Latest / Crime Night / Why the system values reputation over truth

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Why the system values reputation over truth · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine waking up on what should
0:02
Speaker 1: be just a quiet, joyful morning. Right.
0:05
Speaker 2: Like the day after Christmas.
0:06
Speaker 1: Exactly. You know, there is probably still wrapping paper on
0:09
Speaker 1: the living room floor. The house is completely silent. But
0:12
Speaker 1: you walk through your home and instead of peace, you
0:16
Speaker 1: find that your child is gone.
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Speaker 2: Which, I mean, that alone is already the ultimate nightmare
0:21
Speaker 2: for any parent.
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Speaker 1: But it gets so much worse. Your child isn't just missing.
0:25
Speaker 1: You discover they have been brutally murdered right there inside
0:28
Speaker 1: your own home.
0:29
Speaker 2: And you are just, you know, completely paralyzed by this
0:32
Speaker 2: grief that is so heavy you can barely breathe.
0:35
Speaker 1: Utterly paralyzed. But as you are literally drowning in that trauma,
0:39
Speaker 1: you look outside your window and the local police and
0:41
Speaker 1: the national media are camped on your lawn.
0:44
Speaker 2: And they're actively conspiring to convince the entire country that
0:47
Speaker 2: you did it. Right.
0:48
Speaker 1: That isn't just some hypothetical nightmare scenario. That was the
0:51
Speaker 1: grim reality for the Ramsey family in 1996.
0:54
Speaker 2: It really exposes a, well, a catastrophic flaw in how
0:59
Speaker 2: Police and the 24-hour news cycle basically feed off each other.
1:03
Speaker 1: Which is exactly what this deep dive is all about.
1:06
Speaker 1: We are exploring the really complicated intersection between media, law enforcement,
1:12
Speaker 1: and the true crime genre itself.
1:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. And to do that, we are pulling from the
1:16
Speaker 2: archives of a pioneering social justice documentary filmmaker.
1:21
Speaker 1: Someone who has spent decades... investigating some of America's most
1:25
Speaker 1: notoriously flawed cases.
1:27
Speaker 2: Specifically, the JonBenet Ramsey murder and the West Memphis Three.
1:31
Speaker 1: And to really grasp how a greeting family could be
1:34
Speaker 1: publicly convicted without a trial, you have to look at
1:37
Speaker 1: the exact moment in media history when the Ramsey murder happened.
1:41
Speaker 2: Right, 1996.
1:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, the media landscape was literally shifting beneath the public's feet.
1:45
Speaker 1: I mean, the O.J. Simpson trial had just wrapped up.
1:48
Speaker 2: And that trial fundamentally altered the entire DNA of television news.
1:52
Speaker 1: Oh, completely.
1:52
Speaker 2: Because, you know, before OJ, you basically just had a
1:55
Speaker 2: few networks doing their standard evening broadcasts.
1:59
Speaker 1: But then there's this massive explosion. You go from three
2:01
Speaker 1: channels to like 500 cable channels almost overnight.
2:05
Speaker 2: And those network news divisions had a very lucrative realization
2:09
Speaker 2: during the OJ trial.
2:10
Speaker 1: That news didn't just have to be a public service anymore.
2:13
Speaker 2: Exactly. It could be a massive profit center. Right.
2:16
Speaker 1: For decades, networks operated their news divisions at a loss.
2:20
Speaker 1: It was basically a public service they provided in exchange
2:23
Speaker 1: for their FCC licenses.
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Speaker 2: While the entertainment divisions made the actual money.
2:28
Speaker 1: Exactly. But in 1996, that invisible wall just completely collapsed.
2:34
Speaker 1: News became entertainment.
2:36
Speaker 2: And when news has to make money, the journalistic standards,
2:39
Speaker 2: they just plummet.
2:40
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. Reporters were taking these completely unverified stories... often
2:45
Speaker 1: actively leaked by the police, by the way, and just
2:48
Speaker 1: broadcasting them on national television.
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Speaker 2: Without asking a single critical question.
2:51
Speaker 1: I compare it to feeding a newly hatched monster. I mean,
2:54
Speaker 1: it demanded fresh meat every single night, and the networks
2:57
Speaker 1: didn't care if the meat was tainted.
2:59
Speaker 2: That is a great analogy. And the filmmaker whose case
3:02
Speaker 2: files we are analyzing, he actually correlates this specific era
3:06
Speaker 2: to the modern rise of opinion journalism.
