Documentary Days - The Jaundiced Eye

BY PAUL MALCOLM

Directed by journalist Nonny de la Peņa, The Jaundiced Eye was produced by Dan Gifford, whose first documentary, with wife Amy Sommer Gifford, was the controversial, Academy Award-nominated Waco: The Rules of Engagement. Like Waco, de la Peņa's documentary turns on chilling accusations and a miscarriage of justice, and proves itself no less compelling or alarming, though on a far more personal scale. Soon after Stephen Matthews accepted his homosexuality and separated from his girlfriend, he and his father, Melvin, found themselves accused of molesting Stephen's young son. Included in the charges brought by the boy, Stephen's ex and her new husband were horrific acts of sexual torture. As several of the film's subjects assert, Matthews' homosexuality may have been a factor behind an aggressive prosecution despite faulty scientific testing, a lack of physical evidence, and tainted testimony. Taking up the pair's decade-long struggle to clear their names after their release from prison, but while they're still awaiting a retrial, the film unfolds with a readily apparent urgency as it questions the seemingly central tenet of child-welfare law that deems sending a few innocent people to jail an acceptable risk when it comes to protecting children.