You Can’t Make This Up

The Innocence Files: The Prosecutor

Episode Summary

In the final episode of our miniseries about The Innocence Files, host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On...) speaks with Academy-award winning director, Alex Gibney (Going Clear; The Inventor). Alex’s episodes focus on how individual prosecutors can corrupt the whole justice system, examining cases from Philadelphia, Houston, and rural Michigan.

Episode Notes

In the final episode of our miniseries about The Innocence Files, host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On...) speaks with Academy-award winning director, Alex Gibney (Going Clear; The Inventor). Alex’s episodes focus on how individual prosecutors can corrupt the whole justice system, examining cases from Philadelphia, Houston, and rural Michigan.

Episode Transcription

Rebecca Welcome to You Can't Make This Up. A companion podcast from Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And I'll be hosting this week's episode. Here on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. This is the final episode of our mini series about The Innocence Files. This documentary series explores three major causes of wrongful convictions, and it was made in consultation with the Innocence Project. In this episode, I chat with Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney. Alex's episodes focus on how individual prosecutors can corrupt the whole justice system. His episodes cover cases from Philadelphia, Houston and Michigan. I'll be speaking with Alex about the racial tensions that come from, quote, tough-on-crime policies, the role of journalism in bringing the wrongly convicted to the public eye and how some prosecutors are incentivized to break the law. 

There will be spoilers, so make sure you've watched the final three episodes of The Innocence Files. We also recorded this episode in our separate homes. So we appreciate you understanding the change in our normal audio quality. 

Rebecca Now here's my conversation with Alex. 

Clip (Alan Tauber) Well, I did want to ask you a couple of things, because things seem to be percolating in your case. What should people know about your case? 

Clip (Chester Hollman) I don't know if we have enough time for that. First of all, before all this happened to me, if someone would have said this is possible. I never would've believed. Almost 20 years, my life is more than half of my life. I don't have any animosity towards the police. I don't think every prosecutor is bad. And you know what? But I think the ones that I ended up with, the tactics they used, you know, arrest, convict, move on to the next. They were doing everything they could do to close the case without trying to seek out the actual truth. I happen to be tragically in the mix of it. 

Rebecca So, Alex Gibney, thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it. 

Alex Delighted. 

Rebecca So for this project, The Innocence Files, it takes a look at several aspects of dysfunction in the criminal justice system. And your episodes look at prosecutorial misconduct. Why this topic for you? 

Alex I mean, I've done a lot of films about power and abuse of power. And so, too, do the story of prosecutorial misconduct seem right up my alley. And it is one of the great sources of injustice in the criminal justice system. And so I was wildly enthusiastic about taking it on. 

Rebecca I know a lot about the Chester Hollman case. I actually worked on a podcast that covered the case and everything that was going on in Philadelphia that led to many wrongful convictions there. What's really interesting about this case in episode seven is that you kind of track it as it's happening as this, you know, conviction integrity unit is looking at it. Can you just talk about that process as you were making this episode? 

Alex Sure. I mean, I think that was one of the things that was most engaging for me, but also the scariest because we were tracking this case in real time. We didn't know how it was going to end up. We hoped that Chester would be released, but we didn't know for sure that it was going to happen. And certainly Chester had been down this road many times before. So to be able to embed with a conviction integrity unit was hugely beneficial because this was an eye opener for me. I didn't know that much about the C.I.U. You know, there are a number of them across the country, but particularly in Philadelphia with the election of Larry Krassner as District Attorney, you know, he really put in a strong conviction integrity unit. And the idea of prosecutors and defense attorneys working together to try and uncover the truth is really a novel concept and one which I was thrilled to try to film in real time. 

Rebecca Well, it is a rare thing that politics intervenes in this way. You know, Larry Krassner ran on this platform of fixing the criminal justice system in Philadelphia. And that's a real conviction integrity unit there. There are other places in the country, we should mention that set them up and they don't operate that way. You were with this unit and one of the most extraordinary scenes is when they do that ride along to sort of recreate the conditions of the night of the crime. 

Clip of the Ridealong So wherever that cop has pulled over there, probably a way about to pull over. So essentially, essentially coming back to the scene of the crime. This would be Van Pelt here. So we're at eight minutes, essentially. I just don't think there's any way Chester can have committed the crime and stopped where he was in what time period for the crime and the stop. 