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Speaker 1: Where speculation sells way better than waiting for the facts.
3:12
Speaker 2: Right. It established a blueprint. You can draw a direct
3:16
Speaker 2: line from the coverage of the Ramsey case to the
3:18
Speaker 2: fragmented reality audiences experience today.
3:22
Speaker 1: Where different networks present just, you know, completely opposite versions
3:26
Speaker 1: of the truth.
3:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. The JonBenet case was essentially patient zero for the
3:30
Speaker 2: sensationalized fact optional media ecosystem today. that you are forced
3:35
Speaker 2: to navigate right now.
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Speaker 1: It was like an algorithmic feedback loop before algorithms even existed.
3:40
Speaker 2: Right. The police would float a rumor to a reporter.
3:43
Speaker 1: And the networks would broadcast that rumor as a headline
3:46
Speaker 1: to fill airtime.
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Speaker 2: And then the police would point to that public broadcast
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Speaker 2: to justify investigating the rumor as a fact.
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Speaker 1: A completely closed loop of misinformation. But that raises a
3:56
Speaker 1: huge question. Why were the police feeding the media these
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Speaker 1: tainted narratives in the first place?
4:00
Speaker 2: Well, you have to look at the environment in Boulder, Colorado,
4:03
Speaker 2: back in 1996.
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Speaker 1: Right. It was a relatively small, affluent, very safe town.
4:08
Speaker 2: Exactly. The police force there was entirely unequipped to handle
4:11
Speaker 2: a bizarre, complex child homicide.
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Speaker 1: And when investigators are overwhelmed like that and they lack experience,
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Speaker 1: an immense amount of pressure builds up.
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Speaker 2: And that pressure invariably creates a psychological trap known as
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Speaker 2: tunnel vision.
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Speaker 1: They lock on to an early theory in this case
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Speaker 1: that the parents were involved, and they begin filtering every
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Speaker 1: single piece of evidence through that specific lens.
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Speaker 2: Discarding anything that doesn't fit the narrative.
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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just passive confirmation bias either. This is
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Speaker 1: the wild part.
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Speaker 2: Right, the deposition.
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Speaker 1: Yes. Years later, an investigator from the original case, Steve Thomas,
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Speaker 1: admitted under oath in a civil deposition that the department
4:51
Speaker 1: had a deliberate strategy to smoke out the parents.
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Speaker 2: They were intentionally planting, incriminating, totally false stories in the press.
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Speaker 1: The tactical goal was to isolate the parents, create this
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Speaker 1: intense public pressure, and generate enough paranoia that one of
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Speaker 1: them would crack and turn on the other.
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Speaker 2: Which is, I mean, it's a textbook manipulation tactic used
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Speaker 2: in interrogation rooms, but they applied it on a national
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Speaker 2: media scale.
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Speaker 1: And in doing so, the Boulder police actually refused outside
5:17
Speaker 1: help from more experienced agencies.
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Speaker 2: They focused their entire massive investigation— solely on building a
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Speaker 2: case against the parents rather than, you know, following the
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Speaker 2: physical evidence to find the actual killer.
5:31
Speaker 1: But playing devil's advocate here, if you look at the timeline,
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Speaker 1: you can kind of see why the public latched on
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Speaker 1: to the police narrative so easily.
5:39
Speaker 2: You mean the lawyers?
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Speaker 1: Yeah. The parents hired high-profile defense attorneys almost immediately. I mean,
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Speaker 1: if you are sitting on your couch watching CNN in 1996,
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Speaker 1: that screams guilt.
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Speaker 2: Right. The immediate assumption is, why hide behind a wall
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Speaker 2: of lawyers if you have absolutely nothing to hide?
5:55
Speaker 1: Exactly. Or, you know, why refuse polygraphs? Doesn't that look guilty?
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Speaker 2: It does to the public. And that is the exact
6:01
Speaker 2: assumption the police were banking on people making.
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Speaker 1: But it's fundamentally flawed.
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Speaker 2: Completely. Because if you look at the mechanical reality of
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Speaker 2: the justice system, innocent people go to prison all the
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Speaker 2: time precisely because they assume their innocence will protect them.
6:15
Speaker 1: So they just talk to the cops and they don't
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Speaker 1: ask for a lawyer.
6:18
Speaker 2: Right. Seeking legal counsel isn't an admission of guilt. It
6:22
Speaker 2: is the most basic, necessary protection against a system that
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Speaker 2: is actively leaking lies to the press to destroy your life.
