Review: A&E tells real story of a 'killer' salvaging some pride in retrial

There's little that's exceptional about the criminal proceedings under investigation in the A&E network documentary "Facing Life: The Retrial of Evan Zimmerman" (airing at 9 p.m. tonight), about a Wisconsin man accused of murdering a former girlfriend.

It is precisely the everyday sense, the air of ordinariness that attaches to this case — the prosecutors' case, that is — that delivers the film's chilling force. It's one that emerges from dry courtroom exchanges and witness examinations.

But no similar sense of economy kept the film free of a mawkish musical accompaniment that oozes into the narrative at regular intervals.

How it begins

The subject of this story seems mawkish enough as revealed here. In his mid-50s, divorced, with a long history of alcoholism, former police officer Zimmerman became the only suspect when a woman he had been dating was found strangled on a street in Eau Claire the night of her wedding to another man in February 2000.

The new husband had an unassailable alibi. That left Zimmerman, reputed to have been deeply upset over the end of his relationship, as the target of investigation.

He appeared unlikely to be a strangler, so physically unfit at this stage of life that he could barely lift even a moderately heavy object without breathlessness. Still, he was convicted of strangling the victim, a former member of the military police, and sentenced to life in prison.

New trial, new choice

He served three years of that sentence before an appellate court ordered a new trial.

Here the film finds him: a sodden-looking wreck of a man, devoid of confidence, weighed down by uncertainty and confusion, a man who has made a shambles of most of his life.

But he has a choice. The prosecutors are not eager to risk a second trial. Offered a deal that assures he will get no jail time if he pleads guilty to a lesser charge, the accused refuses.

Clearly, he has found in himself a core of pride before now unavailable to him — a power that directs him to refuse, stubbornly, though his new attorneys, associated with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, advise him it would be best to take the deal.

The certainty of his innocence will not allow him to do so, though innocent citizens often take such deals rather than face the risk of lifetimes spent in prison.

Despite the prosecutors' apprehensions, a conviction at a second trial is much likelier than an acquittal, legal statistics indicate.

Defense grows stronger

There will be more deals offered to Zimmerman as the state's case appears shakier.

The defense lawyers are no legal giants but good enough to unnerve the prosecution. That apparently required only a serious effort by the defense lawyers to challenge the state's case.

Things are going unexpectedly well for the defense, though the attorneys keep reminding themselves and their client that no one can predict what a jury will do.

Indeed, the proceedings in the end take an unexpected, faintly melodramatic turn.

Prosecutors' case unravels

By that time, though, we have absorbed a much greater drama. As revelation after revelation about the manufactured nature of the case emerges as their own witnesses give damning testimony, the prosecutors move unsuccessfully to persuade Zimmerman to accept another, better deal — he can have his freedom for a plea of reckless homicide.

Had things gone on a bit longer, one suspects, he would have been offered a plea to littering.

If this film had accomplished nothing else, the displays by prosecutors desperate to preserve some shard of a conviction, all undertaken as routine business, would be by themselves worth watching.