[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., KY., COLO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 14



OHIO:

Joseph McAlpin, convicted of killing couple at Mr. Cars dealership, faces 
sentencing



Joseph McAlpin, the man convicted of murdering a local couple at Mr. Cars 
dealership in Cleveland, will learn his fate during his sentencing hearing 
Monday. He faces the death penalty for the April 2017 murders of Michael and 
Trina Kuznik, and their dog.

On Monday, before the sentencing phase, McAlpin made a motion for a new trial, 
upset about some of the things prosecutors said in their closing arguments 
during his trial. The judge denied his request for a new trial. McAlpin 
represented himself during the weeks-long trial that ended on April 16 after a 
jury found him guilty on charges relating to the murders and the robbery at the 
dealership.

Prosecutors will present evidence during the sentencing phase to show the jury 
that McAlpin should get the death penalty. The jury can make a recommendation 
to the judge to give him either life, life without parole or the death penalty.

The jury selection began on March 15 and closing arguments wrapped up on April 
15.

(source: news5cleveland.com)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Death row inmate Donnie Johnson will die by lethal injection unless Gov. Lee 
intervenes



If death row inmate Donnie Edward Johnson is executed as scheduled Thursday, it 
will be by lethal injection.

Johnson's attorney Kelley Henry announced the decision Monday, after the U.S. 
Supreme Court declined to consider a challenge to Tennessee's lethal injection 
protocol.

Johnson, 68, will not launch any more legal challenges. His execution will go 
forward unless Gov. Bill Lee stops it.

Johnson was among dozens of inmates who argued in 2018 that Tennessee's 3-drug 
protocol, led by the controversial sedative midazolam, fails to block out 
torturous pain as inmates die.

Tennessee courts repeatedly denied arguments that the lethal injection method 
was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Johnson was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of his wife Connie Johnson 
in Memphis. Because he was sentenced for a crime committed before 1999, Donnie 
Johnson could have chosen the electric chair for his execution.

Henry, a federal public defender who handles capital cases, said Johnson had 
declined to choose, and the state would default to lethal injection.

Johnson has decided not to try and stop his execution in court. He has asked 
Lee for mercy — the governor is still considering his application for clemency.

(source: The Tennessean)

*********************

U.S. Supreme Court declines to stop Don Johnson’s execution



The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it would not halt the execution of 
convicted murderer Don Johnson, declining to take up a legal appeal that 
questioned the three drugs used in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.

The decision clears the way for the execution of Johnson on Thursday, unless 
Gov. Bill Lee grants a commutation to Johnson.

Kelley Henry, Johnson’s attorney, said Johnson had held off signing a form 
choosing his execution method until they had heard from the court.

A state law grants Johnson the choice between execution methods because he 
committed his crime before 1999, around the time Tennessee adopted lethal 
injection as its primary execution method.

Tennessee death row inmates and their attorneys have repeatedly argued that the 
1st drug in the lethal injection sequence – Midazolam – doesn’t keep inmates 
from feeling excruciating pain from the administration of the next 2 drugs.

The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the state’s current lethal injection 
protocol last year in part because the inmates couldn’t prove that an 
alternative lethal injection drug was available in Tennessee, many of which 
have become scarce due to efforts from anti-death penalty advocates.

In the original court hearing last year, TDOC officials had testified that no 
other types of drugs were available for lethal injections, but they wouldn’t 
show the inmates or their attorneys information about which drug providers they 
had spoken to, citing state secrecy laws protecting groups and people involved 
in executions.

Attorneys for Johnson and nearly 2 dozen other death row inmates had argued to 
the U.S. Supreme Court that it wasn’t constitutional for judges to rely on 
TDOC’s say-so alone about the availability of other drugs. The U.S. Supreme 
Court rejected that argument on Monday.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision of most of the court in a dissent, 
saying the requirement that inmates must prove the availability of alternative 
lethal injection drugs, coupled with Tennessee’s secrecy laws regarding that 
information, is “perverse.”

The court decision means only Gov. Lee can likely save Johnson’s life, by 
commuting his sentence to life in prison. Historically, governors have waited 
until all legal options are exhausted before making a final decision. 
Supporters of Johnson have taken an approach not usually seen in in their 
clemency application to the governor – appealing to Lee’s Christian faith for 
mercy , instead of challenging how the legal process unfolded.

