True-crime documentary gets advance screening at Law School

“Facing Life: The Retrial of Evan Zimmerman,” a new true-crime documentary that premieres in June on A&E cable television network, will have an advance special screening Thursday, April 27, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School.

The screening will be at 6 p.m. in Room 2211 at the UW Law School, 975 Bascom Mall. A discussion will follow with students and faculty involved in the case and filmmakers from Towers Productions. The event is hosted by the Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies and Frank J. Remington Center and is free and open to the public.

“Facing Life” documents the Wisconsin man’s decision to face the possibility of life in prison rather than accept an offer of freedom that would falsely brand him as a murderer in an Eau Claire County homicide case.

When Zimmerman’s former girlfriend, Kathy Thompson, was strangled on her wedding night in February 2000, her husband had a perfect alibi — one that made Zimmerman the perfect suspect. Although Zimmerman proclaimed his innocence and police had no physical evidence against him, Zimmerman was investigated, arrested, convicted and sent to prison for life.

Three years later — with help from law students and professors at the UW–Madison Innocence Project — Zimmerman won a new trial on appeal, and with it a second chance to clear his name. But before the retrial, the prosecution offered him a deal — plead guilty to a lesser charge and go free.

The documentary — scheduled to air on A&E on Monday, June 5 — details one man’s choice to reject a tainted freedom in an effort to prove to his family, friends and everyone else that he’s not a murderer. Filmmakers Shane DuBow and David Boodell follow Zimmerman and his defense team through their final trial preparations and then on to a startling conclusion in court, one that speaks both to the high cost of imperfect justice and to the difficulties of fighting convictions secured without the use of DNA.

Zimmerman was represented at his retrial by La Crosse attorney Keith Belzer, who was appointed by the State Public Defender’s Office, and lawyers and students with the Wisconsin Innocence Project.