A video surveillance camera showing briefly the victim riding his skateboard on a sidewalk and the defendant's SUV turning left instead of right from a school. That was basically the entire case against defendant Nick Hillary in the killing of a pre-adolescent boy, Garrett Phillips. Everything else was conjecture which had no supporting evidence. If that's enough evidence to bring a case to trial, we still have serious problems with our justice system. It seems the case should have been thrown out immediately, which actually it was initially.
In 2011, a pre-adolescent boy residing with his single mom was murdered in their small apartment in Potsdam, NY, a mostly white small town in Upstate New York. He was alone at home except with the killer(s). Some neighbors working on a car outside heard strange noises but didn't see anything. No one saw anyone enter or leave the apartment, except one of the windows were broken from the inside, which was the only trace of physical evidence of the killer, save the dead boy, who was determined to have been strangled.
Garrett's single mother, Tandy Cyrus, had had two relationships before the murder. One with a deputy sheriff, John Jones, and the other with a black soccer coach, Nick Hillary. For all intents and purposes, Hillary and Cyrus had broken up about a month before the murder. The locals of Potsdam become obsessed with the case, putting signs all over NY state "Justice of Garrett".
What the documentary shows concerning the investigation is the local police's and eventual prosecution's obsession with only one suspect: Nick Hillary. And yet they could find no evidence against Hillary at the crime scene. Even before the end of the night of the murder, the police decided they were convinced it was Nick Hillary. They even bring him in for questioning before they've explored all leads. Interestingly, John Jones, a local sheriff's deputy, was not only seen near the crime scene on the day and near the time of the murder, but his ex-girlfriend Cyrus had written a statement saying she feared Jones. He became heavily involved in the case. It seems maybe he should have recused himself from the case because of his relationship with the victim's mother.
They interrogate Hillary shortly after the murder, claiming they want information about his soccer team. When they start asking him questions about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, he becomes defensive. They also take his cell phone, behaving as if he's under arrest. I thought law enforcement couldn't deprive someone of their property unless they're being indicted or under arrest.
Interestingly, during the entire time, Nick Hillary seems very composed for a guy supposedly who had just killed a boy. They even interview his coaching assistant asking him over and over again if Hillary seemed agitated the day after the murder, and over and over again, the coach says he didn't. During the trial, they paint Hillary as this man obsessed with Cyrus who sought revenge for their break-up by murdering her son. If he was, I didn't see the prosecution's evidence that this was true, except for when Hillary becomes agitated, naturally, with his interrogation.
A poignant documentary about the trouble with rush-to-judgements and a public obsessed with "justice". Justice should mean finding and indicting the right person who is guilty of the crime, not just indicting a scapegoat to satisfy the public's need for closure. Even in one of the final interviews of one of the prosecutors, he admits that the case probably should be thrown out. But he says "But I couldn't do that to Tandy Cyrus and her family." That is NOT what prosecution is or what it should be about.
The documentary proves that prosecutors shouldn't t indict people and bring cases against them to give the family members of victims closure, as much as that may be a motivating factor. Cases should be brought against defendants who are highly likely to be guilty of a crime or crimes in which the case brought against them meets the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold. A lot of people in our country do not understand that people should be convicted a crime if the evidence against them is beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not about whether a bunch of people want someone to be guilty. The community wanted someone to be found guilty but many criminal cases go unsolved. Finding someone guilty who is innocent is not justice.
