THE STORY – In 1983, author Ta-Nehisi Coates learned that a 14-year-old boy was murdered in his Baltimore middle school. Upon revisiting the case, he uncovers the truth: Three innocent teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent 36 years in prison — creating a lasting impact on the accused, the witnesses, and their community.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Dawn Porter (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 112 Minutes
There are few things more infuriating in our modern world than the idea of somebody serving prison time for a crime that they didn’t commit. It feels like a relic of a distant time with less technological and investigative advancements. But still, biases exist, witnesses lie, and totally innocent people are banished to prisons to this day. “When a Witness Recants,” the new documentary from director Dawn Porter, examines such a case. Her film delves into the wrongful conviction of three individuals who were only teenagers when they were given life sentences for a murder they had absolutely nothing to do with. Porter lets the men speak for themselves, giving them an opportunity that the criminal justice system never did to tell their own stories in full.
The trio of men, known as the Harlem Park Three, are Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, and Ransom Watkins. In 1983, they were accused and successfully found guilty of the murder of DeWitt Duckett, a student who was shot during a robbery in his school hallway at Baltimore’s Harlem Park Junior High School. Two other kids were present during the murder, including Ron Bishop, a fellow student who would become the prosecution’s key witness. As Bishop would later detail in adulthood, the teenager was pressured by Detective Donald Kincaid to give false testimony. Kincaid apparently used threats of incarceration and violence on the young Bishop, leading to the boy falsely accusing the Harlem Park Three of being responsible for Duckett’s killing. Thanks to the vile combination of Bishop’s testimony, intentionally withheld evidence, faulty police work, and a seemingly delinquent judge, the three boys were all sentenced to life in prison and sent off to be jailed with adults.
It’s a distressing, racist trend in this country to treat Black male children as if they’re grown men, and the case of the Harlem Park Three represents one of the most intense systemic examples of this bigoted way of thinking. The trio would go on to grow up behind bars, spending 36 years in prison before being completely exonerated in 2019. The film linearly tells their story, starting with the murder, working through the corrupt trial, and showing how they eventually gained their freedom. Throughout, the film lets the men themselves tell their stories.
The film leans heavily on interviews with Chestnut, Stewart, and Watkins. Their presence obviously tells the audience that they eventually managed to leave prison, but the way the film recounts their story withholds details until they naturally pop up in the timeline. This gives the curious impression that Porter wants the real-life plot’s developments to feel like surprises to viewers, such as the fact of their eventual exoneration and how long they spent in prison in total. But the footage of the men clearly living in the outside world makes these moments less of a dramatic revelation, and instead, it just feels like we’re missing something. It’s impossible to spoil real-life occurrences, although the film seems to think otherwise.
But this nonfiction storytelling method is a minor part of Porter’s examination. The story of the Harlem Park Three is compelling in its horror; it’s impossible not to feel outraged at the outrageous injustice. Porter gives the facts of the case to the audience in a way that only makes it more upsetting for how truly wrong this wrongful conviction was. The filmmaking isn’t always the most inspired, such as when entire sections of court transcripts are displayed on screen with silently highlighted text, but at other times, gorgeously detailed drawings help literally paint a picture of the story being told. An impressive amount of archival footage also helps transport audiences back to 1980s Baltimore.
The film is based in part on a New Yorker article by Jennifer Gonnerman (who also serves as an executive producer), which caught the attention of author and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates, who grew up in Baltimore at the same time as the Harlem Park Three and provides occasional commentary. But the final segment of the documentary helps establish it as a true cinematic experience. Without giving away all the details of its finale, Porter places several key characters in this true story in the same room for a meeting as dramatic and compelling as anything in a fictional film. It’s a heart-pounding, appropriately upsetting scene that Porter smartly allows to play out in long, unobstructed takes, effectively making viewers feel as if they’re in the room with the subjects. It’s the kind of incendiary sequence that helps make a documentary like this feel truly impactful, in a way no other medium or genre can.
Porter’s “When a Witness Recants” tells a story of bad luck and worse intentions. It shows in an understated but powerful manner that the systems that are ostensibly in place to keep us safe can be just as destructive as protective. In shedding light on this unfathomable miscarriage of justice, it illuminates very human ideas of redemption and forgiveness, and how difficult these can be to earn. As shown by the experience of the titular witness, it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing, but waiting to do so has consequences. Bravery is needed to accomplish real change, and the necessary bold acts required to do so are always worthwhile.
