This is a made-for-tv movie I'd never heard of, on Screenpix. It's got
the MGM Television logo but it was a Toronto-based production with an
all-Canadian cast of people who looked kind of familiar from long ago
whose names I never learned. The two stars were the token Americans.

I have no clue where this aired. Maybe Showtime?

In shrunked 4:3. I tried to zoom in but it made it worse.

Starring David Strathairn as Jackson Kinley, a writer of "true crime",
someone who would be a podcaster today. He wrote books about notorious
murderers, I suppose serial killers, and typically attended executions.

He's based in New York.

At first I thought they were doing Truman Capote, but they weren't.

His childhood friend Ray, from a small community in Georgia, died; he
was looking into the execution of Lloyd Overton on behalf of his
daughter Dora Overton (Mary McDonnell); Ray and Dora were lovers.

Lloyd was executed for the killing of a teenage girl whose body was
never found. The crime was four decades before the present story.

Dora guilts Kinley into finishing the job.

But Kinley is also haunted by a recurring nightmare, a long suppressed
memory from childhood just out of reach. He was raised by his
grandmother after his mother died in an unexplained car wreck.

The local prosecutor is the son of Overton's prosecutor. At first,
Kinley thinks the prosecution was reasonable but then Kinley is told
by several people still around -- including the then rookie cop who
helped with the investigation -- how little was investigated. Evidence
went missing. A local reporter had suspicions that the police mishandled
everything.

There was a coverup but it came from an unusual place; I'm not sure we
got a satisfactory explanation for why some were involved.

I liked it for the quiet manner in which the story unfolded and
Strathairn has always been a favorite character actor. Sometimes he
makes repetitive gestures and has an unusual way of holding his hands
when acting in love scenes, which I recall from The Days and Nights of
Molly Dodd; he played Moss.

I have a couple of questions about certain plot points that I don't
think were resolved adequately. Maybe I'll track down the book by Thomas
H. Cook.