“The Vanishing Trial” looks into “trial penalty,” the term used to describe the substantially longer prison sentence a person receives if they exercise their constitutional right to trial instead of plead guilty. The documentary focuses on four individuals who were forced to make that excruciating choice.

“The Vanishing Trial” looks into “trial penalty,” the term used to describe the substantially longer prison sentence a person receives if they exercise their constitutional right to trial instead of plead guilty. The documentary focuses on four individuals who were forced to make that excruciating choice.
0
8.0A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
8.0In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.
0.0A courtroom in Milan is filled with people brought together by random selection. Long interviews lie ahead. Based on the interviews, some of them will be chosen for jury duty. However, The Call doesn’t focus on judicial proceedings, but rather considers people’s sense of justice through the conversations in the waiting room.
6.0In the 1950s, a Japanese-American fisherman is suspected of killing his neighbour at sea. For Ishmael, a local reporter, the trial strikes a deep emotional chord when he finds his ex-lover is linked to the case. As he investigates the killing, he uncovers some startling clues that lead him to a shocking discovery.
6.9Though both the historical and modern-day persecution of Armenians and other Christians is relatively uncovered in the mainstream media and not on the radar of many average Americans, it is a subject that has gotten far more attention in recent years.
6.1When Vetter's wife is killed in a botched hit organized by Diablo, he seeks revenge against those responsible. But in the process, Vetter and Hicks have to fight their way up the chain to get to Diablo but it's easier said than done when all Vetter can focus on is revenge.
7.7A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing them over to the law or lynching them on the spot.
7.9A small-time Belfast thief, Gerry Conlon, is wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing in London, along with his father and friends, and spends 15 years in prison fighting to prove his innocence.
7.5The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
0.0Amanda Knox served four years in an Italian prison for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007, always insisting on her innocence. In 2011, she was acquitted on the basis of DNA evidence but prosecutors successfully appealed and her acquittal was struck down. In 2014 she was again found guilty in absentia after a retrial and sentenced to 28 years and six months in jail. The saga came to and end when Italy's highest court overturned the convictions of Ms Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito in March 2015. Known burglar Rudy Guede was arrested a short time later following the discovery of his bloodstained fingerprints on Kercher's possessions. He was later found guilty of murder in a fast-track trial and is currently (as of 2019) serving a 16-year prison sentence.
6.8The true and infamous story of Australia's notorious criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read and his years of crime, interest in violence, drugs and prostitutes.
0.0Mariam, Asiya, and Anissa were 11, 7, and 5 years old when they were raped. The attackers were their paternal uncle, a neighborhood youth, and the nanny's son. They have no memory of the event. To protect them, their bodies developed traumatic amnesia. Years later, the memories returned, and they decided to file a complaint.
7.7Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.
6.6When a younger girl called Emily Rose dies, everyone puts blame on the exorcism which was performed on her by Father Moore prior to her death. The priest is arrested on suspicion of murder. The trial begins with lawyer Erin Bruner representing Moore, but it is not going to be easy, as no one wants to believe what Father Moore says is true.
0.0A young man discovers an infidelity and kills his wife. He was in love with this girl and had married her to get her out of a correctional institute.
6.3A renowned former army scout is hired by ranchers to hunt down rustlers but finds himself on trial for the murder of a boy when he carries out his job too well. Tom Horn finds that the simple skills he knows are of no help in dealing with the ambitions of ranchers and corrupt officials as progress marches over him and the old west.
6.4A series of odd coincidences has left Lukas, an interpreter for an OSCE military checkpoint inspection tour, stranded near a small southern Ukrainian steppe town. With nowhere to turn, this city boy finds shelter at the home of a colorful local named Vova. With Vova as his guide, Lukas is confronted by a universe beyond his imagination, one in which life seems utterly detached from any identifiable structure. Fascinated by his host and his host's daughter Marushka, with whom he is rapidly falling in love, Lukas’s contempt for provincial life slowly melts away and sets him on a quest for a happiness he had never known could exist.
5.6Recently released from prison, Beth is working with her public defender to get her son back from her sister, who was awarded legal custody while Beth was incarcerated for ten years. Soon after, Beth forms an unlikely alliance with Jess, an idealistic young protégé of the public defense team, who decides to take on Beth's cause whether she likes it or not.
6.2A mother takes the law into her own hands after her daughter's murderer is acquitted on a technicality.