In an earlier press conference, Henry said she didn’t anticipate any further 
legal actions in an attempt to delay Johnson’s execution, scheduled for 7 p.m. 
on Thursday. She said that was a decision from Johnson himself.

Johnson faces the death penalty for the 1984 murder of his wife, Connie 
Johnson. She was found with a garbage bag stuffed down her throat.

(source: WTVF news)








KENTUCKY

Man Indicted For 2015 Christian Co. Triple Murder Could Face Death, Held 
Without Bond



The man indicted for the murders of 3 people in Christian County in 2015 is 
being held without bond and could face the death penalty.

An indictment from the Christian Circuit Court said Christian Richard Martin 
faces three counts of murder, two counts of burglary, and 3 counts of tampering 
with physical evidence.

The Commonwealth recommended over the weekend Martin be held without bond due 
to his indictment for a capital offense.

Calvin Phillips, Pamela Phillips and Edward Dansereau were killed in Pembroke 
between November 18-19, 2015. Martin was arrested Saturday morning at the 
Louisville International Airport.

Calvin Phillips was found shot to death in his home in Pembroke on November 18, 
2015. The bodies of his wife Pamela Phillips and neighbor Edward Dansereau were 
found a few miles away in a corn field in a burned car. Pamela Phillips owned 
the car.

Beshear said he met with the family's son nearly 2 years ago, who was worried 
the case had stalled. Beshear then appointed a special prosecutor upon the 
request of the Commonwealth's Attorney.

Martin was living in North Carolina at the time of the indictment. He was 
returned to Christian County for trial. Christian Circuit Court Judge John 
Adkins has ordered the defendant held without bond. Beshear's Special 
Prosecutions Unit will serve as prosecutor.

Family members said in a statement they were overwhelmed by the positive step 
towards resolution.

(source: WKMS news)

************************

American Airlines pilot arrested on board plane for triple homicide earlier 
faced a military court martial for battery and sexual assault----Christian R. 
Martin, currently a commercial pilot for PSA Airlines, was arrested at the 
Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville last week after being indicted 
in the murders of 3 of his neighbors



A commercial airline pilot was arrested on an airplane full of passengers and 
charged in connection to a cold-case pertaining to the brutal 2015 murders of 
three of his neighbors. According to ABC News, 51-year-old Christian R. Martin, 
a pilot for PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines, was arrested on 
Saturday, May 11, at the Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville just 
as his flight was scheduled to take off. A booking photo shows him still in his 
pilot's uniform.

The arrest came just a day after Martin was indicted by a Christian County 
grand jury on 3 counts of murder, 1 count of arson, 1 count of attempted arson, 
2 counts of burglary, and 3 counts of tampering with evidence in the murders of 
Calvin Phillips, 59, his wife Pamela Phillips, 58, and their neighbor Edward 
Dansereau, 63.

Calvin was found shot to death inside his home in Pembroke, Kentucky, in 
November 2015. Pamela and Dansereau were later discovered burned beyond 
recognition several miles from their homes in a car that had been driven into a 
cornfield and set on fire.

Martin was living across the street from the couple and Dansereau at the time 
and denied any involvement in their murders even though he claimed Calvin was 
having an affair with his wife. In interviews with the media, he said he had no 
worries on whether he would be charged in their murders.

Close to 3 years later, it appears as though investigators have finally managed 
to gather enough evidence to link Martin to the murders. According to the 
indictment, Martin broke into the Phillips' home on November 18, 2015, and 
fatally shot Calvin with a .45 pistol before then proceeding to shoot and kill 
Pamela and Dansereau with a .22 caliber firearm.

The indictment alleges that Martin then put the bodies of the latter two into a 
car and drove into a cornfield several miles from their neighborhood and then 
set the vehicle on fire with the victims still inside. Shortly after their 
murders, he moved to North Carolina.

American Airlines, who have employed Martin since January 2018, said the 
51-year-old had passed a routine criminal background check and that they found 
"no criminal history that would disqualify him from being a commercial pilot."

But this is not the first time that Martin has found himself in trouble with 
the law. The murders of the Phillips' and Dansereau occurred just days before 
Martin faced a military court-martial on charges of assault consummated by 
battery upon a child under the age of 16, conduct unbecoming of an officer, 
sexual assault, mishandling classified information, and communicating a threat.