Rebecca So you just talk about what it was like being with them while they were doing their work. 

Alex I mean It was so exhilarating in the sense that that is the moment. We sat in on a number of meetings of the Conviction Integrity Unit itself that was in the prosecutor's office. Here's a case where Patricia Cummings, who is leading the Conviction Integrity Unit and Alan Tauber was Chester Hollman's defense attorney, were sitting side by side in the middle of the winter in a car, you know, literally tracing what was supposed to have been the getaway route of the car that was occupied by the alleged murderer. So that was really a fantastic moment. We embellished it later on with some aerials. We shot after the fact. 

Rebecca Some drone footage. 

Alex But being in the car or tagging along for that was really something. 

Rebecca One of the things that's so interesting about Chester's case is the laser focus the police had on him and pretty much only him from minute one. But were you surprised in his case just how much evidence there was contradicting the theory that he could have done it, that for some reason investigators just chose to not look at? 

Alex Well, we tried to construct the story as a murder mystery, but a murder mystery in reverse grinds to say, revealing over time how Chester didn't commit the murder and how somebody else likely did. But I think what really knocked me out was how little evidence there was to convict Chester at all. You know, pretty much the day after Chester's interrogated, the police pursue another lead, which was much more compelling. But by then, they had already committed to a lie and committed to forcing a witness to lie and also to writing in something on Chester’ own statement, which was false. So they were already building a case. And once they had committed to that lie, that was the big problem. And they were no longer open to any other evidence that happened. And that was maybe the most interesting thing about Chester's case, because you get into the whole idea of how that original lie reverberates through the criminal justice system. There was a lot of talk in the Philadelphia Inquirer of this process called testilying, where, you know, witnesses, in order to get more favorable treatment in their own cases are coerced into lying in order to be able to get a conviction. But then when they recant, they're considered an unreliable witness. Well, now that they're unreliable, the judge claims that he or she doesn't know whether to believe them the first time or the second time. 

So in the absence of any definitive other proof, they let the original ruling stand. Well, that's a terrifying idea if you think about it, because it means that police and prosecutors have an incentive to get witnesses to lie, knowing that if they recant later and tell the truth, they will never be believed. What a, what a terrifying concept. 

Rebecca This case in particular, and it's really hard because this is a subject that comes up a lot. And I've said this before and I think about it a lot in that in some sort of broken police units or prosecutorial units or segments of the criminal justice system. It does seem like there are, you know, generally good people who are incentivized to do the wrong thing. I mean, where do you land on that? Are you able in any way to look at this situation in Philadelphia and say, “oh, this is just the way they did their job, they didn't mean to do harm”? 

Alex No, you know, nobody unless you're in the mafia, nobody goes out and says to themselves, “You know, my job is to do bad. So that's what I get paid for and that's what I'm gonna do”. So in the case of the police, you know, Philadelphia was in the midst of a tremendous murder spree. There was violence all over the city. There were unsolved cases piling up. There was tremendous pressure to get something done, to be tough on crime. 

And I think... There's a phrase called noble cause corruption, which is a police phrase. And it refers to dirty cops who believe that in the service of trying to get people they know to be really bad guys, like, say, a killer. They can't get in for the murder of somebody in the neighborhood. So what they do is they plant some drugs on them and they arrest them for that and they put them down for that. But over time, it leads to this belief that, you know, in your gut, right, that you've got the right person. I mean, they originally bring Chester in because they had an unbelievable match on the license plate of his car with the actual perp. And YZA, the same three letters, same car. So....

Rebecca But there was a reason for that. 

Alex There turned out to be a good reason for it. But at the time, you can understand why cops would have pulled him in. So they in their gut they feel like we got the right guy. So we'll do whatever we need to do in order to make sure this guy gets put away. And no namby pamby liberal defense attorney is going to get him off. And they concoct something to make sure that he's convicted and convicted quickly on very little evidence. I mean, there was no physical evidence whatsoever in the case. It was just two eyewitnesses. That was it. And then the kind of bold summation by Roger King, who is a noted African-American prosecutor who put a lot of black defendants behind bars. And he seemed to have a view that if you're caught, you're probably a bad guy and he would use his rhetorical skills to put these people away. 

