Movie reviews

[caption id="attachment_14816" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Phil Hablutzel, Latham William, Betty Anne Waters and film director Tom Goldwyn"][/caption] By Nancy Hablutzel Phil and Nancy Hablutzel and Latham Williams were privileged to represent the ISBA at a pre-screening event for the new film "Conviction" due to be released on October 22, 2010. The film tells the true story of Betty Anne Waters, a high school dropout and mother of two boys, whose older brother, Kenny, was convicted of murder in 1982 in Massachusetts. Betty Anne was positive that he was innocent, and put herself through college and law school over the next 16 years, in order to be able to represent him and win his freedom, supporting herself by tending bar in a nearby pub. The film, starring Hilary Swank as Betty Anne, follows her through school, as a working mother under considerable stress, and finally to the time when she and her law school classmate Abra Rice (played by Minnie Driver) and who is now in real life an assistant public defender in Connecticut, are working on freeing Kenny. Working with Barry Shreck and the Innocence Project, they are able to finally track down the evidence from the original trial and have DNA tests done, which eliminate Kenny as a suspect and lead eventually to his freedom.