The 51-year-old was eventually convicted of assaulting his stepson by coming up 
behind him and "placing his arms around his stepson's neck in a 'rear naked 
choke,' lifting him off the ground, and squeezing his neck until his body went 
limp and felt numb." As punishment, he was dismissed from the military and 
placed under "confinement for 90 days."

Authorities revealed that Calvin was due to testify during that trial, with Fox 
17 Nashville reporting, "Martin faced child rape charges, accusations he beat 
his step-son and charges he mishandled classified information. That information 
on CDs and laptops had been discovered by Calvin Phillips. He was Martin’s next 
door neighbor, who was murdered before he could testify against Martin."

But Martin's lawyer at the time, Tucker Richardson, claimed Calvin was set to 
testify on Martin's behalf during those proceedings and that he was the 
defense' "star witness." While he will probably not be defending the pilot this 
time around, he told WKRN recently that he believed his former client was 
innocent and argued that any insinuation that Martin killed Calvin because he 
was due to testify could not be "further from the truth."

Martin's daughter, McKenzie, similarly insisted that her father was innocent in 
a statement which read, "My dad is an American hero. He’s served his whole life 
and before this had a spotless record. We believe that he is innocent of these 
charges and hope that the truth will come out."

Martin is scheduled to be arraigned on May 22 at the Christian County Justice 
Center in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on his current charges. Prosecutors said he 
could face the death penalty if he was convicted of his charges. He is 
currently being held at the Christian County Detention Center without bail.

(source: meaww.com)








COLORADO:

Colorado’s Death Penalty To Linger On



The death penalty remains on the books at least another year. Democrats in the 
state legislature have momentarily given up their effort to see the punishment 
eliminated in the state of Colorado.

Senators Angela Williams and Julie Gonzales, both Democrats, introduced the 
legislation in early March. But when it came time for discussion and votes, the 
bill (known as SB-182) looked dead-on-arrival. “I’m going to give SB-182 a 
dignified death. Not a torturous one,” Gonzales explained to her congressional 
colleagues. “I ask that this bill be laid over because I believe wholeheartedly 
that the way in which we treat each other through this process is as important 
as the policy itself. So when this bill comes back next session, there will be 
nothing left to hide behind, except this abhorrent, terrible practice.”

So the debate about our usage of the death penalty is yet ongoing, despite the 
recent efforts by Senators Williams and Gonzales. They did expect their 
legislation to pass without much issue, especially now that Democrats control 
both houses of Congress and the governorship of the state; they didn’t 
anticipate backlash from within the party. Others, however, weren’t on board.

A main issue lies within the core group of politicians expected to vote for the 
bill to send it onto Governor Polis’ desk for signing: at least one fellow 
Democrat, Senator Rhonda Fields, said she felt like she had experienced a 
“sucker punch,” having claimed she had been made aware of the bill on a Monday 
and was being expected to vote for it on the following Wednesday.

Senator Fields became active in politics after the death of her son, Javad 
Marshall-Fields, and his fiancée Vivian Wolfe, who were murdered in 2005. The 2 
men who collaborated in the crime are on death row at the Colorado State 
Penitentiary, alongside one other killer who shot and killed four people while 
injuring another at a Chuck-E-Cheese.

“It was not enough time for Senator Fields,” offers Abbey Vogel, an aide to 
Senator Gonzales who spoke with this reporter. “We’re going to try again next 
year.” In their opinion, the bill will pass with Field’s help; they believe she 
perhaps only needs the additional emotional preparation.

On the other side of the political aisle, Republican Senator Owen Hill issued 
the following statement: “The people of Colorado have a right to speak on this 
issue. Whether or not you support or oppose the death penalty, it is important 
to recognize the emotional weight that this issue carries to many in our state. 
I’m thankful that the Senate recognized this and decided to postpone this 
debate until we can conduct a deliberative process with victims, advocates, 
activists, and legal professionals together to reach a conclusion that includes 
all voices.”

One survivor of the Chuck-E-Cheese killing spree, Bobby Stephens, spoke to 
Denver’s 9News explaining that much like Senator Fields he had been surprised 
by the rapidity of the bill’s introduction. In his opinion, this issue should 
be left up to voters.

“Nobody has reached out to the victims in these cases,” says Stephens.

