Voices in a Jailhouse teams up with Grateful Film Fund

We're in the home stretch! To help raise the last round of funding necessary to complete this epic film, the filmmakers have teamed up with The Grateful Film Fund, an LA based nonprofit that supports "thought-provoking and aesthetically superior media projects that inspire positive action and change by presenting real-world solutions to complex issues and ideas." You can make a fully tax-deductible donation HERE to help finish this important project. All donors will be listed in the closing credits of the film, with major donors lists as executive producers. Go HERE to look at the pitch deck for the film.

A seven-episode documentary series over ten years in the making, Voices in a Jailhouse: The Larry Yarbrough Story is an in-depth study of the incarceration epidemic in Oklahoma and America, as told through the heart-wrenching story of Larry Yarbrough.

Yarbrough was a third generation farmer, family man, and well-respected spokesperson in his community. He was also the only black businessman in racist Kingfisher, Oklahoma, owner of a popular café that attracted people of all races and all walks of life from miles around to commune and eat the best barbecue in the county. This is his story, and the story of private prisons in the state that would become the incarceration capitol of the entire world.

On the morning of November 10, 1994, everything changed. After years of harassment by local law enforcement, Sheriff Danny Graham and multiple officers kicked in the doors to Larry’s home and held shotguns to Larry and his 16 year-old son’s heads. Ten officers and two

drug dogs searched for hours and found nothing,, until Danny Graham left the scene and returned with a brown paper bag. Five minutes after Graham reentered the house, 3 joints and an ounce of cocaine were found in a Barbie thermos under a love seat in the front room.

After a weeks-long trial marred by charges of blatant racism, police misconduct, jury tampering, and good ol’ boy nepotism, Larry Yarbrough was found guilty in 1997 and, under Oklahoma’s just passed three-strikes law, sentenced to life without parole. Thus began a

life or death struggle for freedom, with Larry being approved for commutation multiple times, only to be denied by Oklahoma Governors Frank Keating and Mary Fallin.

Wheelchair bound and his health rapidly deteriorating, Larry Yarbrough finally had his sentence commuted in 2016, only to have the Parole Board deny him his freedom one more time, leaving him and his family with nothing left to do but hope he would survive another year until he was eligible to go in front of the parole board one last time. The twists and turns will keep you on the edge of your seat, with an ending that Senator Connie Johnson, who has championed for criminal justice reform for decades, describes as "bittersweet."

Voices in a Jailhouse: The Larry Yarbrough Story closes with an in-depth discussion of Oklahoma’s current justice system and what we as a society are doing to transform a broken justice system. We focus on two key questions: Are we moving in the right direction? And what can we do to make our state (and nation) more fair and compassionate when it comes to incarceration?

You can make a fully tax-deductible donation HERE to help finish this important project. All donors will be listed in the closing credits of the film, with major donors lists as executive producers. Go HERE to look at the pitch deck for the film, or contact the filmmaker directly at markrfaulk@gmail.com