According to author, investigator and advocate
Katie Carter, Oppenheim attended a training session for mitigation filmmakers who make short documentaries aiming to humanize criminal defendants in an effort to win them a lighter sentence in the eyes of judges and prosecutors.
In an
Instagram post which went up on Sunday, Carter accused Oppenheim of misrepresenting his intentions when he attended the training session and of stealing proprietary footage which he then used for a New York Times 2017 Opinion documentary called “No Jail Time: The Movie,” which he sold to the publication.
“None of us knew any of this,” says Carter. “He lied entirely about his project and what he was up to and he made money by stealing stories from poor people facing crimes and surviving poverty.” Carter goes on to say that her efforts to have Oppenheim take down his short film and return the footage were ignored.
When reached by phone Carter declined to comment.
A spokesperson for The New York Times commented: “The third party footage in ‘No Jail Time’ was not private; Mr. Oppenheim was reporting on and analyzing videos that were submitted to judges by criminal defendants as part of sentencing proceedings. His use of clips of those videos to discuss this phenomenon is fair use.”
A spokesperson for Oppenheim has not commented.