After reaching out to our District Attorney Beth McCann at her Denver office, 
we learned from her Communications Director Carolyn Tyler that DA McCann 
opposes the death penalty and testified in support of SB-182; excerpts of her 
testimony offer insight to the direction in which the city is looking: “There 
are a few good arguments in favor of keeping the death penalty in Colorado. I 
respect the thoughtful and informed opinion of those who still favor capital 
punishment, particularly those who have lost a loved one in a horrible murder…

“If the death penalty is not available for class one felonies, the punishment 
is automatic life without parole…

“Some will argue that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. In my 
experience, people who commit extreme acts of violence do not consider the 
legal consequences of their actions….

“Death penalty cases take far too long and drain far too many resources… These 
cases take 20-30 years on average to resolve. Here in Colorado, the Nathan 
Dunlap case has been going on for 25 years now. The burden on the system itself 
is enormous. Defense counsel should and will file hundreds of motions 
throughout the pendency of a death penalty case. No stone will be left unturned 
in the representation of a person facing death. Prosecutors will tell you that 
when a death penalty case is pending in an office, it affects everyone in the 
office to some degree. It becomes a focal point for resources and drains 
resources from prosecution of other important cases.

“In conclusion, the death penalty law no longer serves the interest of public 
safety, criminal justice nor the needs of victims and their families. It allows 
for the inconsistent administration of justice and involves the state in the 
taking of a life. It is time for the Legislature to repeal the law.”

However, to offer some additional background, we must consider that the United 
States is the last of the developed Western world countries to execute its 
citizens. While 20 other states have eliminated the death penalty from their 
penal codes, Colorado continues to maintain execution as a viable punishment.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, seeking 
life-without-possibility-of-parole costs the taxpayer an approximate $740,000. 
Comparatively, prosecutors seeking a death sentence for the same crime will run 
about $1.26 million. That’s just the cost of the initial trial. Housing a death 
row prisoner runs taxpayers approximately $90,000 extra per year.

Some death penalty proponents will occasionally offer solutions like ‘a bullet 
is only fifty cents,’ or ‘rope is reusable.’ These flippant responses display 
some ignorance regarding the cause of the costs associated with execution.

When a death penalty is sought and gained, an appeal starts immediately—this is 
a constitutional requirement and happens automatically, and it can be difficult 
to even have these waived by a defendant who’s prepared to die. This is, 
however, uncommon. The condemned who do wish to fight can seek multiple appeals 
on many constitutionally legal grounds.

Members of victim’s rights groups often waffle on this issue. When you speak to 
one victim’s family, you speak to only that one person’s family. Revenge is a 
motivator to some, and forgiveness a motivator to others. Senator Gonzales, 
advocating to repeal the death penalty and Senator Fields, who can’t say for 
certain, both of these congresswomen have felt the pain of being the family of 
murder victims but aren’t automatically coming to the same conclusions.

There’s so much to consider.

Racial disparity issues haunt the process of execution. Black men comprise 
nearly 42% of death row inmates, while comprising less than 6% of the 
population. Whites and blacks commit murder roughly on par; however, white men 
are much less likely to face execution.

Gender disparity issues are a big consideration as well. Women rarely receive 
death penalties; they are considered nurturers and those who kill are thought 
of as aberrations. In order to execute a woman, a prosecutor will often present 
a trial about something more than murder—sexuality or behavior in motherhood.

In the case of the Colorado death row, the physical makeup of the people 
waiting there is stark. These three men could theoretically, with the stroke of 
a pen, be dead within days. In the case of Dunlap, Governor Polis says he will 
commute the sentence should it come to his desk; the fates of the other 2 men 
is a rather more tight-lipped scenario.

What’s done cannot be undone.

We’ll conclude with a few additional facts to consider: since 1976, 151 men 
have been released from death row after evidence came forward of wrongful 
conviction. The random racial and gender-based nature of application of 
punishment is too deeply ingrained to be eliminated entirely. And in our system 
of laws, we rely on dispassion from judges and juries. Should we allow 
ourselves to lose that dispassion in the case of execution, in choosing to 
kill?

(source: Kera Morris, Opinion Editor, The Arapahoe Pinnacle)








CALIFORNIA:

Death row – An Irishwoman’s Diary on California’s moratorium on the death 
penalty



No grateful cheers erupted from death row’s 744 convicts after new Californian 
governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on execution by lethal injection.

“Lifers” were too busy at rehearsals for Happy Days or singing Johnny Cash 
songs.