Rebecca But that's also a tactic that's used a lot in jury trials. I mean, you hear prosecutors, even on a fictional jury trial on TV, you hear them say, you know, it must have been if he's arrested, he must be doing something, you know. And I do think that is something that citizens...because let's face it, a lot of people never have contact with the police in their entire life. That if there was contact with the police, there must be a reason, which isn't true. But that's something I think people believe. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about Roger King, his personality, the way he was viewed in Philadelphia and in the courtroom. 

Alex Roger King was a very charismatic character. And I know that I mean, he had kind of the fire and brimstone approach of an old time preacher. We actually were able to get footage of him kind of giving a facsimile of a plea to a jury to execute somebody. 

Clip (Roger King) You should look at him not in sorrow, but scorn. And that scorned being and you should stand up and look at him and look at him for the despicable human being that he is, the mad dog that he is. And say what you did, why did it, how you did it, for what you did, you should die. 

Alex That's pretty compelling. I mean, this guy is really you could see how in the courtroom he would be hugely convincing. He was a big man. And he, you know, felt that he had justice on his side. And so if he had to bend the law to get there, he was going to do it. And he built up a rather enviable record of convictions. Now we know and we're beginning to find out through the work of the Innocence Project that there was a reason he was getting those convictions, which was because he was either helping to falsify evidence, coercing witnesses to lie, a series of other things. They did an inventory, discovered that a lot of his convictions were false. So there's something peculiar about Roger King. He was much admired. When he died, the obituaries of him were, you know, tremendous outpouring of grief and respect. But I think underlying that was a person who felt he had the right to take the law into his own hands, that he made decisions about when people were good or bad, what was right and wrong, and didn't let the facts stand in the way of his gut. 

Rebecca It's more than just speeches in court and his persona. He's actually interfering with witnesses in a way that, you know, if you heard about it in different context, it would be insanity. But apparently that was done with some regularity. 

Alex Well, Deirdre Jones, the woman who testified against Chester, a trial, you know, was threatened by that. And it was her fear that they were going to do something to her that led her to change her story. And then they sent her literally out of the city. (They said it was for her protection that Chester was going to come after her otherwise.) And then only bring her back in order to be able to testify. So it was very much, you know, a coercive process and the police were very much involved in that. And there's a record of Roger King working with certain detectives over and over and over again. And they had a kind of routine going on in terms of how they would get witnesses either to lie or to shade the truth in ways that resembled the narrative that they were building. 

And that was one of the most interesting things to me as a documentarian, which is you realize that over time, bad prosecutors. And when I say bad, I mean people who are corrupt and are not following the letter of the law. They're storytellers and I'm a storyteller. But what you understand is that in court or along the way to court. You know, in terms of gathering the evidence and what you do or don't turn over to the defense. It's trying to take a story that's very much in the gray and turning it into a story that's black and white so that everything is clear and certain. And it's that kind of disquieting certainty that the justice system wants to push. It's comforting in some ways, because I think we as citizens all want to know “we've got the bad guy. We put the bad guy behind bars. You know, mission accomplished”. But there's a reason there are terms like reasonable doubt, shadow of a doubt. Doubt turns out to be important. And I think we've gone overboard in terms of lionizing a kind of harsh certainty that comes of the need to tell a simple story to a jury in a way that ultimately becomes not the truth, but a lie. 

Rebecca Right. And I think that also, given regular citizens who sit on juries their proclivity to want to trust. You know, people who display an innate distrust of the system or the government don't get picked for the jury. They just don't. So...and if that same kind of hope in the system, I think that makes people want to believe those stories. 

Alex And also those you know, they were obviously during this period, a lot of accusations of racism in the system in the city of Philadelphia. That's where Roger King had this peculiar advantage because he was black. And, you know, and many of the people he was prosecuting were black. It was assumed that there was no racial intent or motive. And so he must have been ferreting out the truth. And I think that Roger King, in a way, saw himself as a character who was kind of finding a way of taking the bad apples out of the African-American barrel. And in that way, he became an extremely dangerous character if you were a black defendant going up against him. 

Rebecca I mean, that that was sort of the era of the, you know, Bill Cosby proselytizing, “Pull your pants up, young man”. You know, it's really interesting that sort of the time periods in the regions you look at in these three episodes. As a filmmaker who is known for making these like transcended beautiful documentaries. How painful is it for you to have that little sideways iPhone video of Chester Hollman getting out of prison in your documentary? 

