Railroading the Innocent
Only a year after the infamous 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Building, the bomb explosion in 1996 at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park understandably created great fear in the general public of continued domestic terrorism, along with a frantic desire to capture the person or persons who could commit such an evil act.
Unfortunately, such zeal can lead to injustice, as director Clint Eastwood’s movie Richard Jewell expertly dramatizes.
Richard Jewell was the security guard falsely accused of placing a bomb in a backpack at Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics. (The 1996 Olympics was the 100th anniversary of the 1896 restoration of the ancient Greek games.) Jewell is now credited with saving hundreds of lives when he discovered the backpack with the bomb. But soon after the explosion, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), intent on capturing the person who planted the bomb, targeted Jewell himself as the suspect, or as they put it, “a person of interest.”
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