Or could have been too busy working on “the Q’s” Prison Arts show for Alcatraz, 
taping podcasts, guitar coaching, writing memoirs, jazz appreciation, 
life-class painting, or any other classes run by the creative Golden Gate 
National Parks folks.

You can still visit San Quentin as a tourist but you can’t actually go inside 
the gas chamber as before – a notice saying “Closed” has been nailed up on the 
“North Seg” (death row is a name never used there). There hasn’t been an 
execution since 2006. In 1992 I went to see it when Robert Alton Harris was 
scheduled for execution and was struck by his classic foetal-alcohol features, 
but couldn’t bear it and went to his funeral instead.

Gavin Newsom’s announcement came after his swearing in – a touching ceremony, 
not only because his teddy-clutching 2-year-old was climbing his leg as he took 
the oath.

Newsom’s reasoning wasn’t just that executions are prolonged and expensive 
(true), many convicts are mentally ill (true), and usually men of colour on 
minor charges, that DNA testing sometimes proves innocent.

Newsom opposes execution on the simple grounds that it’s a sin to kill. “If 
someone kills, we don’t kill. We’re better. And I cannot sign off on executing 
hundreds and hundreds of human beings, knowing – knowing – that among them will 
be innocent human beings,” declared the former bon viveur, now a tousled-headed 
father of four. Supporters of capital punishment said he’d rebuffed 
Californians, who’d rejected abolition of the death penalty. In 2016, they even 
passed Proposition 66 to speed up executions. Newsom is anti-guns, 
pro-immigrant, and just back from an El Salvador trip to discuss solutions for 
the migrant crisis. While Donald Trump cut aid to Central America, Newsom 
pledged $5 billion (€4.4bn) to humanitarian charities, adding $1.6 billion for 
Salvador and a new San Diego shelter.

* * *

Like earlier Democrat governors Pat and Jerry Brown, Newsom comes from very 
traditional Irish Catholic stock and has always been anti-death penalty. Last 
governor Jerry Brown was a liberal who made criminal justice reform the 
flagstaff of his two terms. He’d stopped executions in his first term helped by 
his district attorney, Rose Bird. Previous governor Pat Brown (Jerry’s own 
father) dithered over sentences like a “Tower of Jello”. Jerry pleaded with him 
to lift executions, including that of Caryl Chessman who robbed and twice raped 
women (non-fatal assaults are capital offences in California). Governor Pat 
ruled on 59 last-ditch appeals, commuting 23 and sending 36 to the “little 
green room”. Then he decided execution was barbaric and wrote Public Justice, 
Private Mercy, A Governor’s Experience of Death Row, which is a a powerful 
read.

Chessman was a psychopath and was another loser in life’s birth lottery. His 
name (Danish for Charles) subjected him to teasing and his family life was 
wretched. But he was smart and needed money. He never killed, just robbed. 
Governor Pat stayed execution 7 times.

At the 8th, a last-minute appeal from his son Jerry got to the governor – along 
with Eleanor Roosevelt’s, Ray Bradbury’s, Jessica Mitford’s and more. The 
appeal lost by 4 to 3, so Governor Brown let the execution proceed. At the last 
minute he changed his mind again. Rumour has it that a clerk misdialed his 
“stay of execution” call. Pat Brown never forgave himself.

Later, a condemned man wrote a plea to Pat, saying: “There’s so much good in 
the worst of us and so much bad in the best.” He was a black man. Outside the 
“Q”. the American Nazi Party had a banner that said “Gas – the only cure for 
black crime.” Does this melodrama remind you of His Girl Friday, classic 
newspaper comedy by Ben Hecht, in which a power-hungry mayor hangs an 
accidental killer on election day? Times have not changed. Now 744 condemned 
men hope this reprieve may become permanent.

* * *

Ironies abound. In the 1990s I was volunteer cook at Mother Theresa’s Aids 
hospice, and met a transgender diva who did time for robbing “johns”. Dolores 
had been expelled to the care of the Sisters for misconduct. This was her real 
punishment. Dolores was woken for 5am Mass, and all day threw bricks through 
shop windows in hopes of being returned to jail. She missed the “Q” and had no 
intention of dying without drugs. They refused her morphine and she had no 
income to buy any. Dolores wanted to be executed.

