A New ‘Dateline’ Series Will Cash In On the ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘Serial’ Craze

They were here first, dammit!

Dateline is making a brazen, and frankly impressive, play for the true-crime-obsessed audiences who have made Serial and Making a Murderer cultural phenomena.

In The Shadow of Justice is a four-part compilation of previously aired (three) and new (one) Dateline episodes dedicated to the stories of innocent men jailed for crimes they didn’t commit. “A Bronx Tale,” “The Wrong Man,” and “The Confession,” will re-air every week starting this Sunday, and on February 14th Dateline will premiere the story of Robert Davis, who has said he is a victim of confession coercion. From Dateline‘s announcement:

“Though Davis denied any involvement, at the end of a 5-hour interrogation he confessed to the crime he claimed he didn’t commit. For more than a decade, his lawyer struggled to prove that Davis’ confession was false and coerced. Getting the conviction reversed would take a miracle, until he got support from the most unexpected sources.”

The savvy programmers at Dateline have clearly noticed that American audiences are more inclined err on the side of wrongful conviction claims proving to be true rather than the tactic of a guilty man grasping at freedom. We want to believe!

In the Shadow of Justice begins with “A Bronx Tale” on Sunday, January 24th.

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