The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna, uncovers evidence of scandalous injustice and why the cause of this high-profile federal prosecutor may have been concealed.

   In this film, Luna’s colleagues – a fellow prosecutor, a federal judge, a former police commissioner and others - address the camera for the first time. The events of Luna’s baffling “midnight ride” and the trial that preceded it are dramatically recreated, demonstrating damning evidence of malfeasance by government officials and law enforcement.

Did Jonathan Luna take his own life? And if he did, why?

     

     This was the question Bill Keisling, (author of The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna) and I discussed endlessly over the several years we worked on this documentary. We had a hard time believing that this rising star in the justice department, a man of extraordinary achievements who had everything to live for, died by his own hand, even as we allowed that it was possible. But that was the position of the “anonymous law enforcement officials,” who were responsible for investigating his death.

    But if Luna had killed himself, why had the authorities kept his autopsy a secret for twenty years? And why did so many who had worked on the investigation refuse to talk about it?   

    That was the starting point for our research.

   The problem was, like a lot of stories that play out over a considerable time period, Luna’s story had been reduced to anecdotes. The picture of Jonathan Luna, both his life and his death,  had been fragmented. And those fragments paint a dark and negative picture of Jonathan Luna.

    I am not an investigative reporter.  But after numerous interviews and a deeper look into Luna’s entire life, I could see that, if the story was assembled into a clear narrative, including his professional situation and the trial he was working on in the days before his death, viewers would have enough information to make their own, more balanced decision on the issue of suicide. And on how the authorities had handled Luna’s life story. But just as important, to decide whether the Maryland justice department and law enforcement had done a thorough and unbiased investigation, that respected Luna’s life. And if not, why not?

     With my creative team, I made the decision to take a multi-media approach to a complicated story, one that blended documentary footage, animation, created graphics, archival still images, and filmed reenactments. To remain accurate, my reenactments adhere strictly to courtroom testimony, from transcripts.

     Over three years, we boiled down all the elements: court documents, newspaper articles, brand-new interviews, plus broadcast footage from the time. We enlisted local actors to recreate the trial and investigation into Luna's last days and made a graphic reenactment of his bizarre "midnight ride."

     Throughout, we held to one principle: that everything included in the movie would be demonstrably true. Yes, perhaps an interviewee led us astray or obfuscated details. But we did not knowingly include anything  inaccurate. As a result, I believe this film accurately presents a terrifying series of events. It informs viewers and leaves them with enough information to make up their own minds about this rising star in the justice department and his fate.

     Like most of the people who appear on screen, I hope the movie will help to bring about a thorough investigation of Jonathan Luna’s “midnight ride” and the events that ended in his stabbing death 100 miles from his courtroom. His restless ghost has haunted us for too long.

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