6:31
Speaker 1: The Ramseys realized very quickly that the police weren't trying
6:35
Speaker 1: to solve a crime. They were trying to build a trap.
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Speaker 2: Of course they needed attorneys.
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Speaker 1: Which flips the entire premise of the justice system on
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Speaker 1: its head. They were building a narrative first and shopping
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Speaker 1: for evidence second.
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Speaker 2: And the most tragic result of that tunnel vision is
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Speaker 2: that the actual physical forensic truth of the crime scene
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Speaker 2: was completely ignored.
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Speaker 1: The public spent decades arguing over these bizarre theories, while
6:58
Speaker 1: the forensic facts told a completely different story.
7:01
Speaker 2: The physical evidence contradicts almost every theory the police and
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Speaker 2: the public latched onto.
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Speaker 1: Right, like the cause of death destroys that popular accidental
7:09
Speaker 1: bedwetting freakout theory.
7:11
Speaker 2: Where people thought a parent just snapped in the middle
7:13
Speaker 2: of the night.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because JonBenet was tortured. She was strangled while she
7:16
Speaker 1: was still alive using a highly sophisticated garrote.
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Speaker 2: Which caused severe petechial hemorrhaging. Plus, she suffered a massive
7:24
Speaker 2: skull fracture.
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Speaker 1: And there were red marks on her neck showing she
7:28
Speaker 1: desperately tried to pry the garrote loose.
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Speaker 2: I mean, none of that points to a panicked family
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Speaker 2: member covering up a momentary accident. It defies all logic.
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Speaker 1: Yet the institutional tunnel vision was so strong that the
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Speaker 1: actual evidence was just sidelined.
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Speaker 2: And the piece of evidence that highlights this failure more
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Speaker 2: than anything else is the DNA.
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Speaker 1: The DNA is just a massive red flag. Back in 1997,
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Speaker 1: investigators found foreign, unidentified male DNA mixed with JonBenet's blood
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Speaker 1: on her clothing.
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Speaker 2: From an assault with a paintbrush handle, the killer literally
8:01
Speaker 2: left his DNA behind.
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Speaker 1: And it definitively does not belong to a member of
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Speaker 1: the Ramsey family.
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Speaker 2: Which brings us to, honestly, the most frustrating aspect of
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Speaker 2: this case today. With modern, advanced investigative genetic genealogy.
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Speaker 1: Which is the exact same technology that allowed authorities to
8:15
Speaker 1: finally catch the Golden State Killer, right?
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Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. With that tech, that mixed DNA sample could
8:22
Speaker 2: be separated and tested. They could potentially get a clear
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Speaker 2: familial profile of the killer within weeks.
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Speaker 1: But the Boulder police aren't doing it. I mean, John Ramsey,
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Speaker 1: the father, is 80 years old now. He has been
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Speaker 1: begging for these specific tests to be run.
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Speaker 2: He even went so far as to petition the governor
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Speaker 2: of Colorado just to force the state's cold case review
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Speaker 2: board to intervene.
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Speaker 1: And yet the local police refused to update him on
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Speaker 1: the status of the evidence. He doesn't even know if
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Speaker 1: they still possess it or if it just degraded in
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Speaker 1: a storage locker somewhere.
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Speaker 2: It is baffling.
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Speaker 1: I am in sheer disbelief over this. Why on earth
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Speaker 1: wouldn't a modern police chief, you know, a completely new administration,
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Speaker 1: jump at the opportunity to be the hero who finally
9:03
Speaker 1: solves the the most infamous coal case in American history.
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Speaker 2: Because doing so would require an institution to admit it
9:09
Speaker 2: was wrong.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: It points to a much broader, deeply ingrained psychological flaw
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Speaker 2: within the justice system itself. Institutional authorities have an almost
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Speaker 2: pathological inability to admit when they have made a catastrophic error.
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Speaker 1: So testing that DNA today and potentially finding a random
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Speaker 1: intruder means the city of Boulder would have to admit
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Speaker 1: that their decades-long publicly funded pursuit of the parents was
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Speaker 1: entirely baseless.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. It becomes an issue of liability and self-preservation. Admitting
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Speaker 2: fault opens the door to massive public scrutiny, potential lawsuits.
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Speaker 1: And just a complete loss of institutional credibility.
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Speaker 2: They would literally rather let a child killer remain unidentified
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Speaker 2: than admit their paperwork and their initial theories were wrong.