Alex Oh, my God. it was interesting the way the prison handled Chester's release, because when he was finally exonerated, the prison moved very quickly with lightning speed because I think they didn't want a gaggle of cameras there. And we only got notice, I think, about two or three hours before Chester was gonna be released. And all of us, you know, made out like bats out of hell in separate cars to try to get there at time. And my producer, who was magnificent on this film, Kevin Huffman, you know, got there with his camera and was there when Chester got out. That is to say, with his iPhone, because the camera crews hadn't arrived yet. And he got the perfect shot, the money shot. They confiscated his phone and erased the footage. But we did get from somebody whose name and identity I won't reveal that sideways look at Chester hugging Alan Tauber just after he gets out of the big gates. 

Rebecca Well, moving on. You know, one other character who comes into play and in a lot of these wrongful conviction cases. I don't wanna say a lot because we hear the Innocence Project folks say over and over and over again that they only can do a tiny percentage of cases that come their way. They can actually take out for a variety of reasons. The same is true in a newsroom. I work in a newsroom by day. I know that we get tips, we get from citizens, from inmates, from all sorts of people all the time writing in as you can, you can just sort of be deluged by stories of people saying I was wrong in one way or the other. But in episode eight, we have an instance of a journalist getting a tip like this and really working it in the case of Alfred Dewayne Brown. He was convicted for capital murder in the killing of Houston Police Officer Charles Clarke, in another case that went wrong on many levels. Can you just talk about sort of the role of journalism in the stories that are covered in your episodes? 

Alex Sure. I mean, you know, in Chester's case, there was the, there was the role of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who did that wonderful take out on testilying that we profile. And in the case of Dewayne Brown, you know, there was Lisa. 

Rebecca Lisa Falkenburg

Alex That was not a film I directed. It was directed by the wonderful Andy Greaves who was my longtime editor. So Lisa just found this case and really did believe in it. And dug and dug and dug and did an extraordinary amount of work until she started embarrassing people. And the next thing you know, defense attorneys start to take over. And I think that it can't be said enough that the role of the press in terms of embarrassing public officials is potent and powerful. And at a time when the press is being demonized as enemies of the people you see in the hands of Lisa, what dogged reporting and truth telling can do in terms of righting a wrong. 

Rebecca It was really interesting because in Brown's case, he also had an alibi. I mean, he called his girlfriend at a time when the murder was committed so he couldn't have done it. And yet at the grand jury people, and if people don’t know how grand juries work, it's the prosecutor and a bunch of citizen jurors called in and jurors can ask questions unlike in a courtroom jury trial. But the prosecutor allowed this alibi witness to be badgered and harassed by the grand jury. That was shocking to me. 

Alex Badgered and harassed by the grand jury and and really threatened by the prosecutors so that she was terrified that she was going to end up going to prison for perjury. And who's gonna take care of her kid? And so they had a way of making her toe the line. I mean, it was rough justice in the most terrible sense. That was a big get for Andy  and his team to be able to get her, the girlfriend, to come forward and talk about what happened. It was really chilling. 

Rebecca It was chilling. I mean, she was actually put in jail for a period of time. There were cops on the grand jury. I mean, the idea that this would be practiced, which it turns out it was regular practice in this county in Texas, is astonishing. 

Alex I mean, there are checks and balances to be able to manage these things, but not for the poor. You know, you can't hire a high powered attorney to help represent you. You don't really know what your rights are and you can't afford to enforce them. So, you know, particularly and this was the case in the Chester Hollman case to the system of criminal justice preys on the poor because you can muscle the poor in ways that you can't do to the rich. 

Rebecca Mm hmm. And of course, the poor don't have access to the same legal defense typically as people with money or as the state does or the labs or any of the other access that the state has. Dan Rizzo was the prosecutor in this case. And the film uncovers his having committed an egregious Brady violation. 

Alex Yes. 

Rebecca In withholding records that prove that Brown did make that phone call. That was his alibi for the murder. And that prove that he did it know...that he did it knowingly, that he had an e-mail saying, I was hoping it would say this, but it didn't. 

Ciip (Brian Stolarz) This case is the definition for perjury violation in which a prosecutor violated the lead, had institutional duty to turn over documents that are helpful to the defense. 

Rebecca So Brady violations are another thing that I think those of us interested in wrongful convictions have learned a lot about in the last couple of years. But this was a bad one. 

