TNT’s new reality show “Cold Justice” (following two female crime solvers getting paid to solve cold cases) isn’t just devoid of real entertainment value——-it’s essentially a lurid Dateline special swallowed up by static, repetitive scenes of telling us the same five “facts” over and over again———it also could get innocent people locked up. This is possibly the scariest, most destructive reality show to date…and I’ve seen Dance Moms.
In tonight’s pilot episode, it almost certainly led to the conviction of a man who can never be proven guilty, and has not a shred of real evidence to say that he is guilty. The “crime solvers” were working on the case of a Texas woman who committed suicide decades ago, and decided that not only is it not a suicide (despite having no evidence to believe this other than a “gut feeling”…and that they’re getting paid to prove it’s not), but that her boyfriend at the time murdered her.
What makes this premise so repulsive is that they’re starting from the place of thinking this guy is guilty, and work backwards to prove it. The REAL way our justice system is supposed to work is the pursuit of the truth, not a guilty verdict on a crime that might exist only in the mind of a very suspicious detective who claims he “just knows” it’s a murder. The other evidence they have this isn’t a suicide? The woman’s daughter (who was a kid at the time) said her mom wouldn’t kill herself…Welp, that settles it for me, lock up that guy and execute him Texas-style.
The investigators strain so hard to prove the boyfriend is a murderer, that they essentially get a D.A. to reopen the case just because one of the boyfriend’s key witnesses got details wrong from his original statement…decades ago. [I can barely remember what I had for breakfast today, let alone would be able to remember a residue test given to someone decades previously. Plus, the witness is clearly a loud-mouthed redneck prone to exaggeration, and running his mouth…how hard would it really be to get him to alter details that he clearly doesn’t think are important?] The evidence is never more than the flimsiest of circumstantial, but the lead investigators are never less than sure that he’s guilty and it’s not a suicide.
Absolutely no justice to be found. Watching the glee in their eyes when they get even a scrap of evidence that this was a murder and not a suicide (“that’s good” they keep saying, as if murder is ever good) was sickening. Grade: D
The episode you criticized in this article, the Indicted man later confessed. So are you going to send out a pat in the back?
Other people have mentioned this, but since this episode I’ve watched a few more and always come away with a very ambivalent feeling about these investigators and their methods. The former prosecutor seems to have a disdain for hard evidence, and routinely praises circumstantial evidence. Every episode I’ve seen hinges around a long-ago suspect that they put the squeeze to and he winds up misremembering a lot of what he said back then, so they’re convinced he (or sometimes she) is guilty. I think about half the people they catch are guilty, but if a reality show can lock up even one innocent person then isn’t it going too far?
Oh, and a confession is pretty meaningless in a circumstantial case because of plea bargains. Since nearly all of these episodes take place in deep-red death penalty states, I would imagine a lot of suspects would take a plea over the almost certain likelihood that they’d be found guilty with even the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. The former prosecutor star of this show also knows that which is how she’s “never lost a case.” [What are the odds that somebody who’s never lost a case hasn’t locked up an innocent person? Slim to none. It’s all about winning for them.]