''Who Killed Garrett Phillips?'' is a 2019 documentary in two parts by American film director and producer

Liz Garbus Elizabeth Freya Garbus (born April 11, 1970) is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are '' The Farm: Angola, USA,'' ''Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,'' ''Bobby Fischer Against the World,'' ''Love, Maril ...

Synopsis

On Oct. 24, 2011, 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was murdered in his home in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

, a small town in upstate New York. Police quickly suspected Oral "Nick" Hillary, a Jamaican man in the mostly white community, who was a soccer coach at

Clarkson University Clarkson University is a private research university with its main campus in Potsdam, New York, and additional graduate program and research facilities in the New York Capital Region and Beacon, New York. It was founded in 1896 and has an en ...

and the ex-boyfriend of Garrett's mother, Tandy Cyrus. The documentary chronicles the years following the murder including the interrogation, arrest, and trial for second degree murder trial of Nick Hillary, the prime suspect. He opted to be tried by a judge and was acquitted. In the course of the trial it is revealed that public state prosecutor, Mary E. Rain withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. This, and additional instances of professional misconduct, led to Rain being banned for two years from practicing law.

Reception

The film premiered on June 20, 2019 at AFI Docs Film Festival in Washington DC as part of the festival's "Truth and Justice" program. It was subsequently broadcast on July 23 and 24 2019 on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

in the US. The documentary received positive reviews.

References

External links

* 2019 documentary films 2019 films American documentary films Documentary films about crime in the United States 2010s American films {{US-documentary-film-stub