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Speaker 1: They choose obfuscation and silence over accountability.
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Speaker 2: The some-cost fallacy takes over. They have invested so much
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Speaker 2: narrative capital into the parents' guilt that to reverse course
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Speaker 2: now is viewed internally as institutional suicide.
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Speaker 1: And that institutional refusal to admit fault isn't just unique
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Speaker 1: to Boulder. In fact, if you look at how the
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Speaker 1: state of Arkansas handled the West Memphis Three case around
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Speaker 1: that exact same time, You see the identical defensive playbook
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Speaker 1: being run.
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Speaker 2: With devastating human consequences.
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Speaker 1: Transport yourself to 1993. Picture the rural, really dense woods
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Speaker 1: of Arkansas. Three teenagers were arrested for the brutal murder
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Speaker 1: of three eight-year-old boys.
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Speaker 2: And the narrative the local police constructed and that the
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Speaker 2: terrified community eagerly bought into was that this was a
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Speaker 2: satanic ritual killing.
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Speaker 1: When the documentary filmmaker we've been referencing first arrived in Arkansas...
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Speaker 1: The project was supposed to be just a straightforward look
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Speaker 1: at juvenile delinquency.
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Speaker 2: Right. The chief detective actually assured the film crew that
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Speaker 2: on a scale of 1 to 10, the evidence against
10:53
Speaker 2: these three teenagers was an 11.
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Speaker 1: An 11 out of 10. But then the filmmaker sits
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Speaker 1: in that courtroom, the cameras are rolling, and he slowly
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Speaker 1: realizes that the 11 out of 10 evidence doesn't actually exist.
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Speaker 2: There was absolutely zero physical evidence. No blood, no DNA,
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Speaker 2: no fibers connecting these three teenagers to the crime scene.
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Speaker 1: So how does a prosecutor... Secure a capital murder conviction
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Speaker 1: with zero physical proof.
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Speaker 2: They weaponize fear. They rely on the satanic panic that
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Speaker 2: was sweeping the country in the early 90s.
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Speaker 1: Because when you lack physical evidence, you put a person's
11:26
Speaker 1: character and identity on trial.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. The police managed to extract a highly problematic confession
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Speaker 2: from one of the teens, Jesse Meschile, who had a
11:35
Speaker 2: notably low IQ.
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Speaker 1: And he was interrogated for hours without counsel, which is
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Speaker 1: a classic environment for generating false confessions.
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Speaker 2: But the way they prosecuted the supposed ringleader, Damien Echols,
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Speaker 2: is just a masterclass in moral panic. His primary crime
11:51
Speaker 2: was being an outcast in a conservative small town.
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Speaker 1: He wore black clothing. He read Stephen King novels.
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Speaker 2: And the prosecution actually introduced his taste in music as
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Speaker 2: admissible evidence of a murderous mindset.
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Speaker 1: They argued to a jury that because he listened to Metallica,
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Speaker 1: he was capable of participating in a satanic ritual sacrifice.
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Speaker 1: I mean, think about the sheer mechanics of that for
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Speaker 1: a second.
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Speaker 2: It's insane.
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Speaker 1: Imagine being a teenager sitting in a courtroom and watching
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Speaker 1: a prosecutor use your Spotify wrapped and your choice in
12:20
Speaker 1: library books to send you to death row.
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Speaker 2: It demonstrates how easily the legal standards for evidence can
12:26
Speaker 2: evaporate when a community is gripped by hysteria and just
12:29
Speaker 2: demanding a conviction.
12:31
Speaker 1: And what is so vital about this specific moment in
12:33
Speaker 1: the filmmaker's career is how this realization fundamentally shifted his
12:38
Speaker 1: approach to his work.
12:40
Speaker 2: He realized that pure cinema verite just wasn't going to
12:43
Speaker 2: be enough. Right.
12:45
Speaker 1: For those who might not know the exact term, cinema
12:47
Speaker 1: verite is that strict documentary style where the filmmaker acts
12:50
Speaker 1: entirely as a fly on the wall.
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Speaker 2: You just roll the camera, you observe the reality unfolding,
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Speaker 2: and you explicitly do not intervene or editorialize.
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Speaker 1: But when you are watching innocent teenagers being railroaded toward
13:01
Speaker 1: the execution chamber based on heavy metal lyrics, being a
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Speaker 1: passive observer becomes morally unviable.
