Documentary digs for heart of criminal matter

Here's the great thing about a good documentary: Even if you already know how the story ends, the documentary makes you look at it in a completely different way.

For Southern Nevadans, "Sin City Law," an eight-part documentary about Clark County's criminal justice system, offers the chance to examine through fresh camera lenses four high-profile cases locals already have followed through daily news reports.

The eight-hour series, produced by Oscar- and Peabody-winning filmmakers Denis Poncet and Jean-Xavier De Lestrade, premieres at 9 p.m. today on The Sundance Channel and runs in two-hour blocks each Monday through Oct. 1.

Among the cases the filmmakers examine is that of Beau and Monique Maestas, the brother and sister who killed Kristyanna Cowan, 3, and left Brittney Bergeron, now 15, a paraplegic in a January 2003 knife attack over what Beau Maestas said was a dispute over a drug deal.

Other cases include: Pascual Lozano, arrested in connection with the killing of a North Las Vegas 9-year-old as she tried to protect an infant from gang gunfire in front of her apartment; De Rac Hanley, 72, who was arrested in connection with the stabbing death of a neighbor at a Las Vegas senior housing complex; and Jesus Vega, arrested in connection with the shooting of a man outside a Las Vegas nightclub.

Director Rémy Burkel said during a recent phone interview that the four cases are among hundreds that go through the criminal court system here every day. He makes no claim that they're typical, but only that each offered the opportunity to explore Clark County's criminal justice system in a compelling way.

Burkel said he and his crew enjoyed "full access to lawyers, to clients, to public defenders, to the DA and the court system" during about six months of filming last year. "Sin City Law" is a documentary in the purest sense: There are no dramatic re-creations, no formal interviews and no script.

Rather, Burkel and his crew simply followed the attorneys, judges and others as they worked, talked to their clients and dealt with the literal life-or-death consequences of their jobs.

Several cities -- Detroit and Miami among them -- were considered for the project. But, Burkel said, Southern Nevada's dramatic growth, the system's struggle to keep up with the area's burgeoning population, and Las Vegas' inherent contrasts -- "You can film homeless people and right behind them see the shining lights of the Strip," Burkel said -- made Las Vegas the ultimate choice.

In each of the four cases, "we felt there was something compelling in the story, be it the crime itself, the background of the people that were accused in the crime (or) just something in the story that could convey interest," Burkel said.

"I hope that what comes out when people see the series is, there's no judgment, not of the DAs, the public defenders, the judges and even the defendants."

In fact, Burkel admires the people he came to know during the project. All, on all sides of the cases, are "doing a hell of a job," he said. "They're trying to do their best. Sometimes they're trying to do their best not having a lot to work with."

Burkel himself enjoyed the luxury of returning home to France occasionally during filming. "I'd go back to my family," he said. "I'd forget what I'd seen and come back with that fresh perspective a couple of weeks later. I needed that break."

That wasn't the case for the people he was filming.

"It's amazing to see them coming back every day, be it public defenders or the DAs," he said. "I don't know how they do it. It's pretty grim stuff happening."

Burkel also tried to look in each case for moments of redeeming humanity. There was, for example, "a wonderful moment" in the Lozano case when the families of the dead child and the convicted shooter hugged in the hallway after the trial.

The girl's mother, Burkel added, said that she opposed a death sentence for the man who killed her daughter because it would only cause another family to suffer as hers is.

"There is that human sense to it," Burkel said. "To me, there is still this sense that these are still human beings. Whatever they've done, at the end of the day they're still human beings and there's still hope. And you've got to look for it. Maybe that's how I approach it."

Burkel admitted that he's "very curious" about how Americans will react to the series.

"And, hopefully, again, it's not a judgmental piece, saying, 'Oh God, this is only in America' " he said. "It's not true. It's just one Polaroid moment, one instantaneous moment in time in this city."