I have written several radio talks about how bad American television is. I must admit that it cannot all be bad. After all, there are so many channels, so many million hours of TV.
Just the other night I saw a couple of riveting TV shows that were aired back to back. They were real life investigative police dramas and they were an interesting pair of shows.
The first show was about police incompetency. A young woman was raped and murdered. The police were eager to solve the crime and they went haywire, they went crazy. Before they were through they accused eight men and jailed five of them. The evidence against four of them was flimsy, non-existent. The police tactics were highly questionable: in part, brutal, in your face, hours & hours of interrogation. l
I cannot sum up an hour long TV show in just a few sentences but basically, the interrogation was so brutal that four of them confessed to a murder they probably did not commit. They gave the wrong details about the crime scene, the condition of the body. Neither their DNA nor their fingerprints were at the crime scene. Why were they convicted and given life sentences that they are currently serving? Because they confessed and the juries could not believe that they would confess to a rape & a murder that they did not commit.
Under duress, people will say anything to get out of a situation. They will confess to almost anything, and their confessions were bizarre, outrageous, simply not believable. These were not particularly intelligent men who thought, I’ll confess now but later people will realize my confession was ludicruous. The American system of justice will not jail an innocent man. The system threw them into jail.
What is even more astonishing is that eventually another man confessed to the murder and insisted he did it alone. He knew non of the others who were jailed for the murder. He insisted he acted alone. His fingerprints, his DNA were all over the crime scene. He was convicted, jailed, but the others, who claim they are innocent, are still in jail.
The show focused on police brutality, police incompetence. Immediately thereafter a similar show was aired on the same channel & that show profiled police intelligence, police competency.
Once again, a young girl was raped & murdered. Her body was dumped on a highway and at first the police had no idea who she was and of course, no idea who might have killed her. One policeman would not give up. He was diligent, persistent & finally successful. They found faint traces of numbers on the palm of the victim’s hand. Under ultraviolet light they deciphered telephone numbers -- one her home number, the other a school she boarded at. She had run away from the school. They located a gas station nearby where she made a whole series of phone calls. They subpenaed all the gas receipts for three days around the time she made her calls and then subpenaed gas receipts for three days in the area where her body was dumped. One truck bought gas at both gas stations.
A brilliant, persistent, thorough investigation. They got their man & jailed him. He was probably responsible for a whole series of unsolved murders in the vicinity. Good police work, diligent police work.
Two riveting TV shows that balanced each other out. As is the case in real life, sometimes policemen are incompetent and the wrong people are jailed; sometimes policemen are highly competent and seemingly impossible to solve murders are solved.
Sometimes American television shows are excellent.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein