Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Innocence Files’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Fight To Free Wrongfully Convicted People

The Innocence Files is a nine-part docuseries that explains the weaknesses in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful convictions. Each 3-part arc examines a different aspect of the system that can fail during a case: The Evidence, The Witness and The Prosecution. In each arc, one or two cases are followed from their first days through the trials, and how the attorneys at The Innocence Project work to overturn the convictions.

THE INNOCENCE FILES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Peter Neufeld shows up at the offices of The Innocence Project, located at the Cardozo School of Law at New York’s Yeshiva University. We see him and the nonprofit’s co-founder, Barry Scheck, start their days.

The Gist: After an intro where Scheck and Neufeld talk about how angry some of the cases they’ve worked on have made them, and the fact that they can only work on one percent of the thousands of cases that land in their mailbox, we start with the first 3-episode arc: The Evidence. In Noxubee County, Mississippi, in the early ’90s, two 3-year-old girls are sexually assaulted and killed. Both had what looked like extensive bite marks on their bodies. In both cases, a controversial forensic odontologist, Dr. Michael West, was brought in to examine the teeth marks on the bodies, and match those marks up to teeth molds taken from a list of suspects.

In the first case, the 1990 murder of Courtney Smith, witness testimony from her then-5-year-old sister Ashley, as well as what Dr. West claimed was a perfect match between the teeth marks and the molds he made, led to the conviction and life sentence of Levon Brooks. The problem is that Brooks had never been seen as a violent criminal before, especially by one of the jurors, who used to play with Brooks when both were kids.

The second case, the 1992 death of Christina Jackson, occurred 4 months after Brooks was sentenced. The case had many similarities to Smith’s case, including bite marks on the body. Investigators zoomed in on her mother’s boyfriend, Kennedy Brewer, as the main suspect. West’s examination of Brewer’s teeth mold up against the teeth marks on Jackson’s body also led to Brewer’s conviction for capital murder.

But this time, Brewer’s lawyer brings in Dr. Richard Souviron, a forensic odontologist famous for his help in the Ted Bundy case; Dr. Souviron called Dr. West’s evidence into question, as well as the comparison method he used of butting the teeth mold right up against the skin of Jackson’s body. It’s the first sign that bite mark evidence, which came into play around the time of the Bundy case, can’t always be reliable.

Our Take: There are a number of documentary heavy hitters involved in The Innocence Files, including Alex Gibney, Roger Ross Williams (who directed the first episode) and Liz Garbus. That expert storytelling brings a chilling picture of just how the justice system can go awry and fail at any point, and those failures can be ones of arrogance, racism, carelessness, all of the above, or something completely unexpected.

In the cases of Brooks and Brewer, the failure lies in an overzealous prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, whom, in the absence of any physical evidence, relies too heavily on the bite mark analysis of Dr. West. It doesn’t take a lot of directorial manipulation to show that Dr. West’s methods of analyzing bite marks were unorthodox to say the least, and that the confidence he had in his findings was at the very least misplaced.

Bite mark evidence is imprecise, and the best forensic odontologists tend to only reveal that the evidence they’ve examined is “consistent with” a particular individual making those bite marks. But Dr. West was so sure of his methods, that, in the case of Brewer, he said that the wounds were “indeed and without doubt” made by the suspect.

Because these cases will be examined in a 3-part arc, the filmmakers have time to go into just how unreliable the evidence against these two gentlemen was, and how they set out to undermine Dr. West’s “expert” testimony. We know that he’s been discredited, though it looks like he feels that by itself is unfair, judging by the interviews he gave. We wish part one went further into the Innocence Project’s effort to discredit the evidence and Dr. West, but we also understand why the filmmakers felt like they needed to take some time to set things up.

Sex and Skin: Not that kind of show.

Parting Shot: Brewer reads from the letter he sent The Innocence Project in 2006. “I know if you can get someone to look into my case, they will easily see that they have the wrong person locked up.”

Sleeper Star: Both Brooks and Brewer are out of prison, having their wrongful convictions overturned with the help of The Innocence Project, and they both talk about their cases without a trace of anger or bitterness, which would be understandable given the circumstances.

Most Pilot-y Line: The use of subtitles for people speaking English was a little offensive. We get that the accent of people from the deep South can be a bit inscrutable at times, but it felt that the only people that were getting subtitles were Black, and that’s not a good look on the part of the filmmakers.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Innocence Files blows up the commonly-held notions that certain kinds of physical evidence, as well as other parts of the criminal justice system, can’t be called into question. After you watch it, you’ll be more aware of just what can go wrong, even when people’s lives are on the line.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Innocence Files On Netflix