Finally, “The Innocence Files” gets to its most stomach-churning chapters, involving overzealous and corrupt officials who hid evidence or purposefully misled jurors. Even here, the production is smart in its focused rage, spending more time on the victims and on the rescuers than the villains, profiling the people who see these prosecutorial miscarriages and devote their lives to rectifying them.

The scope of “The Innocence Files” is what makes it so remarkable. It naturally spends the most time with the men who were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated, but doesn’t forget the other players, including victims and even jurors. It doesn’t condemn prosecutors or cops in a way that is sensational, and it even has sympathy for those who now recognize their errors. We’ve all seen stories of injustice, but few with this wide a reach; we've seen even fewer that tackle this much, while presenting a portrait this extensive and detailed, working as both a human-interest story and commentary on an entire system.

Ultimately, wrongful convictions harm far more than just one person. They expand the suffering for the victims by delaying their justice; they traumatize new people like the loved ones of innocent men behind bars; they even allow the actual perpetrators to get away with more crimes. If the bite-mark evidence in the first case hadn’t been so faulty, the second murder may have never happened.

Great non-fiction filmmaking has the power to enact change, and my hope is that “The Innocence Files” forces people with the control to change junk science, bad prosecutions, and general incompetency to do something about it. And maybe give The Innocence Project more power to correct the wrongs. There are undeniably hundreds of innocent people behind bars as you read this. I'm just optimistic that “The Innocence Files” has the ability to help ensure there are fewer in the future. 

Whole series screened for review.

Premieres on Netflix, Wednesday, 4/15.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46tn55lmaO7sK%2FEp5qeZZaeuaa%2FjKamr6GVYr%2BmwsiermZqYGd9