Logline: At the mercy of an accelerating dementia, Jonas Flemming, aka, America’s Coroner–the state’s lead witness in yet another high profile murder trial–melts down on the witness stand, setting a psychopath free.

When the L.A. detective on the case reopens his investigation, Jonas becomes the prime suspect.

Anyone watching a celebrity trial on television loves when America’s Coroner, Dr. Jonas Flemming, takes the stand. His measured, scholarly, and usually irreproachable testimony has doomed many killers to a life behind bars.

Dr. Flemming’s current appearance as an expert witness highlights a uniquely L.A. murder trial. Famed porn queen, Tiara Weston, is brutally assaulted and stabbed multiple times in the dressing room of a Hollywood gentlemen’s club. L.A. detective, Gifford Branthoover, arrests her boyfriend, Dorian Hunter; the evidence against him is devastating.

As the defense begins its cross-examination, the jury, courtroom spectators, and a huge television audience watch Jonas slowly sink into some kind of recurring stupor. He appears intermittently lucid, confused, mesmerized, then perfectly normal again—a frightening cycle of distress leading to only one conclusion: Something is terribly wrong.

Jason Rouse, a young, brash defense attorney exploits the Doctor’s increasingly worrisome performance—punctuated by Detective Branthoover’s receipt of a bizarre text: Fleming was present at the crime scene on the morning of the murder.

That revelation, along with Hunter’s subsequent acquittal, thrusts Jonas into a painful journey of introspection and suspicion. He is losing touch with his soul and turns to the only one who can save him. His estranged girlfriend, Coco—who previously found proof of Jonas’ infidelity—reveals he has been blacking out from medication, sometimes sleepwalking his way through the unpredictably dangerous streets of Hollywood. Their mutual fear of Jonas’ worsening condition and his unknown role in the murder reignites their bond.

After the trial, Hunter hires an agent and battles the incessant demons of American celebrity. Via social media he and Jonas taunt each other; their conflict goes viral.

Jonas can no longer deny he is in the throes of some kind of accelerating dementia. Branthoover’s revived investigation bears fruit when he discovers surveillance footage showing the tormented Doctor at the gentlemen’s club, in disguise, on more than one occasion.

The breakdown finally consumes Flemming.

Trying to salvage his once brilliant mind, the desperate Doctor injects himself with DNA modified by the Warrior Gene, which he discovered.

He confronts his own guilt of experimenting on the murderers he helped to imprison—and the fact he may now be one of them.

Specifications

• Project Type: Screenplay
• Number of Pages: 96
• Country of Origin: United States
• Language: English
• Digital Cinema Package: Unavailable

Awards

• Mad Wife 100 Scripts
  July 22, 2022
  Semi-Finalist
• Crime/Mystery Film & Screenplay Festival
  August 25, 2023
  Award Winner
• Los Angeles Crime and Horror Film Festival Loa Angeles
  October 25, 2023
  Semi-Finalist