Alex Well, it was a bad one, because, I mean, not only I mean, when you have evidence that shows that the alleged perp, the person that you want to send to prison or to send to die is innocent and you withhold that information. I mean, where are you going then? Is that for the notch on the belt? How do you live with yourself at night and accept that you sort of convince yourself that he's probably a bad guy and he's done other bad things. So it's OK. I mean, how do you wrap your head around that, that you hide that evidence, knowing that it would be proof that he would be innocent. It really is chilling. And yet he is completely unrepentant. And the police union is outraged that Dewayne Brown is, has been exonerated and declared innocent. That's another thing about the justice system that I find disquieting and something that I learned in terms of making this series, this terrifying certainty. You know, this need to feel certain so that you're unwilling to ever check yourself. To, you know, imagine if we all behaved that way so that if we learned that something we said or did was we now saying I was hoping it would run. True, but it didn't. And then just as fast as we're not disclosing, what kind of world would that be? But that's the world too often of the criminal justice system where there is no willingness or no mechanism for reconsideration or doubt. 

Rebecca And there's no incentive for people to accept that they were wrong. I mean, it's so interesting to watch in that case when they decided to declare him legally innocent. That the preamble to that press conference had to be “a lot of people aren't going to like this. You're not going to want to hear this. But…” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like he didn't do it. He just didn't. 

Alex Well, not only did he not do it. That's a number one. But the other thing is that means that the person who did do it is still out there or in some other part of the prison system. But, you know, you'd like to think..And there was some hope when Larry Krassner is talking and in the film on Chester Home and he says, yeah, we'd like to think that. We want to put the guilty people in jail and let the innocent people go free. 

Clip (Larry Krassner) And you also don't want the innocent person to stay in jail. That ain't right. I mean, duh. 

Rebecca Mm hmm. 

Alex Exactly. And because because you don't want innocent people in prison, because that means the guilty are out there continuing to commit crimes. 

Rebecca Right. Right. Speaking of innocence, though, he still hasn't gotten compensation from the state of Texas, even though there was a period of time where they thought he was gonna get compensation. Right. 

Alex Right. And that, I think, is a huge injustice. So if you're listening in Texas, raise a ruckus because this man deserves compensation for what he went through. You know, at the hands of the state. 

Rebecca Well, moving on to Episode 9 of the Innocence Files, the case of Ken Wyniemko, who, by the way, does not look a lot like Phil Collins. He just doesn't. 

Clip (Ken) Detective Ostin asked me who I thought the composite looks like. I told him it looks like Phil Collins

Rebecca It's different, a different single challenge that one of the lighter moments of this entire series that he is arrested for allegedly raping and robbing a woman in Michigan. And he is immediately harassed by the prosecutor who calls him the Million Dollar Man, sort of saying to him, like, you're not going to be able to fight this. How is that for a setup at the very beginning of a case? 

Alex Right. I mean, again, it just testifies to the need for that certainty that the idea of they have a narrative and they're going to push that narrative no matter what the cost. Like I say, again, in the case of Ken Wyniemko, it's another way of getting at something, which is they decided he was a bad guy. They had evidence from his girlfriend that maybe he was a bad guy. And so they pushed a bad guy narrative. And they hammer at it until they send him down. 

Rebecca Linda Davis is the prosecutor that you focus on in this episode. And she doesn't really seem to have a strong sense of how cases should work in terms of how they're actually investigated and worked. 

Alex She also didn't have much of a sense of regret about what had happened. She seemed perfectly sanguine about what happened to poor Ken Wyniemko. That also is something I have a hard time understanding. 

Rebecca I have a hard time understanding that, too, as the documentary progresses, the Innocence Project gets involved and there are all these opportunities to test items for DNA. And I guess it was that deposition footage of her talking about what she did and didn't do in this case. 

Clip (Linda Davis) It was in a report that there was a semen found on a pair of underwear. I didn't question it. I made an assumption that it was Mr. Wyniemko’s. And it was explained to me by Tom Ostin that the victim had had an affair earlier that night, that she had never had that pair of underwear on after it was initially taken off of her by Mr. Wyniemko, and that it could not have possibly been his semen. So I did not send it for testing. I would have otherwise. 

Rebecca Is that true, do you think? I mean, I'm curious if it's your opinion you didn't direct this portion. I don't know. 

