At the end of , Brian was in a serious relationship that produced a son, O'rion King Banks, in late January In real life, the woman who accused Banks of raping her, Wanetta Gibson, attempted to reach out to him in by sending him a friend request on Facebook.
He didn't accept her request. Instead, he replied with a direct message, "Why would you friend request me? Gibson said she wanted to let "bygones be bygones," writing that she was immature back then. She suggested they hang out. You look real good. I would love to hook up. According to the true story, he hired a friend's father who was a private investigator, hoping he could get a confession recorded.
Brian set up a lunch-hour meeting with Wanetta at the investigator's office, lying to her and telling her it was where he worked. The investigator monitored the conversation from another room via a hidden camera and microphone. Brian explained to Wanetta the grave effect her accusation had on his life.
She agreed to come back another day to talk to the investigator. When the investigator asked Wanetta if Brian had raped her, she responded, "Of course not.
If he raped me, I wouldn't be here right now. We were just young and having a good time, being curious, then all these other people got involved and blew it out of proportion. The Innocence Project presented Brian Banks' case to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, who thoroughly reviewed it and agreed that he had been wrongfully convicted.
In , Judge Mark C. Kim, the same Los Angeles Superior Court judge who had sentenced him to six years in prison, took less than a minute to dismiss his conviction and clear his name. The judge offered Brian no apology for a justice system that had failed him. Greg Kinnear right plays Brooks in the movie.
Banks said that the accusation of bribery makes no sense because he only had a dollar and some change left to his name. Carroll phoned Banks and invited him to Seattle for a tryout the day after all the charges against him were dropped. However, Banks had been away from the game for 10 years.
Too much time had passed. He tried out and got invited back to camp, but they didn't sign him. No one put him on their roster. Coach Carroll noted that it was evident he had missed the physical development a player gets as a college athlete.
Banks played linebacker and special teams for the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League until the league folded in after Banks had played just two regular season games. The Falcons asked him to tryout again in , and he played in all four preseason games, fulfilling his dream of playing in the NFL. He was let go when the roster was finalized.
At just 28 years old, his hope of becoming an NFL star was over. I set out to accomplish one thing: become an NFL athlete. But in , his dreams all came crashing down. Banks was wrongfully accused of rape when he was 17 years old. Although he was eventually exonerated, Banks never got to fulfill his football dreams.
A post shared by b r i a n b a n k s brianbanksfree on May 11, at pm PDT. In , Banks was a prominent name in the high school football landscape. He was a standout linebacker at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, and he already he high hopes for his future in football. He was a high-rated prospect who garnered plenty of attention from the best college programs in his home state of California.
After reviewing his options, Banks committed to USC in when he was just a junior in high school. His dreams of playing in college and the NFL were starting to come to fruition.
With the help of the California Innocence Project, Banks was exonerated in The specific facts of the case are what made Hodge, Shadyac and fellow star Greg Kinnear , who plays California Innocence Project director and co-founder Justin Brooks, comfortable with their roles in the film and what they hope viewers will keep in mind.
I do think that this MeToo moment has made some real change and is hopefully making some real change. No sympathy for real rapists. But the difference here is Brian is not a rapist. All three men also feel like what Banks was charged with is less important than what he experienced in the California criminal justice system. Once he was placed inside that system, that was really the story that we were focused on telling — that conveyor belt that just only has forward momentum.
The same is true for Brian. And I do think that this is a story that fits in appropriately now, we can just open the conversation up to another thread in the fabric here.
Indeed, all three men hope viewers will take away a sense of the need for criminal justice reform and possibly seek ways to take action. That means 97 percent of people, especially people without means and people of color, will be threatened with longer sentences and those threats lead them to take pleas for guilty convictions when they may not be guilty.
It happened to Brian and it is happening far too often. The system is overrun. I hope we can do something about it. Whatever we can do. Support an innocence project, which is in every state, or get behind some movement to change the criminal justice system.
And it was this desire to spark a discussion about changing the system that made Hodge want to take on the role of Banks.
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