BET Announces New Original Docu-series 'Vindicated', Hosted By Morris Chestnut BET Vindicated Highlights: Joyce Ann Brown’s Incarceration Affects Her Family Clip: Joyce Ann Brown’s family recalls the affect her incarceration had on each of them. Season 2, Episode 7 (08/03/2014)
At long last -- which is to say, close to 20 years since Joyce Ann Brown was freed from prison for a robbery and murder she did not commit -- the South Dallas woman's story will become a movie. So reports The Hollywood Reporter, which makes special note of the announced film as it marks the feature-film directorial debut of actor Brian Dennehy, who's co-writing with the producer of HBO's 61*.
For those who don't recall Brown's story, she provides a recap on the Mothers (Fathers) for the Advancement of Social Systems Inc. Web site. (MASS is an Atlanta Street-based nonprofit she founded in order to help newly released prisoners readjust to life on the outside.). Better still is the 1990 book Joyce Ann Brown: Justice Denied, published one year after a 60 Minutes feature on her case and conviction (based on a single eyewitness's testimony) helped set her free. After the jump is a three-minute-long June KXAS-Channel 5 profile, in which Brown compares her case to those of the wrongly convicted Dallas County men who've been freed using DNA evidence: "We have a long ways to go, but you can see the system changing."
