• Director(s):

    BURKEL (REMY)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE GEIE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide (except United States).

  • Production year:

    2009

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, VOD, DVD, INTERNET, MOBILE

In this episode, De Rac Hanley, a 71-year-old with a tenuous grasp on reality, is charged with murdering a fellow resident at an assisted living facility.

As the D.A.'s office prepares to try this as a standard murder case, Hanley's public defenders work to piece together what occurred. Remy Burkel directs.

On the night of January 27, 2006, a distraught 71-year-old man named De Rac Hanley phoned 911 to report that he had murdered someone in his apartment. Though Hanley remembered little at the time, it emerged that the victim was one of Hanley's elderly neigbors, Earl Spangenberg.

Hanley's attorney public defenders Curtis Brown and Andrea Luem, quickly realize they have their work cut out for them with this particular client, a colourful Irish drifter with a troubled past, a prodigious drinking habit and an often tenuous grasp on reality. Hanley claims that he killed in self-defense after Spangenber made sexual advances. At one point he asserts that he must have been drugged; in fact, Hanley had already taken two morphine tablets and begun drinking when Spangenberg knocked on his door.
A full account of what happened may never be known, but it is certain that Spangenberg was stabbed over 20 times. While Brown and Luem try to untangle Hanley's life story, young Deputy District Attorneys Summer Tanasi and Sonia Jimenez begin preparing their case.