The Innocent Man
Release date: 2018
The ‘innocent man’ at the centre of this 2018 six-part true-crime documentary on Netflix is Ron Williamson, who had been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a young woman and served 11 years of his death-row prison sentence before being exonerated through DNA evidence. The story caught the attention of author John Grisham, who went on to turn it into the 2006 true crime book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. If you’re a fan of Grisham’s work, you’ll want to watch this docuseries, which he executive produced. Using interviews with friends and family members of the victim, lawyers, reporters, and Grisham himself, it methodically recounts the murder, the miscarriages of justice, the prison system’s inadequate handling of mental illness in its population, and the eventual solving of the crime five days before Williamson was scheduled to be executed.
White Boy
Release date: 2017
The ‘White boy’ in question here is Richard Wershe Jr, a Detroit-based FBI informant whose intel led to a number of arrests in the ’80s, including of the brother of Detroit’s mayor and several members of law enforcement. The problem, however, was that White Boy Rick, as he came to be known, was underage when law enforcement first began grooming him as an informant. The FBI cut ties with Wershe as a result, and a year later, Wershe was convicted for life without the chance of parole under a law that was later overturned. Wershe was consistently denied not only parole but a parole hearing – until 2020. This documentary addresses why, and in the process, it exposes the shocking corruption within the Detroit police force and political machine.
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Source: RD.com
