An award-winning, short but to-the-point Netflix documentary exposing yet another example of inept, lazy or at worst prejudicial policing in America, depending on your point of view. Personally, I've lately seen so many mini-series and movies on similar miscarriages of justice, that I think I know which way I'm leaning.
Here, a young Latin-American male, called Juan Catalan, admittedly with a previous, though long time ago criminal record and blood-connected to an older brother with a more serious criminal history, finds himself being charged with the execution-like murder of a 16 year old young woman who was a witness to a crime. The proof presented by two of L.A.'s finest mainly centres on a witness who recollects the presence of a man of similar appearance in the vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the deed. The police pair then concoct a motive, so that when they forcibly take him downtown and charge him, it's clear they're looking for a quick confession and easy conviction.
Given that the slaying took place some time previously, the young man and his girlfriend struggle to remember his exact whereabouts at the time, but then he remembers he attended a baseball match with his young daughter that very night. But how to prove his story adds up? Enter the long arm of coincidence, when, as it transpires, that very night, the popular TV show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was filming a scene on location in the same baseball stadium at the very time and almost the same place the defendant claimed to have been there. Is it just possible that the man and his daughter might be in the background of the TV footage, to give credence to his alibi in defence?
One suspects this programme could have easily been extended to two or three episodes to more thoroughly investigate the doings of the two blinkered detectives and the wider implications of a possibly racially-motivated arrest. I didn't really appreciate either the massive close-ups of the interviewees and thought maybe too much credit was afforded to Larry David for his accidental part in helping clear the young man as well as the way he then milks it. Neither of the two offending cops is punished too much, at least so it seemed to me, for his zeal / bias although at least the city of Los Angeles did make a cash settlement to Mr Catalan in mitigation of his mistreatment.
Perhaps even extended by one episode, I do think that this nevertheless revealing documentary could have been made even more effective, but at least the cameras were there to expose yet another glaringly obvious travesty of justice in America, where an innocent young man could have been serving life imprisonment for a crime he didn't commit. In fact, four gangland youths were later apprehended and once convicted, duly received that very sentence leaving as ever, the abiding thought as to how many other innocents currently find themselves in prison or worse, are on death row, under similarly contrived charges. Answers on a postcard please to the U.S. Justice Secretary...
