User Reviews

In this series, two experienced barristers tackle old criminal trials. Both barristers interact with various distant relatives of the defendant, many of whom believe that their relative should have been given a fairer trial or a more lenient sentence. The key question is : would the verdict still stand nowadays, or would it be declared unsafe ?

I like the series, alhough for me each episode might be a quarter of an hour longer, paying greater attention to the legal aspects of the matter. At this point I need to warn you that I've got an unusually high tolerance for legal arguments, procedural discussions, courtroom scenes and so on, meaning that there won't be too many viewers around who share this criticism...

The concept behind the series is pretty interesting, although it sometimes seems to stray into an ill-advised attempt to blame people from 1880 or 1920 for not having exactly the same institutions, laws and attitudes as people living in 2018. One can easily imagine such attempts turning into involuntary comedy or self-parody. ("What about the Human Rights record of queen Elizabeth I ?" "Was queen Victoria an environmental criminal ?" "Was it right for the Spaniards to chase away the Moors ?" "Did Newton deserve a knee in the groin ?" "Why wasn't Glasgow built in another area ?" "Were Roman emergency services sufficiently equipped to deal with the Pompeii disaster ?")

Still, it needs to be said that many of the files provide interesting material for discussions about the death penalty. Moreover, many of the files still breathe an enduring horror or sadness. One of the cases, for instance, concerns an inoffensive couple of lovers walking home on a path next to a canal. The pair suddenly meet an older man with an air of authority who berates them (wrongfully) for trespassing. The confrontation grows ugly, and the young man receives a vicious blow which knocks him unconscious. Bemused witnesses see how the screaming girl is grabbed by the older man, who drags her away to a hiding place under a bridge. Hours later the corpse of the young girl is found floating in the canal. Now this is the stuff of nightmares...

Two barristers and a judge revisit old cases where the accused were convicted and sentenced to death. Not only do we get to hear the details of each case and the possibility that evidence was flawed or insufficient but we learn about the social mores of the time, how even one unfortunate woman was not even given legal representation and was hung possibly as a result of that. Many of the accused, not all, were very poor, uneducated, and could not afford to hire good legal counsel. Women who were victims of prolonged domestic abuse, who had no way out except to kill their tormentor, unsubstantiated police 'verbals' that judges directed juries to take as gospel, it's all quite horrific, so very sad, one hopes that things have greatly improved since then.

One of the most compelling arguments against capital punishment is the irreversibility of it, if exonerating evidence shows up after sentence is passed; this show IMHO misses a key component which would make revisiting past death sentence cases truly compelling, and worthwhile - the invaluable element of hindsight. At the time of trial and sentencing, the future is still unknown. But over time, in addition to new evidence (on the basis of which a case can of course be re-opened), certain actions and behaviours by still-living persons sometimes reveal patterns and hidden motives which would have changed the outcome of the trial IF they had been possible to perceive, prior to such patterns having emerged. Hence, surely, the whole point of this show! For example: In the first episode, the outcome of the original conviction was not reversed because no new evidence was provided, even though no motive was presented for Charlotte's alleged crime (other than a spurious accusation by unkind neighbours of sexual relations with a lodger which she vehemently denied and which wasn't proven), she had no record or history of murderous behaviours or intent, and there was no assertion that her husband was unpleasant or violent towards her or their children - in fact she had an 'anti-motive' of being mother to the murdered man's 5 children, who, if she was not convicted for murdering him, faced abject poverty and the workhouse in the wake of his sudden death. But her 'best friend' Lucy, on whose testimony the bulk of the damning evidence against Charlotte rests, had lost her husband prematurely 4 years previously...so, surely the first line of research should be, how did the rest of Lucy's life play out post-trial and execution of her 'best friend' Charlotte? Did she re-marry and if so, when and how did that husband die? Did other people in her life die unexpectedly and prematurely? Keeping in mind that a serial killer tends not to need a motive to kill, other than the thrill, and subsequent pleasure of getting away with murder. Obviously, it need not have been Lucy, but hindsight provides the invaluable capacity to re-examine everyone closely associated with the victim as well as his (possibly also victimised) wife, to detect a pattern somewhere. Insufficient detective work may be excusable almost 100 years ago, but surely not in the 21st century, and in the context of a TV show dedicated to re-examining old cases! Certain is, someone murdered this man, but very possibly his wife was subsequently wrongfully murdered by his country; I wanted to watch historical detective research unfolding which would at very least shed new light on WHO might have dunnit besides the person protesting that they hadn't, but condemned and put to death for it anyway, but I was sorely disappointed...as was, surely, the emotionally wounded family of both the deceased.