True Miracle: How Seinfeld Creator's New Show Saved Man From Death Row
When justice system fails you, sometimes rescue comes from the most unexpected of places. This time, it's... sitcoms.
In 2003 a man was awaiting death penalty for a crime he didn't commit. A comedy show starring a legendary Seinfeld creator saved him from death row. And here's how.
As told in Long Shot, a 2017 Netflix documentary depicting the unbelievably miraculous story, a man named Juan Catalan was arrested and convicted of murder of a 16-year-old girl.
At the trial, he only had one defense strategy: to tell the truth. That afternoon he was at the Dodgers Stadium. But there was only one way to prove it: look through video tapes that caught all of 56 thousand people who attended the game.
Catalan's lawyer did just that and found a still of Juan on the tapes. Sadly, its quality was bad enough for it to be dismissed as viable evidence of Catalan's innocence.
And that's where the Larry David's (creator of seminal sitcom Seinfeld) show Curb Your Enthusiasm enters the picture.
As it turned out that same day that Catalan attended the game at the Dodgers Stadium, an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was being filmed there (The Car Pool Lane, from season 4).
The footage from the set of this episode showed Juan Catalan clearly. With time codes attached to the footage it could firmly place this innocent man just enjoying the game with his daughter.
Turns out, the American justice system almost had Juan Catalan killed for something he never did.
His prosecutor was so hell-bent on bringing the man to death row that overlooked clear missteps that the police have made (on purpose or unintentionally) in this murder investigation.
Cell-phone records were not pulled until only after the Curb Your Enthusiasm footage was found. Those records showed Catalan at and near the stadium at the time of murder.
If it wasn't for the acclaimed comedy show, an innocent man would be dead now, and no justice would be served in the case of the murder of a 16-year-old.