Trial by Media

Netflix docuseries.

Executive producers:

• George Clooney
• Court TV creator Steven Brill
• CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin

The Guardian:

“We wanted a mix of cases that were famous and recognizable, and cases that were … just bizarre and fascinating on their own terms,” Toobin, a New Yorker staff writer, told the Guardian. “It’s really more about media manipulation from a broader perspective. I think in each of these stories, you see that the one-sentence media summary is almost invariably misleading if not outright wrong” compared with the trial.”

Episode #3:

The death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed west African immigrant who was shot at, in what became an incendiary headline, 41 times by New York police in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment” while reaching for his wallet. He was unarmed. The four NYPD white police officers were acquitted after the trial was moved from the Bronx to Albany.

“The one thing you can say with certainty is that courtrooms are not hermetically sealed from what’s going on in the world,” said Toobin. “That tension between wanting a verdict entirely on the evidence in the individual case and recognizing that politics and social conditions are always going to affect the outcome – that is I think part of the tension that’s always going to be present in courtrooms.”

“You can get killed just for living in your American skin.”