One Cut

Gr 8 Up—On May 22, 1995, teenagers Jimmy Farris and Mike McLoren were hanging out in McLoren's backyard when four other boys from their high school—Jason and Micah Holland, Tony Miliotti, and Brandon Hein—hopped the fence onto the McLoren property. Twenty minutes later, Farris lay dead in the McLoren kitchen from multiple stab wounds, while McLoren was taken to the hospital for cuts. The once quiet community of Agoura Hills, CA, was shattered by Farris's death, and the ensuing media circus did nothing to help the images of the five boys arrested (another, Chris Velardo, who wasn't present at the scene of the crime was also locked up). The prosecution built its case on flimsy eyewitness accounts and blatant hearsay, and at the end of the lengthy trial, four out of the five boys were convicted of first-degree murder. Porinchak carefully exposes some of the failings of the trial, including the biased presiding judge and the selection of jurors who personally knew the victims' families. The narrative keeps the details of what really happened vague, adding to the mystery of the case. Ultimately, this is a story of how four lives were forever disrupted because of prejudice and a flawed judicial system.