Beginning April 15, Death Row Stories, Innocence Files to Feature Wrongful Death-Penalty Convictions

Beginning April 15, 2020, two tele­vi­sion series — one a new pro­gram from Netflix and the oth­er new episodes of a return­ing series from CNN — will high­light sto­ries of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing some death-penalty cases. 

The new Netflix doc­u­men­tary series, The Innocence Files, will debut on April 15, with its first episode fea­tur­ing the case of Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown. The fifth sea­son of CNN’s series, Death Row Stories, will pre­miere on April 19 with an episode that will tell the sto­ry of Ohio death-row pris­on­er Tyrone Noling, who has main­tained his inno­cence through­out the near­ly 30 years he has spent on death row.

The Innocence Files

The Innocence Files will spend nine episodes explor­ing eight wrong­ful con­vic­tions through the themes of junk sci­ence, false eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. It fea­tures the work of the Innocence Project, trac­ing eight sto­ries of peo­ple exon­er­at­ed with the help of the orga­ni­za­tion. A team of direc­tors, includ­ing Oscar-win­ner Alex Gibney, use the sto­ries to high­light sys­temic prob­lems that lead to wrong­ful con­vic­tions, as well as the per­son­al cost to the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed pris­on­ers and their families.

The series pre­miere looks at the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct that led to Brown’s wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in 2005 for a robbery/​murder in which a store clerk and respond­ing police offi­cer were shot to death. Brown claimed that phone records would show he was at his girlfriend’s apart­ment at the time of the mur­der. Harris County homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Dan Rizzo had phone records cor­rob­o­rat­ing Brown’s sto­ry, but with­held them from the defense, then abused grand jury pro­ceed­ings to jail Brown’s girl­friend until she agreed to impli­cate Brown. Brown was exon­er­at­ed in 2015 after the phone records came to light in a box in a homi­cide detective’s garage.

The series also fea­tures an episode on Mississippi death-row exoneree Kennedy Brewer and the dis­cred­it­ed bite-mark evi­dence that con­tributed to his 1992 wrong­ful con­vic­tion. DNA test­ing con­firmed his inno­cence in 2001, and he was exon­er­at­ed in 2008. Despite numer­ous cas­es like Brewer’s and a grow­ing body of research show­ing that bite-mark evi­dence is unre­li­able, it is still accept­ed in all 50 states.

Other sto­ries in the series will illus­trate the chal­lenges of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly cross-racial iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, and the dan­gers of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, which is a lead­ing cause of wrong­ful death-penal­ty con­vic­tions. The series presents cas­es involv­ing wit­ness coer­cion and with­hold­ing of evidence.

The Daily Beast said ​“The Innocence Files lays bare a hand­ful of sig­nif­i­cant areas in which our judi­cial appa­ra­tus is prone to mak­ing mis­takes, or to being exploit­ed by uneth­i­cal play­ers. It’s a series with its heart in the right place, and argu­ments that are worth hear­ing — and heed­ing — in the inter­est of cre­at­ing a more just sys­tem for all.”

Death Row Stories 

The fifth sea­son of Death Row Stories will air on HLN start­ing on April 19 with a sto­ry of Ohio death-row pris­on­er Tyrone Noling, who has con­tin­u­ous­ly main­tained his inno­cence of the 1990 mur­ders of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig. Noling’s case has already been the sub­ject of in-depth report­ing by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Scene, and Columbus Dispatch. In 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Attorney General Richard Cordray urged pros­e­cu­tors to allow post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing for Noling and six oth­er pris­on­ers with strong claims of inno­cence. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Noling to the Hartigs’ mur­ders, but he was con­vict­ed on the basis of tes­ti­mo­ny from three co-defen­dants who have since recant­ed, say­ing their tes­ti­mo­ny was coerced. Thirteen years after his tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors revealed police notes show­ing that a wit­ness had iden­ti­fied anoth­er man as the perpetrator.

The sec­ond episode of Death Row Stories, sched­uled to air on April 26, fea­tures the case of for­mer Philadelphia death-row pris­on­er Terry Williams, whose pros­e­cu­tor with­held evi­dence that Williams’ mur­der vic­tim was a sex­u­al preda­tor whose vic­tims includ­ed Williams, instruct­ed the state’s lead wit­ness to be silent about the sex­u­al abuse and to tes­ti­fy that the mur­der had been part of a rob­bery, and then argued to the jury that the vic­tim was a ​“kind man” and inno­cent good Samaritan who had been mur­dered after offer­ing Williams a ride home.