Ofra Bickel, a crusader for the PBS investigative sequence “Frontline,” whose documentaries about the US’ prison justice system uncovered deep flaws within the convictions of 13 folks, died Aug. 11 at her house in Tel Aviv. She was 94.
Her niece Tamar Ichilov confirmed the loss of life. She left no quick survivors.
After making an eclectic mixture of “Frontline” documentaries, together with ones concerning the conflict in El Salvador, folks over 75 caught up in spiraling medical prices and the Solidarity motion in Poland, Ms. Bickel’s focus shifted primarily to prison justice instances.
“I hate injustice,” Mrs. Bickel told The New York Times in 2005. “It simply annoys me.”
One case specifically consumed her for seven years.
In 1990, she started investigating a case in Edenton, North Carolina, the place seven folks, together with Bob and Betsy Kelly, a married couple who owned the Little Rascals day care middle, had been accused of sexually abusing 29 kids.
Mr. Kelly was convicted and given 12 consecutive life sentences, however his sentence was overturned. His spouse pleaded no contest to 30 months in jail. The opposite 5 defendants, together with three of the Kelly household’s workers, additionally spent lengthy durations in jail earlier than being launched.
The case, which lacked bodily and conclusive medical proof, relied on the testimony of many kids who protection attorneys stated had been manipulated by therapists.
In three documentaries aired in 1991, 1993 and 1997, referred to as the Innocence Misplaced sequence, Ms. Bickel interviewed jurors, defendants, mother and father, legal professionals and the district lawyer within the case. She questioned the validity of the prosecution’s case and detailed examples of juror bias (one admitted to her that he had been abused as a toddler, which might probably have disqualified him). She additionally questioned the actions of panicked mother and father in an environment she in comparison with the Salem witch trials.
“Our doubts simply constructed up over time,” Rachel Dretzin, an affiliate producer on the primary two documentaries, stated in a cellphone interview. “It was by no means clear that nothing occurred, however we thought there was little doubt that there was a witch hunt.”
The primary documentary, Ms. Dretsin stated, started to show public opinion towards prosecutors and ultimately led them to drop prices towards among the defendants and provide no contest pleas to Ms. Kelly and one other defendant, Scott Privot.
“The truth that we fought for them and had been proper and managed to get seven folks out of jail was superb, intoxicating,” Ms. Bickel informed Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, in 2005. “That is once I realized what energy I had on tv .”
Howard Rosenberg, tv critic for The Los Angeles Occasions, wrote in 1997 that the Little Rascals trilogy is “one lengthy, throbbing, agonizing ache, a exceptional work that chronicles an odyssey of anguish spanning eight hellish years.”
Ms. Bickel received 5 Emmy Awards for information and documentary: one for her first look on ”Innocence Misplaced,” and others for her work on El Salvador; Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court docket affirmation hearings, which embrace questioning about sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill; failed armed theft; and the challenges wrongly convicted prisoners face after they return to society after being exonerated by DNA proof.
She additionally obtained the Alfred I. DuPont Award – Columbia College for every of the three documentaries “Innocence Misplaced,” and in 2007 received John Chancellor Awardfrom the Columbia Journalism College, for the scope of her work on “Frontline.”
Ofra Yehieli Ichilov was born on September 12, 1929 in Tel Aviv throughout what was then referred to as the British Mandate of Palestine. Her father Haim is {an electrical} engineer and her mom Deborah (Novik) Ichilov is a particular schooling trainer.
At 19, Ofra moved to France, the place she attended the College of Paris and Sciences Po. She later immigrated to New York, the place she married people singer and actor Theodore Bickel in 1955, however divorced two years later. In 1956, she received $20,000 as a contestant on the TV present “The Huge Shock.”
She labored as a researcher for Time and Newsweek magazines, then landed an entry-level job in 1961 at ABC, which concerned taking cues from performers and taping their indicators to the studio ground with masking tape. Later within the decade, she turned a producer at Nationwide Academic Tv, the predecessor of the Public Broadcasting Service. She made client sequence applications and segments for “The Great American Dream Machine,” a weekly satirical selection sequence that premiered in 1971.
After returning to Israel to provide documentaries, she returned to the US, the place she was employed in 1977 to work on “World,” the sequence set on “Frontline.”
David Fanning, who was an government producer on each sequence, recalled his first assembly along with her.
“As we had been speaking, I spotted I wanted to see a few of her motion pictures, and she or he reached right into a bag stuffed with 16mm rolls,” he stated in a cellphone interview. “By the top of the screening, we had began the dialog that we might be having for the following 25 or 30 years.”
She had “a robust curiosity,” he stated, and “needed extra time, more cash, extra analysis, extra journey, extra capturing time” for her documentaries. She continued to obtain funding for her work – a physique of labor spanning practically 30 movies – “as a result of it is nice literary journalism,” he stated. “She drove folks away.”
Three males – two held for rape and homicide and one for rape – had been launched from jail after the airing of The Case for Innocence (2000), which explored why exculpatory DNA proof was missed or ignored.
Barry Okay. Scheck, founding father of the Innocence Challenge, which works to overturn wrongful convictions and took on the case of one of many males featured within the documentary, described Ms. Bickel as “relentless” in an interview with The Occasions in 2005 .
“Ophra would not hesitate to name me at any time of the night,” Mr. Scheck stated. “She calls me seven occasions and I am on a case, but when I do not name her again instantly, she’s like, ‘What’s up?’ Do not you’re keen on me?’
Ms. Bickel’s documentary Frequent Crime (2002) introduced consideration to the case of Terence Garner, who served practically 4 years in jail after being convicted of a number of prices, together with tried first-degree homicide and armed theft in a monetary firm, in what turned out to be a case of mistaken id. Quickly after the documentary aired, a choose overturned his conviction and launched him on bail pending a brand new trial. The prosecutor subsequently declined to refile the fees.
The Plea (2004) options Charles Gampero Jr., who feels pressured by a choose to plead responsible to manslaughter and serves 9 years in jail earlier than being granted parole a number of months after the documentary airs. Additionally consists of the story of Patsy Kelly Jarrett, who pleaded not responsible to homicide and theft and was paroled after 28 years in jail.
Ms. Bickel informed The Occasions that she despatched copies of the interviews she performed with Mr. Gampero and Ms. Jarrett to their parole boards. In Ms. Jarrett’s case, Ms. Bickel additionally despatched a letter saying, “Look, I do not know if she’s going to talk for herself, and I would like to do this.”
Abe Smith, Ms Jarrett’s lawyer, informed The Occasions in 2005: “It’s kind of embarrassing. I’ve been a prison protection lawyer for 22 years and her work has in all probability led to the discharge of extra prisoners than mine.
Dad and mom who had been outraged by her Innocence Misplaced movies accused her of bias, which she denied.
“However in case you say I’ve a viewpoint? Sure,” she stated Times in 1993. “I really feel for the mother and father, however there’s a factor known as due course of, a authorized system, a factor known as justice.”
