Posted 5:46 pm Saturday, September 26, 2009
Women Behind Bars Documentary Films Segment In Jacksonville
By KELLY GOOCH
Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE -- Television viewers from around the country will get to experience the sights in Jacksonville as they watch "Women Behind Bars" this coming season.
Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE -- Television viewers from around the country will get to experience the sights in Jacksonville as they watch "Women Behind Bars" this coming season.
The documentary program, which airs on a national cable network, profiles women from different backgrounds who are now in prison.
For its third season, the show is producing a segment on Jacksonville resident Patricia Sexton. Ms. Sexton, 34, is serving a life sentence at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville for her role in the February 1998 murder of her estranged husband Bobby Sexton.
Ashley Crary, co-executive producer of "Women Behind Bars," said filming started Monday in and around Jacksonville and will end today as crews go to Tyler and Rusk.
Based on information from show officials, they are potentially filming places like downtown Jacksonville, Love's Lookout and Lake Jacksonville, said Peggy Renfro, president of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.
"We tell her life story, so we will have footage from the town where she grew up (Jacksonville) and pertinent locations (related) to the crime," Ms. Crary said.
Show officials also scheduled interviews for Ms. Sexton's episode.
Among the interviewees are members of Ms. Sexton's family, a defense attorney, the lead investigator in the case, a reporter and someone from Bobby Sexton's family.
" We're giving these people their opportunity to tell us what happened," Ms. Crary said. "It's not our job to make assumptions."
Ms. Crary said the victim's family doesn't always want to participate in the show, but the show does initially try to contact them to see if they're willing.
The show's ultimate goal is to interview someone from the prosecution, defense, law enforcement agency that handled the case, inmate's family and victim's family, she said.
"So many of these stories are told through the media, through attorneys (or) through police," Ms. Crary said. "This is the inmate's full story, not just what happened on the date of the crime, but what happened in their childhood and in their teens."
The fascinating thing, she said, is the commonalities that some of the inmates have, such as coming from a broken home, abuse in the home, dropping out of high school and getting married or pregnant at a young age.
Ms. Crary noted that there are also cases where the inmate had a thorough education and plenty of opportunities.
"It's never our goal to use these situations as excuses, but (rather) to purely show the mitigating factors that lead these people to make these decisions," she said.
BACKGROUND
Ms. Sexton and her grandmother, Dorothy Bingham, were arrested in September 1998 on charges of capital murder after Ms. Sexton's mother told investigators she heard them discussing the murder on several occasions.
Her boyfriend Michael Fielding, of Jacksonville, was arrested in March 1998 and confessed to shooting Sexton.
According to court documents, Ms. Sexton was convicted of the lesser offense of first-degree murder in 1999.
Ms. Sexton appealed her 1999 conviction, but a Tyler appellate court upheld her murder conviction in November 2000.
The new season of "Women Behind Bars" starts in March 2010.
Ms. Crary said there will be 12 episodes but she did not know when the episode with Ms. Sexton will air.
