WATCH: Forgiving Johnny, a Short Documentary About the Power of Love and the Law

TIME, September 6, 2023: WATCH: Forgiving Johnny, a Short Documentary About the Power of Love and the Law

“When Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot was growing up, the backseat of his family’s car was often crammed with bankers’ boxes full of paper. They were case files from the law practice of his father Gordon Proudfoot, a one-time radio DJ who became the president of the Canadian Bar in 1995. After his father’s death in 2020, Proudfoot sought closeness to the sense of mission that drove his father’s career—so he was drawn to telling the story of a lawyer trying to make the system better, and a client whose criminal-justice story could make viewers rethink their ideas about forgiveness.

“Proudfoot had reached out to the Los Angeles County Public Defenders’ Office, which put him in touch with attorney Noah Cox, from the department’s Neurocognitive Disorders Team, which works with clients with cognitive disabilities. ‘As a documentary filmmaker, you're looking for someone who probably would rather not be in the documentary but believes so much in what you're trying to do that they still want to help,’ Proudfoot says. ‘Noah was that correct balance of somebody who probably would rather not seek the spotlight, but because he believed in the work, was willing to engage.’

“Cox was working with a client named Johnny Reyes, a disabled young man who faced a potential sentence of up to 20 years after the police were called about an altercation with his father figure. Cox and Reyes hoped to be among the first to take advantage of a new California program that could divert defendants like Johnny into treatment rather than incarceration. Proudfoot’s film Forgiving Johnny tells the story of that effort. ‘Most Americans who I've met put a high value on second chances and forgiveness and are not punitive people,’ Proudfoot says. ‘And yet the system is highly punitive.’”

Additional reading:

KCRW, May 1, 2023: CA has a long history of failing people with mental illness

American Psychiatric Association, November 14, 2022: Decriminalizing Mental Illness and Promoting Mental Health Equity

The Conversation, May 7, 2021: US prisons hold more than 550,000 people with intellectual disabilities – they face exploitation, harsh treatment