Justice shouldn’t depend on whether a Netflix showrunner makes a popular drama or an influencer decides to champion someone’s release.
We’ve apparently reached the point in the ongoing decay of the American empire where all it takes to get a pair of criminal defendants resentenced is for a Netflix showrunner to make a factually dubious drama about the crime that got them sent to prison, for a bunch of randos to sign an online petition, and for a reality TV star who got famous from a sex tape to champion the cause. Throw in a po-faced, progressive district attorney in a tough re-election fight (L.A. county’s George Gascón), and presto: Erik and Lyle Menendez, sentenced to prison in 1996 for shooting their parents to death, could very well walk free soon.
Assuming that a judge agrees with prosecutors’ request for the resentencing, that is. If that’s the case, then a Netflix series, makeup-hawking influencers, and the hive mind of the Internet will have been able to do what criminal defense attorneys could not.
