The fight for Cyntoia Brown’s clemency will be chronicled in an upcoming Netflix doc. The streamer just nabbed rights to a feature documentary about the prisoner’s experience in the criminal justice system and widespread efforts to get her released. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news.
Daniel H. Birman is reuniting with Brown for the project. He previously explored her story in “Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story,” which aired in 2011 on PBS’ “Independent Lens.”
Still untitled, the new feature will “document the … ongoing updates in Brown’s story, which began in 2004, when a then 16-year-old Brown was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, for murdering a 43-year-old man who solicited her … for sex,” the source notes. “Brown was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison.”
If you’re disturbed by a teenage victim of sex trafficking being sentenced to life in prison, you’re not alone. Viola Davis, Amy Schumer, Ashley Judd, and Kim Kardashian West were among the many to call for her clemency.
In 2019 she was granted her request for clemency. The doc will include her release from prison, which is slated for August.
“You won’t hear from [Brown] I don’t think until … she’s released — and maybe not even then,” Charles Bone, one of her lead attorneys, has said. “You just have to think about the fact that a 16-year-old who’s never had a driver’s license, never voted, never had a job would now at age 30 begin that walk outside the prison walls.”
Check out a trailer for Birman’s first doc about Cyntoia below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lFhEjfXYEI
