In 1984 Darryl Hunt was tried the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a married white woman who had worked as a copywriter in the town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A twenty-one-year-old black man with no family, Hunt was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment � a verdict, which for the all white jury and many others, provided a reassuring conclusion to a horrible episode. For Hunt and his legal team it was the beginning of twenty-year fight for exoneration and freedom.

Winner in the best documentary category at this year�s Raindance Film Festival, The Trails of Darryl Hunt is a powerful and gripping expos� of a legal system that enabled racial prejudice to masquerade as justice for almost twenty years. Directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg have assembled interviews with Hunt�s legal team and supporters, others involved in the case and contemporaneous news footage, effectively conveying the complexities of the case and of the legal wrangles that punctuated it. In doing so they reveal the institutional racism of a system that allowed the wilful misinterpretation of evidence and refused to admit that a mistake had been made � reluctance that has since raised suspicions over the delayed revelation of other viable suspects and of vital forensic evidence.

For Hunt�s supporters the most incriminating factor was always the colour of his skin. Indeed, at one point his treatment in the law courts is likened to a lynching. That the US legal system has a history of convicting and executing young, poor black men for crimes they didn�t commit will be news to few. But the determination of the judiciary, sections of the media and victim�s family to stand by the massively flawed case while circumstantial facts, DNA evidence, and eventually, the real murderer�s confession, pointed to Hunt�s innocence, is both incongruous and infuriating. One of Hunt�s friends comments that the story would be a comedy if it weren�t that a man�s freedom was on the line, and watching witnesses for the prosecution that include a mentally ill heroin addict and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, you begin to see his point.

Despite his terrible experience, Hunt struggled throughout his incarceration to remain hopeful for the future � even marrying while in prison. His strength of character in the face of incomprehensible and crushing defeats and refusal to plead guilty in order to receive a lighter sentence, is inspirational.