Joshua Freedman (3L)
Like many of you, I spent ten hours over the holidays getting lost in the warm timbre of Dean Strang’s voice while watching Making a Murderer. But now, there’s probably a cold empty void in your heart that not even giving a bad Yelp review to Ken Kratz’s law firm can fix. Have no fear though, there are plenty of other shows, movies, and books to scratch your True Crime itch.
For those who like serials
Why not try The Jinx? A six-part HBO series about deranged multi-millionaire Robert Durst, who at various points has been linked to three suspicious deaths. And, available on YouTube, is the eight-part The Staircase, an inside look into the defence team for the murder trial of novelist Michael Peterson.
For those who furtively look at the true crime section at Indigo, only to think that the checkout person will think you’re strange
If you liked The Jinx, watch Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans, which delves into how complicit a family was in a child molestation scandal.
For the more literary inclined, I recommend the trilogy of books about the Jeffrey MacDonald murder trial. First up is Fatal Vision, which describes the MacDonald trial through the perspective of Joe McGinniss, a journalist who embeds himself with the defence team, poses as MacDonald’s friend, and then railroads him in the book.
When the discussion of ethics in journalism was actually about ethics in journalism, Janet Malcolm, of New Yorker fame, discussed the ethics of what McGinnis did during the trial in The Journalist and the Murderer (also see her excellent book, Iphigenia in Forest Hills).
Last, esteemed documentarian Errol Morris became interested in the case, and wrote a book, A Wilderness of Error, trying to discredit the state’s evidence.
For the true crime elitist
Considered the classic of the True Crime genre, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote will satisfy your literary pretensions. Similarly, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt was high-brow enough to spend several years on the New York Times best-seller list. Spousal stabber Norman Mailer’s 1,000-page tome The Executioner’s Song won the Pulitzer for discussing the life and death of serial felon Gary Gilmore (the alleged inspiration for Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign). Also read Shot in the Heart, a memoir by Gary Gilmore’s brother.
For the Canadian reader
Remember learning about the wrongful conviction of Donald Marshall? Well then go read Justice Denied, which discusses the very screw-ups involved in that case. Similarly, Until You Are Dead covers the wrongful murder conviction of Steven Truscott. For a more recent case, Innocence on Trial is about the set-up of Ivan Henry on multiple counts of sexual assault.
For those interested in wrongful convictions
What they did to Brendan Dassey was pretty terrible, but it actually followed a procedure called the Reid Technique, which you can read about in Douglas Starr’s New Yorker article The Interview (not the Seth Rogen & James Franco movie). For a set of movies where the police similarly manipulated a bunch of kids, the HBO Paradise Lost trilogy is essential viewing.
For those who saw The Hurricane, Rubin Carter’s searing prison memoir The 16th Round delves into the frustration of going to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.
The aforementioned Errol Morris rose to fame with his documentary The Thin Blue Line, which pretty convincingly proved that a man had been wrongfully imprisoned for murder. Morris’ documentary was parodied in the Documentary Now! episode The Eye Doesn’t Lie.
The (fictional) Sundance television show Rectify, focuses on the readjustments that someone wrongfully convicted of a crime has to make as they re-enter society.
Of course, I must mention two of my favourite articles of all time, Pamela Colloff’s, The Innocent Man Part One and Two and David Grann’s Trial by Fire, both about the foibles of the Texas justice system.
For the academic
Since we are in law school, I’d be remiss to not mention an academic book. Have a go at Convicting the Innocent, a very readable text that looks at several hundred cases of people who had their sentences overturned and the different factors that led to their wrongful convictions.
Happy viewing and reading!
