Netflix’s take on Juridiction systems
The nine episodes of innocence files had me wondering what the law system is about. It is a universal question that what does innocence looks like. The series clearly shows how the system is broken from inside and the US justice system is not as effective as it seems. There have been many incidents of injustice that have been portrayed in different other movies before, but this was an eye-opener and the revelation of gory truth behind the law system in the city of dreams which is highly infuriated with racism and the pressure of solving the case.
An agency named The Innocent Project established in 1992 worked to provide justice to the people who were wrongfully convicted. They are so determined in providing justice to the wrongfully incarcerated that they would reinvestigate, collect evidence, and even advocate for them. The nine episodes clearly depict three types of injustice that was done to different individuals which revolved around witness, evidence, and prosecution. Each section is followed by real incidents and real errors that were made during the process of the case. The first three episodes, for instance, talked about how bitemark evidence was not a decisive factor in the cases but however were admissible in all 50 states of the United States of America. Similarly, the latter three episodes talk about witness and memory of the victims as an unreliable story because it keeps on changing as time passes by. All of these errors in the system become the reason for an innocent life to face the life sentence which is not fair at all.
The different cases here shows the victim of the error in the system in prison for 20-35 years of their life. It is so sad to see because of wrong witness statement or the lack of the assessment of evidence they were wrongfully convicted for the crimes they were not even associated with. They were just there in the wrong time and wrong place and they became the victim of the weak law system which only focussed on trying to solve the cases and get done with it. It is very sad to see all the first 4-5 convictions were made at non-white people except one. The presumptions about certain races so prevailed in the society that they were not even heard properly, and their alibis were not even taken into consideration.
The series has all the best directors in the documentary history like Roger Ross Williams, Alex Gibney, and Liz Garbus and they have indeed done their wonderful job in presenting the optimistic nature of the cases where one finds and sees the light of the day. It is indeed one of the strongest and boldest series to present the injustice system that prevails in the city of dreams like Los Angeles, dark towns Mississippi, and many other areas. It is so pure to see that the series was not sensualized and made for the supremacy of anything but the truth itself. It is important to watch and understand this series and hope for the better justice system.
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