McLeod on TV justice shows

Rosemary McLead writes:

I am bored with the Sounds murders. I’ve had it up to my nostrils with them. I am bored with Scott Watson. I do not count him as a martyr to the justice system, but as a convicted double murderer. Which is reasonable, because that is what he is. As far as I’m concerned he doesn’t deserve your sympathy, or mine.

I think of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, two young people with their whole long lifetimes before them, whose existence was snuffed out – a jury agreed – by this man, who now merits my tax dollars being squandered on him in the name of fashion.

It is fashion, of course it is, because documentaries that cast doubt on criminal convictions are beloved of kindly people who believe the justice system is an evil thing about which they cannot bring themselves to be kind. Many nice people like to believe the world is an evil place, and that dark forces drive the police to frame the innocent. Yes, it happens, but this is how often in this country: not much.

There would be no documentary to establish Watson’s guilt for a million dollars.

No ratings in a show saying the Police got the right person. But maybe Ian Wishart should apply for funding for a documentary backing his book that concluded Watson did do it.

These documentaries are made because kindly people, people with good hearts, just cannot bring themselves to believe that a man who says he’s innocent could lie. Or that his lawyer most likely crafted a defence without knowing the whole truth any more than you or I. Or that everybody’s family believes them to be innocent and will say so, repeatedly, as Watson’s father does. And rather than sit through the tedium of a long trial, which Watson – and his jury – did, they would prefer to believe a documentary that sweeps aside inconvenient detail and spells out a story in words of one syllable, between ad breaks, in a commercial hour.

Will this documentary show the evidence that supports Watson’s conviction, or only the evidence that supports their contention? Will it be advocacy or factual?