While perhaps not as bad as the story of an innocent person wrongly convicted and imprisoned for their entire life, the tale of Debbie Peagler ranks as a close second. When California passed a monumental law in 2002 that allowed trials where the accused killer was also a victim of abuse or rape, a circumstance that had been ignored and even inadmissible up to that point, to have a rehearing, it seemed like Debbie Peagler would finally see justice done, except the California DA’s office didn’t want that to happen. So adamant was DA Steve Cooley in not releasing Peagler, who’d been convicted to 25 years to life in prison for the murder of her husband and the father of her child, that he was involved in stopping her release right up until the end. Peagler’s story paints a disturbing portrait of the California legal system, and Director Yoav Patosh’s film Crime After Crime follows the efforts of the two lawyers who would go on to spend years and years battling through appeals just to have the truth of her case come to light.
Debbie Peagler and William Oliver’s relationship started out in a way that most single mothers could only dream: William treated Debbie’s daughter to expensive dresses and took care of them in a way you’d expect any self-respecting man who loved the woman might. Sadly, that was just the public persona. Behind the scenes, William would savagely beat Debbie and William, not to mention William’s own sister, and even went as far to pimp out Debbie to raise some money – and when she refused, he beat her some more. When two Crips killed William in 1982, the prosecutor included Debbie on the ride to lock-up, even going as far as pushing for the death penalty according to a very extreme political agenda. With capital punishment looming overhead, Debbie’s lawyer encouraged her to take a plea that would instead get her 25 years to life. Though it was an exaggerated case of hardball, at the time the plea seemed like the only option, if not the right move.
It might have been, in that Debbie wasn’t given the death penalty and thus didn’t die before lawyers Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran could begin working on her case pro bono in 2002, after 20 years of imprisonment. However, what Costa and Safran uncovered about the trial made it very clear that her charge of first-degree murder was baseless and the prosecution knew it. Their investigation into Debbie’s case would stretch on for seven years and saw them run into wall after wall of red tape whose only purpose seemed to be to obstruct the truth. Even after presenting the compelling evidence that Peagler’s charges were trumped up and securing a written concession that Peagler had long since served out her sentence, the District Attorney’s office stepped in once again and prevented her release.
But why?
It becomes pretty clear by the film’s end that many people in the California judicial branch had a vested interest in certain aspects of Peagler’s conviction not becoming public knowledge, and most of it stems back to the shady practices surrounding her trial. From the special interests group in charge of prosecuting her with the intent of seeking the death penalty to the DA’s office that knowingly hid the perjury of the key witness that began Peagler’s long life in prison, the deck was stacked against her. And so, you would think that when, 25 years later, a pair of lawyers arguing the wrongful sentencing of that inmate uncovered the glaringly less-than-Kosher practices that seeing justice served would be of the utmost priority.
Apparently, that’s a very naïve way of thinking.
Yoav Potash’s documentary succeeds in establishing Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran as fleshed out characters whose stake in Debbie’s case compounds with emotional investment with each new piece of damning evidence they uncover about the DA’s involvement. As the camera has them discuss their hopes for the trial and voicing their frustrations over the stunning silence coming from the DA or every time they move to block one of the efforts on Debbie’s behalf, it becomes clear just how much the case has ceased to be a simple pro bono matter. The years of commitment poured into the research and the pursuit of the truth is a powerful reminder that with the strength of will Costa and Safran displayed, anything is possible. Even if that anything is moving heaven and hell, only to find the DA devout in its refusal to concede wrongdoing. Crime After Crime is the kind of story that can move you to political action no matter how Sisyphean the progress for the cause might be.
The intrusion of a filmmaker’s voice into a documentary typically comes in two forms. The first, in choosing the topic to be covered, seems a null point here as the damning reactions of the DA’s office make it very clear that the defense of Debbie’s case isn’t one of political posturing. It’s a matter of restoring human dignity, pure and simple. The second intrusion is Potash’s very clear presence as part of the film, even going so far as to appear at times to demand answers of DA officials, only to be blown off. Potash expresses an appropriate amount of outrage at the events unfolding in front of his lens, yet he never goes overboard and turns it into a crusade, and again, that’s likely because he doesn’t have to. The truth of his subject and the very obvious warmth of Debbie’s character construed through various interviews with her is all the proof you need that something very wrong happened back in 1982 when she was accused of first-degree murder. And as new evidence exposing the mistrial of her case arises, it shouldn’t surprise you if your frustration with the legal system is perfectly in tune with Potash’s own.
"Crime After Crime" opens August 5, 2011 and is not rated. Crime, Documentary. Directed by Yoav Potash.
