MUST l KNOW
TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY
A TCK LAWYER, A FORENSIC SCIENTIST AND A FILMMAKER PRODUCE “STRANGLED,” A DOCUMENTARY ON THE U.S. JUSTICE SYSTEM AND CASE STUDY ON ONE MAN’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM.
T Photo courtesy of Donna Musil.
by Donna Musil
Drawing by Carlton Gary, a self-taught artist.
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Summer 2020 | www.CultursMag.com
hose in the U.S. typically presume wrongful legal convictions are the result of a few “bad apples” — a dirty cop, an overzealous prosecutor or a corrupt judge. But what if the whole tree is rotten? What if the whole concept of an adversarial system is doomed from its inception? Prosecutors, for example, are required by law to act as “ministers of justice” (who presumably care about truth and the defendant) and zealous advocates for the crime victims. But as Daniel Medwed, Northeastern law professor and author of “Prosecution Complex,” posits, can you really root for both the Yankees and the Red Sox? For the past four years, filmmakers Donna Musil, Meg Cormier and Aidan McCarthy have been documenting the trials and execution of Carlton Gary, a professional thief dubbed the “Stocking Strangler” who, in the
