Film screening of the documentary, Texas Justice: Brandon Woodruff, and Q&A with the film’s co-producers, Scott Poggensee and Richard Ray. Event is free, but you must reserve tickets at the event site, www.tinyurl.com/texasjusticehouston

Texas Justice: Brandon Woodruff takes a hard-hitting look at the Capital Murder case of Brandon Woodruff.

In October of 2005, Small-Town East Texas prosecutors charged Brandon Dale Woodruff — then a 19-year-old freshman at Abilene Christian University — with murdering his parents Dennis and Norma. Unable to make the $1 million bail, he sat in Hunt County Jail for more than three years awaiting trial. When the case finally was presented to a Greenville jury in northeast Texas, the prosecution essentially posited during the 12-day trial that Brandon Woodruff was living a double life. The prosecution surmised that if Brandon could “lie about something small like his sexuality, then he can lie about something big” [like killing his parents]. Faced with flunking out and returning home to a hick town, the prosecutors argued that Brandon killed his disappointed parents for their life insurance so he would be free to pursue his gay life with carefree abandon.

On March 20, 2009, the jury convicted Brandon Woodruff after only five hours of deliberation. The state earlier had waived the death penalty, and he automatically was sentenced to a life term behind bars, without the possibility of parole. This documentary exposes the gay bias that went on from the investigation all the way through the trial. No one should ever go to prison for the rest of their lives because they were going through a very normal “coming out” process. This film examines why that happened in this case.