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Attorney Abra Rice’s life story is the subject of an upcoming Hollywood film.

Like most of New Haven's public defenders, Abra Rice can be seen scurrying between cases and courtrooms trying to get clients out of jail — or at least get them a reduced sentence — at the Elm Street courthouse.

But unlike her colleagues, Rice's life story will be depicted by Minnie Driver in an upcoming Hollywood film that tells the story of the fight Rice and her best friend (played by Hillary Swank) waged to free her friend's brother from prison.

It all started when Rice and Betty Anne Waters met on the first day of law school at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. The first Friday after class the two went for a drink and a chat.

That conversation is now memorialized in the movie, The Betty Anne Waters Story, due out this winter.

"I want to help innocent people and be a public defender," Rice said over drinks. Waters wasn't planning on telling anyone what motivated her, but she spilled it all to Rice: Her brother, Kenny, was convicted of a brutal Ayers, Mass. murder. He was accused of stabbing a woman more than 30 times in her bed and stealing her jewelry and money in 1980.

"I never told anybody else about him in law school," Waters says in a recent phone conversation. "As soon as you tell people you have a brother in jail for murder they think he's guilty. Somehow I knew Abra would understand, and she did."

Kenny had an alibi — he was at work — but three women, including an ex-girlfriend, testified against him. One said he drunkenly confessed to the murder; another said he tried to sell her the dead woman's jewelry.

A police fingerprint analysis cleared Kenny, but that information was never shared with prosecutors or defense attorneys. A jury sentenced him to life in prison.

Betty Anne was a high school drop-out working at a pub. When Kenny went to prison, she got her GED, put herself through college and entered law school motivated by her faith in him. She wanted to get him out of prison.

When, in law school, Betty Anne wrote a paper on DNA evidence, she discovered the Innocence Project — famed for using DNA evidence to free wrongfully convicted murderers and rapists.

Working together, Rice and Waters found a box of evidence, more than a decade old, in the courthouse basement that contained the murdered woman's bloody nightgown and the knife. With help from the Innocence Project they found a DNA sample that belonged to someone other than the victim or Kenny. Rice and Waters then went on a cross-country investigation to track down and interview witnesses, who recanted their story.

Meanwhile, Kenny was suffering from anxiety and panic attacks in prison; he'd attempted suicide several times. Every time Rice and his sister made a new discovery, Kenny got his hopes up only to have them dashed.

With new evidence and new testimony, Rice and Waters proved that Kenny was innocent. In March, 2001, the state dropped all charges against him. He was released after 18 years in prison.

Six months later, he fell and hit his head and died. "It was such a shock," says Rice. "Betty's still in shock. Betty and I were always afraid something would happen to him."

Betty Anne Waters sued the town of Ayer, Mass. for wrongful imprisonment and withholding evidence. Just last month the town settled the case for $3.4 million.

Rice is a fan of crime and punishment films, so it's especially poignant to find herself a subject of one. Her favorites are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shawshank Redemption. She also loves Scarface. "If you put that in the paper, I don't know if I'll ever live that down with my clients," she laughs.

Rice moved to New Haven three years ago for the job, and works on a variety of cases from robberies to domestic violence to drugs.

Kenny's situation, Rice says, taught her to not make assumptions about people.

"Anybody that gets her as a lawyer is so lucky," says Waters. "Abra truly loves her job and she puts everything into it." Waters was originally turned off by public defenders because her brother was poorly represented by one at trial. Rice, she says, changed her mind.

But not enough for Waters to continue practicing law. After freeing her brother, Waters went back to managing a pub. "She had a one-track mind," says Rice with a shrug.