I wanted to try this out but I haven't yet forgiven Serial for completely wasting my time on a similar sounding premise. Is this better? Before I watch it does it actually dig up new evidence or just rehash a cold case?
You get to see a 16 year old person with low IQ (about 70, so borderline learning disabled) get interrogated several times, by different people, without a lawyer or parent present.
Some of that interrogation is clearly designed to get him to confess to a crime, and doesn't seem to care whether the confession is true or false.
Some of that interrogation appears to be better designed, and seems to want to get truth rather than a confession, but after several hours they get frustrated that they're not getting a confession so they change tactics. (And I think their frustration is because he'd confessed the day before, so why isn't he confessing now, and the thought that maybe he's innocent doesn't seem to occur to them.)
When there's a miscarriage of justice people often say "but why did he confess?"
This documentary is now my example of why people confess to crimes they did not commit.
There are some frustrating bits about it. The other person was wrongly convicted of a violent crime, was cleared by very good, solid, DNA evidence. We hear a few times from law enforcement who doubt the exoneration and the DNA evidence, and there's a lack of challenge of those attitudes. It's a bit like watching a slow motion train wreck - "what the fuck is that lawyer doing?!?" (the lawyer for the young person makes a comment to the media that pretty much torpedoes his client's case). There's some stuff around plea bargains that isn't explored as much as it could be. A bunch of people accept plea bargains not because they're guilty but because they don't want the extra penalties from a risky court case. And it's a bit long - 10 programmes could have been edited down to 5 without losing any information.
It'll frustrate you the same way Serial did in that it's not all tied up with a bow at the end. But I did find it more engaging than Serial, while also much more disturbing since parts of it are some completely beyond the pale, much more so than in the Syed case.
It's not really so much the question of who did the crimes it's more an eye-opnener into how the police, legal and court system misbehaved every step of the way because right or wrong they were certain they had their man.
