Brother's Keeper Movie Analysis

In their documentary Brother’s Keeper (1992), filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky portray the life of Delbert Ward and his take in a court case revolving around his brother’s death. On one side, there are the New York State Police and a handful of locals who believe the Delbert is the one who murdered his brother while they were sleeping. However, the Ward family itself and most of the local town people who through the trial fight alongside the Wards to prove Delbert is innocent. Throughout the film we can see the filmmakers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, argue their take on the case by the way they portray Delbert, as being a simple county boy who could never hurt a fly. From taking into account of all the evident from the …show more content…
From Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky film we know that Delbert’s IQ is only 69. Delbert has had little to no education and it would be the lack of education he received that would force him to live a very simple life. It would be these factors that would have lead state police to take advantage of Delbert’s condition and allow them to modulate Delbert into agreeing with them. We can confirm this because of the line stated by Investigator Robert Killough, “a lot of words were put into his mouth” (Brother’s Keeper, 57:23). We also have people from around the community, who before wouldn’t event sit next to Delbert, now defending him from the state police. The Ward’s neighbor Harry Thurston defends Delbert by telling filmmakers, “people shouldn’t be treated that way just cause they’re stupid” (Brother’s Keeper, …show more content…
The case medical examiner states in court that he believes that Williams death was a murder was because of the large amount of blood spots and petchiae found in Williams windpipe. However, if we look at he medical expert, he looks for four signs when it comes to death of the asphyxia type. Four signs that were not preset in Williams body after his death. When asked if with any medical degree that he couldn’t clearly confirm the cause of death was murder, the medical examiner answered, “that is correct” (Brother’s Keeper, 18:47). Now knowing that the medical examiner had no clear evidence that Williams death was murder, we can look back on his changing of William’s death certificate with even more questions. On June 7th, Williams death certificate was changed to a from the cause of death being natural to homicide. If the medical examiner had no proof to cause of death being a murder then why would he have changed the certificate to a homicide, because this was also the day that Delbert had signed the confession and the change in the certificate was the medical examiner learning that Delbert have confessed to the