I have experience dealing with the Feds and found this movie incredibly compelling. So much about this movie hit home for me. Just a few examples, when the Feds came to talk to Jewell and tried to make him sign shady documents, bugging his home, the slick self-righteous agent who thinks he decides who is right and wrong, cleaning out his home supposedly looking for evidence, wasting time on easy, harmless suspects instead of finding the real criminals to boost their career. It's sad. All that time spent looking at Richard Jewell as a suspect while the real terrorist got away. They knew he was innocent, all they had to do was actually do some actual investigative, science-based investigative work instead of using confirmation bias.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Jewell didn't have access to a great lawyer or had the law enforcement background to spot the tricks the Feds were using? He would probably have been in prison until his death, which is nuts. At no point did anyone use common sense and point out that there was absolutely no evidence this guy was involved. They were looking for an easy mark.
It just shows that reform is needed drastically. I've always thought that many in American law enforcement are not educated, which leads to this sort of thing happening too often. Then you have the for-profit prison system which encourages all the corruption in the justice system to begin with.
If I had kids, I'd definitely show them this movie and point out all the things Jewell did wrong and what to do in a situation like this. It should be mandatory to show in Civics classes, TBH.
