Truth or doubt: questioning legal outcomes in true-crime documentaries

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.