's Keeper, videotaped the entire trial of the three teenagers who were ultimately convicted of killing the West Memphis boys. The crew also gained access to the families of both the victims and the accused.
Nevins said the 2 1/2-hour documentary began as one thing and ended as another. The idea came after she read a newspaper clipping on the case and gave it to the filmmakers.
"I thought in the beginning we'd see why teenagers were into devil worship, but it turned out to be about three kids who may or may not have done this crime," she said.
"To me, it's like a witch hunt. I don't know whether the kids are guilty or not, but it was like the Salem witch trials. These kids were different, they were lost, like most kids in America. They were basically trailer park kids, and they were throwaways, but that doesn't mean they killed these three little boys."
She seemed certain the guilty verdicts came about because the jury was determined to convict.
"When you look at the evidence carefully, it was a pretty sophisticated crime for these goons who can't even defend themselves properly. Forget their lawyers, they can't even represent themselves appropriately," Nevins said.
"These kids are such slobs, they leave things all over, they couldn't have worked as a team in that way, to have cleaned up the murder site in that way, to have tied these children up in that way, to have abused them in that way. It's extremely out of character with any of them.
I mean Damien (Echols) is a nut case, there's no question, he's depressed, he's on all kinds of stuff, but it doesn't mean he killed these children. He's the only one capable of masterminding it in some way, but that doesn't mean he did it."
Nevins added that some people at HBO who have watched the film are convinced the three did commit the crime. But she's not certain.
"I think if reasonable doubt is the issue in this country, not so much guilt or innocence, then there sure is reasonable doubt there. These children could not afford the kind of justice (O. J. Simpson) could afford," she said. "These kids were guilty until proven innocent. But they weren't sophisticated enough to prove it."
The film is scheduled to air in June or July.
Meanwhile, Nevins puts Memphis in the national spotlight when HBO airs Memphis P.D.: The War on the Streets in June. It is about the job pressures that can lead police officers to despair and even suicide.
Documentarians Vincent DiPersio and Bill Guttentag (who did Crack U.S.A. for HBO) spent about six months following Memphis police officers on the job, documenting the pressures, the incidence of divorce, heavy drinking, depression and thoughts of suicide.
"We wanted to do something about the inside workings of the police force," Nevins said.
"We traveled pretty much around the country, and we found the Memphis P.D. were facing the problems of suicide, depression and despair in the most direct and honest way. And they felt the need to make the film with us about what goes on inside a policeman's head.
"This is a film about what it's like to be a street cop in a city that's at war - which is not specifically Memphis at war but any American city at war."
Memphis doesn't have the highest rate of suicide among police officers, but the department does recognize that officers can have problems with depression and worse.
"The guys are very interesting, they're very verbal," Nevins said. "These guys are severely depressed. The cities have changed because of drugs and the availability of guns. We used to talk about the friendly cop on the beat. That's over. This is now a soldier in a war zone," she said.
"You feel sad for cops at the end of it. Not all cops, but you see what they go through."
She said the officers were forthcoming about the job. "The cops do talk a lot about suicide, they talk about the meaninglessness of life in the face of what they experience, they talk about what it does to your marriage, your soul and your gut, how it's just very hard to keep going when you have to tell a woman her daughter's just died in an accidental shooting or scrape a body out of a car
accident," she said.
One officer talks about how a 14-year-old girl convinced him her friends were just joking that she was threatening suicide.
"He went back to his precinct because he believed it was a joke, then got a call 20 minutes later she had shot herself in the head," Nevins said.
Copyright 1996 The Commercial Appeal
THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
TWO HBO FILMS EXAMINE DARKER ASPECTS OF MID-SOUTH
Date: January 22, 1996
Section: Appeal
Page: C1
By: Tom Walter
Television reporter Tom Walter is in Pasadena attending a press tour of new programming.
Who is Sheila Nevins, and what is it she finds so fascinating about law and order in our backyard?
