A Netflix documentary tells how an episode of an HBO series helped exonerate a defendant who was facing the death penalty.
It all began when a man named Juan Catalan was arrested on August 12, 2003, accused of killing 16-year-old Martha Puebla on May 12, 2003, who had testified in a case in which Juan’s brother was accused. She was shot in the head in front of her home by a passenger in a sedan.
A witness witnessed the murder and fled. Found by the police, he gave the description of the supposed killer. A composite portrait is made which looks very much like Juan Catalan. The latter was present at the trial involving his brother and had therefore attended Puebla’s testimony. He is placed behind bars.
netflix Juan Catalan in the dock
Except that on May 12, Catalan would have an alibi. He claims he was at the stadium watching a Dodgers game, the Los Angeles baseball team, accompanied by his 6-year-old daughter, his cousin Miguel and his friend Ruben.
According to the documentary Long Shot, which recounts the case, his lawyer Todd Melnick searched images filmed during the match and found him in the audience among tens of thousands of people, but the quality was insufficient to exonerate him, as the rest of the match tickets. But when Melnick learned that an HBO comedy, Larry and His Navel, was coming to shoot scenes that day, he contacted the production firm.
netflix
Larry David
But producer Tim Gibbons doesn’t believe this story. He replies that the images of a series being filmed are never shown to the public and that they will have to wait until the episode is broadcast on HBO. At Melnick’s insistence, Gibbons asked the series’ creator and lead actor, Larry David, what he thought.
Larry David is the co-creator of Seinfeld and has been broadcasting Larry and His Navel on HBO for three years. The episode involving the Dodgers game is the seventh of the upcoming season 4. Several shots were taken during the game and on one of the six rush tapes, Juan Catalan can clearly be seen returning with his daughter from having purchased confectionery:
HBO
Juan Catalan was good at the match
Except that the prosecution does not give up so quickly and considers that the accused could have left the match before its end and still committed the murder. Thanks to a phone call given to Catalan by his wife, Melnick manages to prove that his client remained until the end of the match and that he could not have gone to the scene of the crime and been there at the time the shooting took place. He is declared innocent.
The Long Shot documentary gives the full conclusion of the case, particularly with regard to the abuses committed by the police during the investigation, but we will not reveal any more to leave it to subscribers to discover.