HBO has released a trailer for When a Witness Recants, director Dawn Porter’s documentary about three men who spent 36 years in prison after being wrongly convicted as teenagers.
Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins were sentenced to life following the 1983 murder of a 14-year-old boy at a Baltimore school. The film examines how their convictions happened, the testimony that was later withdrawn and what freedom means after so much time has been taken away.
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, an executive producer who grew up in the same West Baltimore community, revisits a case that shaped the neighbourhood. Porter combines interviews, animation and depositions to trace its impact on the men and the witnesses who say they were pressured to give false testimony.
One encounter brings the three exonerated men face-to-face with a witness whose earlier account helped convict them. The story also follows the lives and relationships they have begun to build beyond prison.
The documentary premiered at Sundance in January. Its new trailer arrives ahead of the previously announced US debut on HBO and HBO Max on 17 November.
