{"title":"Truth or doubt: questioning legal outcomes in true-crime documentaries","authors":"D. Rickard","doi":"10.1080/17521483.2022.2148385","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Within the last decade, true crime stories have increasingly concerned cases of possible wrongful conviction. Many of these podcasts and documentary series about wrongful conviction look at specific and known factors that contribute to the bad outcomes, and, in different ways, champion the defendants whose cases they explore. This paper looks beyond the contributing factors of wrongful conviction to consider the way truth becomes problematized within the context of the law and the trial. It examines four series (Serial, Atlanta Monster, The Staircase, and Making a Murderer) and the ways the knowability of truth is framed in journalistic and legal discourse, focusing on how knowability itself is questioned in some series; how journalistic bias can compromise truth claims; how the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt are key to framing truth and innocence; and how Alford pleas offer an unsatisfying way of compromising legal truths. Taken together, we see that series-makers challenge legal outcomes and critique injustices by destabilizing notions of truth.","PeriodicalId":42313,"journal":{"name":"Law and Humanities","volume":"17 1","pages":"60 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Law and Humanities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2022.2148385","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
ABSTRACT Within the last decade, true crime stories have increasingly concerned cases of possible wrongful conviction. Many of these podcasts and documentary series about wrongful conviction look at specific and known factors that contribute to the bad outcomes, and, in different ways, champion the defendants whose cases they explore. This paper looks beyond the contributing factors of wrongful conviction to consider the way truth becomes problematized within the context of the law and the trial. It examines four series (Serial, Atlanta Monster, The Staircase, and Making a Murderer) and the ways the knowability of truth is framed in journalistic and legal discourse, focusing on how knowability itself is questioned in some series; how journalistic bias can compromise truth claims; how the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt are key to framing truth and innocence; and how Alford pleas offer an unsatisfying way of compromising legal truths. Taken together, we see that series-makers challenge legal outcomes and critique injustices by destabilizing notions of truth.
期刊介绍：
Law and Humanities is a peer-reviewed journal, providing a forum for scholarly discourse within the arts and humanities around the subject of law. For this purpose, the arts and humanities disciplines are taken to include literature, history (including history of art), philosophy, theology, classics and the whole spectrum of performance and representational arts. The remit of the journal does not extend to consideration of the laws that regulate practical aspects of the arts and humanities (such as the law of intellectual property). Law and Humanities is principally concerned to engage with those aspects of human experience which are not empirically quantifiable or scientifically predictable. Each issue will carry four or five major articles of between 8,000 and 12,000 words each. The journal will also carry shorter papers (up to 4,000 words) sharing good practice in law and humanities education; reports of conferences; reviews of books, exhibitions, plays, concerts and other artistic publications.
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