The arrest of eccentric billionaire Robert Durst following the airing of an HBO documentary series about his connection to murders and missing persons may be shocking, but it’s hardly the first time legal scrutiny has been ignited by the forces of popular media.
In these seven instances, publicity surrounding pop culture phenomena — from serious documentary features to reality series and even stand-up comedy — led to real-life action that changed the lives of the subjects.
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SEE ALSO: HBO filmmakers cancel all press; could be key witnesses against alleged murderer Robert Durst
Podcast "Serial" helped Adnan Syed win the right to appeal his conviction in February.
The groundbreaking 2014 podcast “Serial” attempted to solve the mystery of who killed Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old high school student who was found strangled to death in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1999.
Lee’s ex-boyfriend and fellow student Adnan Syed was convicted of her murder and has been serving a life sentence, but the podcast reexamines evidence that suggests Syed might not have been responsible — or at the very least, that legal proceedings at the time were flawed.
As part of her research, “Serial” host Sarah Koenig interviewed Deirdre Enright, head of the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia law school. Enright decided of her own accord to take up Syed’s case, and in December 2014, the Innocence Project began the process of filing a motion to examine DNA evidence.
Syed also won the right to appeal his conviction in February based on his lawyer’s failure to utilize a letter potentially confirming an alibi — a key piece of evidence Koenig brought up in her discussions with Syed during the course of recording “Serial.”
TLC's "Sister Wives" launched an investigation into the family on possible charges of bigamy.
Like Durst, the family at the center of TLC’s “Sister Wives” put its potential guilt of a crime front and center in a nationally televised docuseries.
Kody Brown was in a polygamous relationship with three women when the series began in 2010 and married another during the course of the first season.
Police in their hometown of Lehi, Utah, launched an investigation into the family on possible charges of bigamy the day after the series premiered. Footage from “Sister Wives,” which depicted the marriage ceremony between Brown and newest wife Robyn Sullivan, was used as evidence.
Brown objected to the investigation, arguing that he was only legally married to his first wife, Meri. But in Utah, bigamy — a third-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison for the man and five years for each wife — could also be defined by cohabitation. Brown shared a single massive house with wives Meri, Janelle and Christine and their 13 children, all documented in detail on TLC.
Fearing persecution and prosecution, the family fled to Las Vegas, deeming Nevada a more “polygamy-friendly” state. Utah’s criminal case was ultimately dropped, but Kody Brown won a federal lawsuit challenging Utah’s anti-bigamy statutes on the basis of cohabitation. The state’s appeal is currently pending in the federal court system.
"The Central Park Five" were awarded $41 million after a documentary revealed all.
In 1989, four black and one Hispanic teenagers were accused of the violent rape of a young white jogger in Central Park.
Despite a lack of physical evidence tying those boys to the case, they were all convicted of charges ranging from rape to assault and attempted murder.
The Central Park Five, as they came to be known, sued the city of New York for malicious prosecution and racial discrimination in 2003 after their convictions were vacated when DNA evidence exonerated them.
The suit remained tied up in the courts for nearly a decade when Sarah Burns, daughter of legendary documentarian Ken Burns, made a film about the case. “The Central Park Five” premiered at Cannes in 2012, and the filmmakers became advocates for the five men, pushing New York to settle the lawsuit.
Ken Burns said in a 2013 interview that then mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio would settle the case were he to win that year’s election, and on Sept. 4, 2014, the Central Park Five were awarded $41 million.
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