Dream/Killer

In 2001 a newspaper editor was murdered in Missouri and the case stayed open for two years. Then a young man named Chuck Erickson went to the police saying he had seen the killing in a dream that night. On his statement, his friend Ryan Ferguson was arrested. There was no physical evidence. In 2005 Ferguson was sentenced to forty years. His father, Bill Ferguson, left his job and spent ten years on the case. The documentary covers those ten years: retracted statements, withheld documents, and the ruling that finally came in 2013. Andrew Jenks directs; a hundred and seven minutes, with the Ferguson family and the lawyer Kathleen Zellner among those speaking. The film looks at how a conviction gets built: a statement based on a dream, testimony witnesses later took back, and information never handed to the defence.