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Starring: Delbert Ward, Lyman Ward & Roscoe Ward
Directed by Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

Polly Staffle Rating: **

    Criminal cases where written confessions are the only evidence should not be taken to court. This should especially be true when the confessions are later retracted and you are dealing with people that are mentally challenged. But that’s not how our country works. If two cops can trick an uneducated suspect with a low IQ into signing a piece of paper that says he did something, then not only is it enough to move on with a trial, it’s usually enough to get a conviction.

    Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s award-winning documentary “Brother’s Keeper” deals with such a case. I will not reveal what the verdict in the trial was, but will say, no matter the verdict, I’m enraged the case was ever brought to court.

    The Ward brothers are farmers in Munnsville, New York. All four of them are in their fifties or sixties, live in a small shack of a house that does not have heat or running water and are very socially isolated in this town with a population of 499. None of them have ever married or had children. In fact the brothers still sleep two to a bed.  When they need to go into town for something, they walk or ride their tractor. They live extremely simple lives. As it was said a number of times in the film, they are children in old men’s bodies.

    When William Ward dies in his sleep, his brother that sleeps next to him, Delbert, is arrested and charged with murder. No evidence points to murder, in fact the autopsy shows death by natural causes. A confession is squeezed out of Delbert anyway and his brother Lyman signs a statement that the murder was discussed before hand. The medical examiner that did the autopsy now goes back and changes it to say the cause of death was murder.

    These men only have themselves. They are outsiders in their small town. Why would they kill one of their own?

    Delbert later claims he did not murder his brother. He can barely read and had no idea what he signed. He was told if he cooperated with police they would let him go, so he did and they slapped handcuffs on him and threw in jail.

    Lyman, who also goes back on his statement, is probably even worse off than Delbert. He is an extremely unsocial and nervous man. When he has to testify in court, he gets upset and shakes so bad that a recess has to be called for him to compose himself. He also shies away from Berlinger and Sinofsky’s cameras. He doesn’t get a lot of screen time by choice. When he does, he is uncomfortable and heads on about his business, not wanting to stop and talk.

    We are supposed to believe these men made confessions to police. I don’t see them as being capable of murder, capable of conspiring to murder or even capable of knowing what the hell is going on in most situations unless someone is explaining it to them. The statements were taken without lawyers present and the brothers signed papers they were unable to read. Why does a case like this move forward?

    I say, even if you buy into the prosecutions notion that it was a mercy killing because William was sick. Is there any reason to prosecute? I don’t think there is.

    “Brother’s Keeper” is a good story that is worth telling, but this documentary is rather had to watch. As with Berlinger and Sinofsky’s later film “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,” there is no narration and the filmmakers try to stay completely out of the movie, letting the story tell itself. It worked extremely well in the powerful HBO produced documentary “Paradise Lost.” That movie examines a lot of the same themes we see here. “Brother’s Keeper” doesn’t work as well. It is edited poorly and the Ward brothers are so unintelligible there should have been subtitles. Overall this film needs a bit more structure to move it along, but should be considered worth watching once.