Alex There is directed by Sarah Dowland, who did a lovely job. Yeah, it's hard to know in that moment. Is she lying? Is she remembering things in a way that are... it doesn't make her look particularly good. It either makes her look incompetent or a little bit like a liar. But she doesn't seem to pause too much. She just rolls right into it. Same thing with the detective. 

Rebecca You know, it's interesting that part of this episode that I think I mean, I'm glad that it made me uncomfortable. I think it should. Is that one of the pieces of evidence that Linda kind of brings into the focus is having Ken's ex-girlfriend accuse him of being a rapist because, you know, some of his sexual proclivities lineup allegedly with details of the crime. And there is some discomfort there. The idea that they would lean on that, lean on the idea of having a woman falsely accuse a guy of being a rapist. And that's uncomfortable to watch as a viewer. And I'm wondering if that was uncomfortable to make, you know, as a documentarian, how that was sort of dealt with. 

Alex Well, I think it was. And I think it was also, you know, a question that Sarah had to reckon with a lot, too, was to what extent do you include some of the details, either of his past behavior or the details of the rape itself, which to some extent you really had to in order to be able to get at the facts of the matter. But again, this is part of building a narrative. You want to build the narrative of Ken Wyniemko as a kind of a pervert who could commit this kind of an act. 

Rebecca Why do you think it was important to go to such different parts of the country to tell these three stories, this is your block of episodes...

Alex That's a really good question. And we debated that a lot. And and, you know, we've got Philly, we've got Houston, we've got Detroit. 

I think the idea here, not only for prosecutorial misconduct, but also for the other episodes, was to convey a sense that there was a systematic problem here, that these are individual cases. And each one of these individual cases has its own intrigue, its own drama, its own logic, its own set of characters. But put together, it seems to be pervasive throughout the country and it can happen to a white guy from Michigan. Or a black guy from Houston. Or it’s part of a Philadelphia police force, that's just a, after all, a few miles from University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college. So it could happen anywhere. And it was that systemic quality that I think was so important to this whole series, but also in terms of spreading it around geographically. This is an all American problem. 

Rebecca One of the things that I feel like gets under told in these stories or underrepresented, is that the trauma experienced by the wrongfully convicted of three men in these three episodes, can Chester and Dewayne, who if you were to meet them today and did know anything that happened, you can sort of look at their lives and say they seem okay. But we know that they're not right. 

Alex We know they're not. I mean, I know that Chester's doing the best he can. Having just got up. But it's a hard road back. 24 years in prison. And that's one of the reasons that in the case of the Hollman film, we started that film with shots of the prison and only hearing his disembodied voice from inside of the cell block, that he's less than a human being. You can't even see him or touch him or reckon with him. And the prison recording will interrupt your phone call at every 15 minute interval in order to remind you that you're being listened to. The poignant stories of these in this case, these three men, you know, trying to maintain a sense of decency and humanity in the face of such brutality is impressive and it's a testament to the human spirit. 

Rebecca One of the big themes of your episodes is the lack of accountability for prosecutors in these wrongful convictions. Is there anything that can happen to change that? Or is this something that is just unfixable? 

Alex I don't think it's unfixable. I think there are statutory fixes. So I think, you know, states have to be willing to enact laws that allow you to hold prosecutors to account, that allow you to just, to have them disbarred or even literally charged with crimes and sent to, sent to jail. 

Alex There's also the question of whether or not the federal government can play a stronger role of examining some of these bad prosecutors and filing federal charges against them. So in a way, I think, you know, part of the solution is technical, but part of the solution is, has to do with popular will. And that's where I hope these films can play a role, is let people know, look, you know, it's important, of course, that we prosecute crimes and we hold the guilty to account and we take people who are dangerous to us off the streets. But at the same time, it's also important we get that right. And if people, just for the sake of their own reputations or a misguided sense of the end justifies the means, are methodically putting innocent people in prison. They need to be held to account. 

Rebecca Well, Alex Gibney, I do think that people who watch these three episodes of the Innocence Files that are your block of this project will come away with that. And I can't thank you enough for talking to me about it. This has been a really fascinating conversation. 

Alex Thank you so much. A great pleasure. 

Rebecca And that's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much to Alex Gibney. And remember, if you want to hear more of my thoughts on The Innocence Files, check out my other podcast, Crime Writers On... You can find this show on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe rate and review this show. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And thanks for listening.