Hosts of the Murderville podcast Lilian Segura and Jordan Smith said that there is systemic bias in the criminal justice system that leads to wrongful convictions.
During an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Segura said that a goal of the podcast has been to shine a light on the ways that flaws in the criminal justice system can lead to the imprisonment of innocent people.
“The point of of this project and of this podcast has always been about to shine a light not only on an individual case, but using that case as a vehicle for revealing all the ways in which the flaws in the criminal justice system can lead to innocent people being locked up for crimes they didn’t commit,” Segura said.
The investigative podcast examines the systemic failures within the justice system that can cause wrongful convictions. Season two of the podcast centers on Texas, which has used capital punishment more than any other state in the country.
Segura said the podcast’s new season focuses on the conviction of a man who falsely confessed to murdering an elderly woman. Murderville shines a light on the ways in which murder investigations and confessions can become compromised, according to Segura.
Smith said the National Registry of Exonerations shows hundreds of examples of false confessions.
“What we know and what science tells us and what history tells us is that people confess for any number of reasons to things that they didn’t do even in incredibly high-stakes scenarios,” Smith said.
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