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Speaker 2: The project morphed from observational cinema into active social justice advocacy.
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Speaker 2: The films exposed the absolute lack of evidence to the world.
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Speaker 1: Proving that sometimes, when the legal system is profoundly broken,
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Speaker 1: media scrutiny and public pressure are the only tools left
13:22
Speaker 1: to correct it.
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Speaker 2: And that media scrutiny actually worked. High-profile figures like Peter
13:26
Speaker 2: Jackson stepped in, legal defense funds were raised.
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Speaker 1: And after 18 agonizing years in prison, with Damien Echols
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Speaker 1: sitting in solitary confinement on death row, They were finally released.
13:39
Speaker 2: But they were not exonerated. The state of Arkansas didn't
13:42
Speaker 2: just open the doors and apologize. They forced the men
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Speaker 2: into what is called an Alford plea.
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Speaker 1: Which is one of the most cynical legal maneuvers in
13:50
Speaker 1: the justice system. It operates like a legal hostage negotiation.
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Speaker 2: It is essentially a legal paradox. It requires the defendants
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Speaker 2: to officially plead guilty to the crime. acknowledging on paper
14:01
Speaker 2: that the state has enough evidence to convict them.
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Speaker 1: While simultaneously allowing them to maintain their innocence on the record.
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Speaker 2: Right. The state essentially says, we will let you walk
14:10
Speaker 2: out of this prison today, but only if you sign
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Speaker 2: a piece of paper saying we were right all along.
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Speaker 1: And by forcing that guilty plea, the state completely shields
14:18
Speaker 1: itself from multi-million dollar wrongful conviction lawsuits.
14:21
Speaker 2: The prosecutors get to keep their win record intact. The
14:24
Speaker 2: state avoids financial ruin and the men get their physical freedoms.
14:28
Speaker 1: But the human cost of that compromise is staggering.
14:31
Speaker 2: Because they took that plea to escape death row, they
14:35
Speaker 2: remain convicted felons in the eyes of the law to
14:38
Speaker 2: this very day.
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Speaker 1: Their daily lives are still dictated by a crime they
14:42
Speaker 1: didn't commit. When they try to travel internationally, they are
14:45
Speaker 1: frequently stopped in borders or denied entry because their passports
14:49
Speaker 1: flag them as convicted child murderers.
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Speaker 2: And the most infuriating parallel to the JonBenet case.
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Speaker 1: The DNA testing. Yes.
14:57
Speaker 2: The state of Arkansas still actively blocks these men from
14:59
Speaker 2: conducting modern DNA testing on the remaining crime scene evidence.
15:04
Speaker 1: Testing that could definitively identify the real killer and fully
15:07
Speaker 1: clear their names.
15:08
Speaker 2: It is the exact same institutional playbook we saw in Boulder.
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Speaker 2: The system is fiercely protecting its own conviction record and
15:15
Speaker 2: reputation rather than seeking the actual truth.
15:18
Speaker 1: Which brings us to a really critical intersection regarding how
15:20
Speaker 1: you consume these narratives.
15:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:23
Speaker 1: If the media has the power to orchestrate tsunamis of
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Speaker 1: public shame and ruin lives, as we saw with the Ramseys.
15:28
Speaker 2: But also possesses the power to pull innocent men off
15:31
Speaker 2: death row, as we saw with the West Memphis Three.
15:34
Speaker 1: What is your ethical responsibility as a consumer of this genre?
15:37
Speaker 2: Well, the filmmaker we've been tracking throughout this deep dive
15:41
Speaker 2: actually despises the term true crime.
15:44
Speaker 1: He views it as a label for content that often
15:47
Speaker 1: just wallows in the misery of others purely for entertainment value.
15:51
Speaker 2: He prefers to categorize his work as social justice, and
15:54
Speaker 2: that perspective was forged through a profound psychological toll.
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Speaker 1: Early in his career, he had a jarring epiphany. He
16:02
Speaker 1: had spent the entire day in a dark editing bay,
16:05
Speaker 1: scrutinizing hours of unspeakable, gruesome crime scene footage of murdered children.
16:10
Speaker 2: Then he drove home, walked into his nursery, and picked
16:13
Speaker 2: up his own 10-month-old daughter.
16:14
Speaker 1: He described how he started flashing back to the autopsy
16:17
Speaker 1: photos while holding his own child.
