Shortchanged: Unjailing the Mentally Ill

Shortchanged: Unjailing the Mentally Ill is an hour- long documentary produced by Edith Brady-Lunny and David Proeber.  An audience of more than 400 attended the film’s premier in October 2014 at the Normal Theatre.

McLean County, like most other communities across the nation, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of mentally ill people cycling through its jail.  But McLean County made a decision as a community to take on the challenges of mental health treatment by initiating a long- term effort to improve services and reduce the mentally ill population behind bars.

Shortchanged: Unjailing the Mentally Ill tells the story of those who need help the most and how McLean County responded to their plight.

Featured interviews

Dateline NBC

On June 17, Dateline NBC aired its investigative episode on the Pam Zimmerman murder case. Brady-Lunny was featured on the broadcast in her role as the crime reporter for The Pantagraph who covered the case for more than four years.  She was interviewed by Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison.  They talked about the police investigation and the acquittal of the victim’s ex-husband Kirk Zimmerman of murder.

www.nbc.com/dateline/video/before-midnight/3970922

Other broadcasts

Producers working with Investigation Discovery and other networks have interviewed Brady-Lunny for documentaries on high profile cases she has covered over the past decade.

  • “Heroes Gone Wrong” was produced for E! Entertainment and profiled the case of Jeff Pelo, a police officer sentenced to 375 years in prison for rape.
  • The ID Discovery series “Deadly Women” included an interview with Brady-Lunny for its documentary on Misook Nowlin, a woman who strangled her mother-in-law.