(source: irishtimes.com)








USA----film review

Trial by Fire review – old-fashioned death row drama pulses with anger----Jack 
O’Connell and Laura Dern impress in a sturdy, no-frills retelling of an 
enraging true story about a man who might have been wrongfully convicted of 
killing his children



Quietly premiering at last year’s Telluride film festival alongside bigger, 
splashier titles, the worthy fact-based drama Trial by Fire quickly became one 
of the season’s most inevitable casualties, a crushing lack of buzz immediately 
putting an end to any potential awards run. A decade or so ago, this might not 
have been the case. Based on the true story of a man claiming wrongful 
imprisonment, directed by Oscar-winning film-maker and producer Edward Zwick, 
scripted by Geoffrey Fletcher, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Precious and 
starring 2-time Oscar nominee Laura Dern, it’s the sort of sturdy prestige-y 
project that would have been a contender in a different, simpler time.

The film’s old-fashioned nature is a plus and a minus, delivering us the 
satisfying beats we’ve come to expect from such a story, yet also giving it a 
dusty, dated feel, playing like a mid-90s TV movie stumbled upon late at night. 
The story at its centre has been previously explored in a 2011 documentary but 
the film takes its inspiration from David Grann’s 2009 New Yorker article of 
the same name. In 1991, 23-year-old Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell) 
wakes to the sound of crying. His house is on fire and his three daughters are 
trapped in the other room. He’s unable to save them but, to police, he was 
never really trying to, their immediate assumption implicating him in their 
deaths. A trial ensues; Willingham’s shambolic public defender is neither able 
to save him from a conviction nor the death penalty.

7 years later, an unlikely set of circumstances brings playwright Elizabeth 
Gilbert (Dern) into Willingham’s life. Still on death row, he’s resigned 
himself to his fate but when Gilbert starts to dig around, he starts to allow 
the idea that justice might be served.

There’s a steady current of righteous anger coursing through Trial by Fire, a 
film that begins as a self-contained story of one man’s injustice before 
transforming into a damning indictment of an entire legal system. The steep 
rise in popularity and prolificacy of the true crime documentary has given us 
an increased awareness of the nuts and bolts of the courtroom, and however thin 
this added knowledge might be, it helps to make the film’s initial stretch that 
much more infuriating. Willingham was betrayed by a system that had already 
judged him as a worthless miscreant before the investigation even started, and 
Fletcher’s script doesn’t hold back on the various levels of incompetence and 
apathy that kept him locked up for so many years.

Willingham is by no means a saint, and the film doesn’t paint him as such, 
choosing instead to show him as a difficult man with a short fuse and a 
predilection for both violence and infidelity. But it also asks us to avoid our 
own judgments despite this, and there’s a rare humanity afforded to Willingham 
and a fellow inmate, played by Ozark’s McKinley Belcher III in an impressive 
cameo. O’Connell, no stranger to playing spiky, brutish characters, eases into 
the role, equally adept at portraying the rough and the smooth, and he helps 
add grit to what can often be staid film-making. As the Susan Sarandon to his 
Sean Penn, Dern only arrives about halfway through, but carries with her the 
requisite outrage to sell her character’s unusual immersion into a disconnected 
narrative. While the film does make familiar pitstops, the pair are spared any 
overly forced moments of conflict or Oscarbait monologuing, and the script 
makes Gilbert’s attempts to free him feel grounded and specific.

It’s in Trial by Fire’s final stretch when it finally manages to distinguish 
itself from so many similar films of its ilk. Much of this is down to the 
unavoidably enraging facts of what really happened. At the time, Trump’s future 
secretary of energy Rick Perry was governor of Texas, and his callous lack of 
interest in re-examining Willingham’s case, despite undeniable new information, 
is placed at the forefront, especially in a chilling coda. Zwick is a director 
whose most famed projects are long behind him, from Glory to Legends of the 
Fall to Blood Diamond, and his direction often feels similarly old-school. But 
there’s a prescience to his motivation here, an urgent messaging embedded in 
the film that also makes it feel deeply necessary.

It’s easy to see why Trial by Fire was buried in an awards season that brought 
us The Favourite, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman and Roma, films that felt fresh 
swallowing up a film that feels inarguably commonplace. But it’s a story that 
deserves another airing and by presenting the facts in such a straightforward 
fashion, it’s hard not to feel incensed.

Trial by Fire is out in the US on 17 May and in the UK at a later date.

(source: The Guardian)