Nevins is HBO's senior vice president for documentary and family programming, and she's got two Mid-South projects the cable network will air this summer.
One deals with the trials of the teenagers convicted in the 1993 West Memphis murders of three second-grade boys.
The other documentary is a close-up look at how Memphis police deal with job pressures.
Nevins says Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills will be an unsettling documentary: "It's about poor man's justice...I feel like justice is on trial."
HBO screened it last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who made Brother's Keeper, videotaped the entire trial of the three teenagers who were ultimately convicted of killing the West Memphis boys. The crew also gained access to the families of both the victims and the accused.
Nevins said the 2 1/2-hour documentary began as one thing and ended as another. The idea came after she read a newspaper clipping on the case and gave it to the filmmakers.
"I thought in the beginning we'd see why teenagers were into devil worship, but it turned out to be about three kids who may or may not have done this crime," she said.
"To me, it's like a witch hunt. I don't know whether the kids are guilty or not, but it was like the Salem witch trials. These kids were different, they were lost, like most kids in America. They were basically trailer park kids, and they were throwaways, but that doesn't mean they killed these three little boys."
She seemed certain the guilty verdicts came about because the jury was determined to convict.
"When you look at the evidence carefully, it was a pretty sophisticated crime for these goons who can't even defend themselves properly. Forget their lawyers, they can't even represent themselves appropriately," Nevins said.
"These kids are such slobs, they leave things all over, they couldn't have worked as a team in that way, to have cleaned up the murder site in that way, to have tied these children up in that way, to have abused them in that way. It's extremely out of character with any of them.
I mean Damien (Echols) is a nut case, there's no question, he's depressed, he's on all kinds of stuff, but it doesn't mean he killed these children. He's the only one capable of masterminding it in some way, but that doesn't mean he did it."
Nevins added that some people at HBO who have watched the film are convinced the three did commit the crime. But she's not certain.
"I think if reasonable doubt is the issue in this country, not so much guilt or innocence, then there sure is reasonable doubt there. These children could not afford the kind of justice (O. J. Simpson) could afford," she said. "These kids were guilty until proven innocent. But they weren't sophisticated enough to prove it."
The film is scheduled to air in June or July.
Meanwhile, Nevins puts Memphis in the national spotlight when HBO airs Memphis P.D.: The War on the Streets in June. It is about the job pressures that can lead police officers to despair and even suicide.
Documentarians Vincent DiPersio and Bill Guttentag (who did Crack U.S.A. for HBO) spent about six months following Memphis police officers on the job, documenting the pressures, the incidence of divorce, heavy drinking, depression and thoughts of suicide.
"We wanted to do something about the inside workings of the police force," Nevins said.
"We traveled pretty much around the country, and we found the Memphis P.D. were facing the problems of suicide, depression and despair in the most direct and honest way. And they felt the need to make the film with us about what goes on inside a policeman's head.
"This is a film about what it's like to be a street cop in a city that's at war - which is not specifically Memphis at war but any American city at war."
Memphis doesn't have the highest rate of suicide among police officers, but the department does recognize that officers can have problems with depression and worse.
"The guys are very interesting, they're very verbal," Nevins said. "These guys are severely depressed. The cities have changed because of drugs and the availability of guns. We used to talk about the friendly cop on the beat. That's over. This is now a soldier in a war zone," she said.
"You feel sad for cops at the end of it. Not all cops, but you see what they go through."
She said the officers were forthcoming about the job. "The cops do talk a lot about suicide, they talk about the meaninglessness of life in the face of what they experience, they talk about what it does to your marriage, your soul and your gut, how it's just very hard to keep going when you have to tell a woman her daughter's just died in an accidental shooting or scrape a body out of a car
accident," she said.
One officer talks about how a 14-year-old girl convinced him her friends were just joking that she was threatening suicide.
"He went back to his precinct because he believed it was a joke, then got a call 20 minutes later she had shot herself in the head," Nevins said.
Copyright 1996 The Commercial Appeal
