TROY, Mich. — Invisible Hand Productions today began pre-production of the feature film “Guilty of Innocence: What’s Said Behind Your Back Can Kill You,” a documentary on the failings of the U.S. legal system. The independent film, to be completed in Q1 2008, will be shot on location in Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, with a budget not to exceed $200k.
Principal photography will commence in December of 2006. The film will explore the role of rumor and innuendo in the decisions lawyers make, by the example of three actual court cases, in which guilty people denied justice to innocent people by skillfully lying in court, using the experience they gained by lying in court previously.
Producer and CEO Bob Schubring previously produced the John Holowach film, HIGH: The True Tale of American Marijuana, which explores a wide range of misinformation and quackery relating to America’s most popular illegal drug.
No strangers to controversy, in HIGH, Schubring and Holowach helped expose a bogus Florida charity, which raked in $95 million from unsuspecting parents by locking their children away in an unlicensed mental health facility in St. Petersburg and two others in Virginia and New Jersey, torturing them to the point of psychotic breakdown, demanding that the children make false confessions to drug use and various twisted and bizarre behavior, using the confessions and psychotic behavior to mislead the unsuspecting parents into giving additional funds to the ersatz charity to provide further care to their children, and finally filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Tampa, after being sued for kidnapping, torture, and false imprisonment. Most of the $95 million was never recovered, the ringleaders of the scam paid $ 3 million to a front man to shield them from being sued, at least 25 children committed suicide after the abuse, and many more are mentally and physically disabled from the quack treatment.
“Guilty of Innocence” draws on three cases, to demonstrate how shysters circumvent the Constitutional right to confront one’s accuser in court, by making the allegations to other people behind one’s back.
Pennsylvania physician Paul Heberle encountered a paid DEA informant who sought to supplement his income by trafficking in Oxycontin. Dr. Heberle reported the informant to authorities, when the informant insisted that he be prescribed Oxycontin, after tests showed him to be allergic to the drug. The informant and his handlers fabricated an elaborate cover story for their actions and accused Dr. Heberle falsely. The prosecuting attorney doggedly pursued the case, after it became obvious that the informant was lying, even ignoring his written threat to bomb a public building. The lawyers got a lot of free publicity, but the jury found their only witness unbelievable and acquitted Dr. Heberle on all counts. At least one of Dr. Heberle’s patients died from lack of treatment, after the hospital at which he practiced, refused for several months to perform diagnostic tests ordered by Dr. Heberle, and refused to call in a neurosurgeon for consultation, for the patient, whom Dr. Heberle diagnosed as having a brain tumor. The hospital’s executives were only convinced of the victim’s brain tumor after his autopsy, in large part because of the false accusations and malicious prosecution that were in progress, and did not have the sense to obtain a second opinion from another physician, before simply tossing the patient out to die.
Florida nurse Michelle Grew was poisoned with hydrogen sulfide from sewer gas, in a commercial building space in Michigan she had rented to open a gift shop. Two previous business tenants of the building had also suffered from the deadly fumes. One died. The second, who sued, is severely incapacitated and living in the Tampa Bay area. The source of the neurotoxic fumes, in a strip mall renovated from a former garage, was a manhole and vent stacks that, by law, should have been vented outdoors, but were vented into the building to save money on the renovation. Unfortunately, the landlord hired a dishonest lawyer who charged exorbitant fees, and may have tricked him into believing that if he repaired the sewer system so it would vent outdoors, the repairs would amount to an admission of guilt. Ten years later, Grew is still fighting the case.
More information
Bob Lee, LongTale LLC, +1-323-733-1000, World-Wide Licensing Rights Sales Manager
[tags]documentary filmmaker, Guilty of Innocence, Invisible Hand Productions, Bob Schubring, LongTale LLC, John Holowach film[/tags]
