Mario's Story

Synopsis: In 1998 Mario Rocha a young Latino from East LA was convicted of murder and attempted murder on the basis of one questionable identification and not a shred of physical evidence. He was sixteen years old at the time of his arrest yet tried as an adult and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. While spending over two years at Juvenile Hall waiting for his trial Mario joined the Inside Out Writing Program and discovered his talent for writing. Today his stories, plays, and poems are published and performed in prisons throughout the country. This film interweaves Mario's Story as an inmate in one of California's toughest maximum-security prisons with the efforts of an unlikely group of people who have come together to win his freedom. They include; Sister Janet Harris the feisty and unstoppable former chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall, Mario's pro-bono attorneys at Latham and Watkins one of the nation's most prestigious and respected law firms, an aspiring filmmaker turned private detective, and Mario's large Mexican-American family. They are united in their belief that Mario was wrongfully convicted and did not receive a fair trial guaranteed him by the United States   Source: Amazon.com