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FREEING MORE INNOCENT PRISONERS THAN MANY PROFESSIONALS
IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Ofra Bikel Awarded 2007
John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism
Award comes in honor
of a career as a filmmaker who has set the innocent
free
November 2007
She's not a lawyer; she's
not a cop; she's not a private detective - she's a journalist.
But in a career spanning over 30 years as a documentary
filmmaker, the impact of her work has freed more innocent
prisoners than many professionals in the criminal justice
system. Fourteen innocent men and women walk the streets
today because Bikel wouldn't let the public forget about
them.
"People tend to pay attention
to death row prisoners who make a case for their innocence
because the stakes for them are life or death. If you
have a sentence like 30-to-life it is easier for the
criminal justice system to turn the page and write you
off," says Bikel. Because her documentaries require
long painstaking digging and a critical rapport with
the subjects of her films, Bikel has gotten close to
the people she has freed and remains in touch with many
of them as they struggle to put their lives back together.
Through her legacy of reporting
on public television, working exclusively for the PBS
series FRONTLINE since its inception in 1983, Bikel
has shined a bright light on the realities of the American
justice system. Her conclusion: justice in America is
nothing like what we are all taught in school. Bikel's
eye-opening documentaries have revealed:
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The resistance of the justice system to acknowledge
when it is wrong - even in the face of irrefutable
DNA evidence;
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How plea bargaining can distort the justice process
and the pressure on the police and prosecutors to
produce a conviction on any charge rather than going
to trial;
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The racial politics of American justice affecting
everything from the cop on the beat to the jury
room;
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The impact of mass hysteria in driving prosecutions
and cultivating false "recovered" memories; and
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What happens when juveniles are sentenced to life
in prison.
Bikel's programs about the
justice system are used in the law schools of Harvard,
Yale and Georgetown University. Individual programs
she has produced have one such prestigious honors as
an Emmy, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the duPont-Columbia
Gold Baton. The John Chancellor Award is special because
it honors her entire body of work.
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