Convicted

The Forbes family lived in my neighborhood and I knew them well. This movie was so far off the mark in portraying his family, our town and the facts of the case that it's a total joke. The acting was far below even movie-of-the-week standards and those were easily the worst fake Tennessee accents ever committed to film. Lindsay Wagner sounds midwestern and Larroquette is channelling Louisiana. Among the glaring omissions from the movie were the popular local opinion Forbes was wrongly freed and the rape victims who promptly moved out of state upon his release. The only good to come from this awful TV movie is the big check Forbes surely earned for the rights to his story to go along with his fat settlement from the state.

I have actually never seen the movie, but I worked with Martha for years. I actually never knew this story until some of the ladies at work were talking about it. She was the sweetest, most down-to-earth woman I have ever met. She never seemed the type to have gone through so much. Her faith in God was so strong, and to be a woman who went through this hell, she never let her faith waver. She never let on that she had received a settlement from the state over the situation, and from what I can gather, she never stopped working to enjoy the money. Her husband came out of prison a different man, and was never the same again. Martha never showed any desire for revenge, and showed nothing but an attitude of forgiveness for all involved.

I felt nothing but loathing for the rape victim in this film. Just because a crime was committed against her, cannot justify her act of deliberate false accusation of an innocent man. And the fact that the prosecutor (clearly) knowingly went along with it is worse. The evidence was all there right from the beginning -- everyone KNEW that they had an innocent man. All of the evidence and witnesses refuted the victim's claims (lies) the he was her attacker. When 1 person says to me "this is so" and a dozen people say "this is NOT so" it is clear who is lying and who is telling the truth. What is really sickening is that everybody clearly knew they had an innocent man. But they didn't care -- they just wanted their pound of flesh -- and didn't care who's hide it came out of. The prosecutor, the police, the judge; EVEN THE COLD-BLOODED JURY THAT CONVICTED HIM! It was only after the real rapist voluntarily turned himself in that the truth came out. The prosecutor, when confronted with the irrefutable, said, "I am not an evil man." If this is not evil, nothing ever was. What is sad is that this is a fact-based story. It really happened and does happen. I had the utmost respect for our nation's system of justice. Never in my life, until after having seen the chronicle of events told in this film, would I have believed our county's justice system to actually be capable of UGLINESS.

I feel this movie is top of the charts. I really felt for the mother and everything that she went through. I felt so bad to see that she had no support without her husband, not including having no true friends. That poor husband being locked up for doing nothing but loving his family and wanting to be with them. My heart truly goes out to these families who have to suffer for another persons doing.