An Innocent Man - Netflix Docuseries

Just finished it tonight.. Really good.

Makes you wonder what kinda shady shite is happening in Ada Ok...

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Is it all about one murder/murderer? Or is each episode about a different case?

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It's about a couple of murders.

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Ada Ok

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Was on a rig in the area for a summer in 2010. Everyone goes to applebees after 10pm. It turns into a bar

I read the book (An Innocent Man) years ago. The detectives in that town need to be tarred and feathered

Just finished this. Knocked it out in one sitting. Incredible

The change of Ron williamson after a few years in prison was scary. The amount of effort it took for the police department to get these convictions is even scarier, and the scariest part is the people who still defend it despite the evidence being as plain as day.

Couple of other random thoughts on the show

1.) it was weird as frick to give the mother the murder weapon as like a keepsake. Apparently she took solace in it but it was super weird. Grief is weird but they didn’t make it seem like she specifically requested it


2.) the blonde writer in the end really added nothing to the show. He was there to nod her head at conclusions that other people had spent years developing evidence to support and then just being like “wow I am fighting injustice”. I was expecting her to break something in the case but she really just kind of added some characters to the backstory in a similarly leading way as the prosecution used to get the false confessions.


3.) they need to do an entire series simply on small town politics and how these things work and used to work. My family has a lot of history in towns like this and I’ve heard so many stories of stuff that was eearily similar to the corruption they talk about in this show. There’s so much meat left on that bone.


4.) after it ended I felt like they could’ve and should’ve cut it down to 4-5 episodes, it really lost steam in episode 5 and they dragged out the non-conclusion ending for 2 episodes without much to keep you drawn in. They also got a bit too cute with some of the production techniques and dramatization of it. But overall it was well done and the story is so wild.

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3.) they need to do an entire series simply on small town politics and how these things work and used to work. My family has a lot of history in towns like this and I’ve heard so many stories of stuff that was eearily similar to the corruption they talk about in this show. There’s so much meat left on that bone.

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I have always felt like the scariest places in the US are rural arse towns like that. They play by their own rules. Meth and shite like that is the currency in a lot of places.

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4.) after it ended I felt like they could’ve and should’ve cut it down to 4-5 episodes, it really lost steam in episode 5 and they dragged out the non-conclusion ending for 2 episodes without much to keep you drawn in. They also got a bit too cute with some of the production techniques and dramatization of it. But overall it was well done and the story is so wild.

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Yeah, I agree. I also thought they would go into Tommy's weird arse dreams.

Just finished this last night. Great docuseries.

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1.) it was weird as frick to give the mother the murder weapon as like a keepsake. Apparently she took solace in it but it was super weird. Grief is weird but they didn’t make it seem like she specifically requested it

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I thought the same thing while watching the final episode. Granted Debbie's mother has gone through a great deal and probably views it as some sort of closer on the situation (I don't know if I would be able to look at it that way). I think it was kinda cool/positive that Peggy and Ron formed some sort of relationship after he was released.

I will say that I find it a bit fishy that the court reporter is the one in charge of keeping all of this evidence in a storage unit.

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2.) the blonde writer in the end really added nothing to the show. He was there to nod her head at conclusions that other people had spent years developing evidence to support and then just being like “wow I am fighting injustice”. I was expecting her to break something in the case but she really just kind of added some characters to the backstory in a similarly leading way as the prosecution used to get the false confessions.

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Disagree, she was able to speak to some folks that clearly know a great deal about Ava. But refuse/can't talk about the dealings of the time. Also, maybe her role the entire time is to document pieces of a corrupt criminal justice system. That's definitely not the job of John Grisham, civil or criminal attorney's.

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3.) they need to do an entire series simply on small town politics and how these things work and used to work. My family has a lot of history in towns like this and I’ve heard so many stories of stuff that was eearily similar to the corruption they talk about in this show. There’s so much meat left on that bone.

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That's a slippery slope tbh. Similar to what we saw in the final episode of TIM. People generally don't want to talk about politics and law enforcement in small times. Hell, look at the case out of Jennings that sparked True Detective season one. That still has a fishy smell to it.

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They also got a bit too cute with some of the production techniques and dramatization of it. But overall it was well done and the story is so wild.

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Examples?

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Disagree, she was able to speak to some folks that clearly know a great deal about Ava.

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Well the documentary crew were already talking to those people. Like the friend who was trying to talk to all these people had already been on the show previously talking with the show saying the same things. Nobody she talked to really said anything we didn’t already know, and she honestly just lead those people to say what she wanted them to say, exactly in the way the prosecutors were doing to the accused in these cases.

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Also, maybe her role the entire time is to document pieces of a corrupt criminal justice system. That's definitely not the job of John Grisham, civil or criminal attorney's.

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My issue is she didn’t really do this. The lawyers/investigators on the case spent years compiling evidence and interviews with all these people and she showed up and just highlighted their research for the show and added in a lot of useless shots of her typing on a computer and patting herself on the back about it

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Examples?

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Just felt some of the re-enactments felts a bit 48 hours level production, and didn’t add much to the show.

I have not watched this yet, but plan to be richly rewarded when I do, having already read the book a few years ago.

Grisham supports this kind of thing in real life as well, contributing financially to the Mississippi Innocence Project which has already exonerated 9 wrongfully convicted individuals:

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