Richard Linklater, Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey Organize "Bernie" Fundraiser

[TexasTowelie]

Photo by Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson
Bernie Tiede, who had been imprisoned since 1997 for the murder of Marjorie Nugent, was released from the Panola County Detention Center in May 2014. He was released on the condition that he live with filmmaker Richard Linklater, director of the movie "Bernie."

Four years after director Richard Linklater made a dark comedy about Bernie Tiede, a genial East Texas man who killed an 81-year-old woman, the filmmaker and the film's star-studded cast are planning a fundraiser to help pay for Tiede's legal costs ahead of a new sentencing trial.

Linklater has sent out an invitation for an "uber-private" and "exclusive" fundraiser on Jan. 8 to raise between $150,000 and $200,000 for Tiede's defense fund. Tiede was convicted in 1999 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Linklater’s film, "Bernie," featured Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, and was based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article. It portrayed Tiede as a loveable, popular funeral director and church singer caught in an abusive relationship with a miserly wealthy widow.

Following the film's release, Tiede's attorney presented evidence that he was sexually abused as a child, a factor they argued might have persuaded the original jury to give him a lighter sentence. Tiede's life sentence for killing Marjorie Nugent was dismissed in 2014. With the agreement of the original prosecutor in the case, visiting state District Judge Diane DeVasto allowed Tiede to be released on bond while his sentencing is revisited. Nugent’s family filed court papers objecting to his release. A condition of Tiede's release was that he live in Austin with Linklater.

"The trial date is now set for early April 2016, and the reality has set in that the only way to compete with the power of the state... is to put together a top criminal defense team," Linklater writes in an invitation from "the BERNIE film gang (me, Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and Bernie Tiede)" obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Read more: http://www.texastribune.org/2015/12/21/linklater-black-mcconaughey-organizing-fundraiser-/