16:18
Speaker 2: He felt fundamentally robbed of his innocence. To survive proximity
16:22
Speaker 2: to that kind of darkness, a person has to compartmentalize heavily.
16:26
Speaker 1: But more importantly, it requires a rigorous shift in intentionality.
16:29
Speaker 1: He made a conscious decision that he would only pursue
16:31
Speaker 1: projects that actively move the needle or serve a definitive
16:35
Speaker 1: societal purpose.
16:36
Speaker 2: He applies that metric to everything he creates now. For instance,
16:39
Speaker 2: he made a documentary about Ted Bundy and initially faced
16:42
Speaker 2: intense criticism.
16:43
Speaker 1: Right. People accused him of giving a platform to a
16:46
Speaker 1: serial killer, of glorifying the violence.
16:49
Speaker 2: But he didn't make the film to showcase the gore.
16:52
Speaker 2: He engineered it specifically as a cautionary tale.
16:56
Speaker 1: At the time, he had two bright college-age daughters at
16:59
Speaker 1: home who fit Bundy's or his exact victim profile perfectly.
17:04
Speaker 2: And neither of them had any idea who Ted Bundy was.
17:07
Speaker 1: He wanted to dismantle the myth that predators always look
17:10
Speaker 1: like monsters hiding in the shadows. He wanted to warn
17:13
Speaker 1: young women that sometimes the most dangerous predators are are charming,
17:17
Speaker 1: good-looking guys who just ask for a little help carrying
17:20
Speaker 1: books to their car.
17:22
Speaker 2: It is about extracting the underlying lesson. Ethical consumption of
17:26
Speaker 2: these stories requires a mission.
17:27
Speaker 1: It is not about rubbernecking at a tragedy on the
17:30
Speaker 1: side of the highway just to feel a fleeting sense
17:33
Speaker 1: of suspense.
17:33
Speaker 2: No, it is about identifying systemic flaws to protect others,
17:37
Speaker 2: demanding accountability from institutions, and understanding the mechanics of how
17:41
Speaker 2: these injustices occur so they aren't repeated.
17:44
Speaker 1: Think about what this means for you the next time
17:46
Speaker 1: you turn on a true crime documentary while, you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: folding laundry or commuting home.
17:50
Speaker 2: It is so easy to consume these stories as popcorn entertainment,
17:54
Speaker 2: as if they are just plot points in a movie.
17:56
Speaker 1: But these are the worst days of actual people's lives.
17:59
Speaker 1: They are grieving parents whose trauma was weaponized for television ratings.
18:03
Speaker 2: They are innocent teenagers in a rural town who lost
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Speaker 2: two decades of their lives because a prosecutor didn't like
18:08
Speaker 2: their clothes.
18:09
Speaker 1: When you step back and look at the through line
18:11
Speaker 1: of these investigations... It paints a very stark picture of
18:16
Speaker 1: our legal machinery.
18:17
Speaker 2: The combination of sensationalist, profit-driven media and defensive tunnel vision
18:22
Speaker 2: policing is an incredibly toxic brew.
18:26
Speaker 1: It has allowed actual killers to walk free. It has
18:29
Speaker 1: legally branded innocent people as felons for the rest of
18:32
Speaker 1: their lives.
18:32
Speaker 2: And it has left grieving families like John Ramsey navigating
18:36
Speaker 2: decades of trauma entirely without answers.
18:38
Speaker 1: It is a devastating reality. And it leaves you with
18:41
Speaker 1: a chilling question to ponder. Something to really chew on
18:44
Speaker 1: long after this deep dive ends.
18:46
Speaker 2: Right, about the ultimate mandate of our justice system.
18:49
Speaker 1: Exactly. If that mandate is to uncover the truth, why
18:53
Speaker 1: do prosecutors and police departments fight so desperately to block
18:57
Speaker 1: DNA testing after a conviction has been made or a
19:00
Speaker 1: theory has been publicly established?
19:02
Speaker 2: When they refuse to test the DNA found in a
19:05
Speaker 2: young girl's clothing, or when they spend taxpayer dollars fighting
19:09
Speaker 2: to block the testing of evidence from the West Memphis woods?
19:11
Speaker 1: You have to ask, what are they really trying to protect?
19:13
Speaker 1: Are they protecting the public from a killer?
19:15
Speaker 2: Or are they just protecting their own reputations?
19:18
Speaker 1: Until the system is forced to prioritize the truth over
19:21
Speaker 1: its own ego, those questions are going to remain completely unanswered.