The most interesting thing I'm currently binge listening to is the BBC Radio 5 Live series Beyond Reasonable Doubt?
If you, like me, have invested time into watching The Staircase, a 13-part documentary that follows the case of Michael Peterson after he's been accused of murdering his wife Kathleen, this might be a recommendation for you. A lot of people love this documentary. It was a unique when the first episodes came out in 2004 because the filmmakers had unprecedented access to Peterson and his lawyers. There were a couple of update episodes in 2013 and some more updates added when it was released via Netflix earlier in 2018. However, if you are like me, you also found the documentary to be sloooooo...ooow and had a hard time staying awake through it. (Confession time: I fall asleep watching most things longer than five minutes. I never learned how to properly watch television and trust me, it's a skill.)
The case can be summarized relatively briefly. Peterson claims he and his wife went outside to hang out by the pool of their North Carolina mansion after dinner one night. She went inside before he did and when he went inside, he found her lying at the bottom of the staircase with blood everywhere. She died from her injuries. Did he kill her or was it a tragic accident? While that sounds simple, there's so much more. There are complicated family dynamics at play with his sons, her daughter, and a pair of sisters who call him dad but were never formally adopted. There are numerous questions still out there. Did he kill a family friend in another country in the same way? Did he have bisexual affairs that his wife did not know about? Do either of those things matter? If he killed her, what was the murder weapon? If he murdered her, how did he dispose of the weapon? How did the couple afford that giant mansion and their lifestyle? What's with all that blood anyway?
The prosecution declined to work with the filmmakers, so the film is mostly told through the lens of the defense team. Those are legitimate choices made by the prosecution and the documentarians. However, it does make the whole thing feel slanted very heavily towards the defense. As I watched it, I kept wondering what the prosecution would say about the defense strategy and tactics. I also had a lot of questions about the case, despite watching eleven hours of interviews and trial excerpts.
This Beyond Reasonable Doubt? podcast answers some of those questions. The host is not from the United States and having someone without a lot of experience with the criminal justice system in this country walk you through the case is actually quite interesting. The podcast also spends time talking with people who aren't on the side of the defense and interviews people who are main players who don't get a lot of time in the original documentary. I wouldn't call this podcast objective in any real case - it is clear that the journalists think Peterson is guilty and there's a definite slant towards the prosecution here - but the podcast also spends more time helping to humanize the victim and her family that the original documentary didn't take the time to do, focusing as it did with Peterson puffing his pipe and orating on himself.
I think I might have found this podcast a bit hard to follow if I hadn't already been invested in the story, though, so if you aren't familiar with this case, it might be a bit of a slog. On the other hand, if you haven't seen the documentary, you might be in a better position to take in the information without already having a preconceived notion of what you believe.
It's great, though. I am definitely whipping through these seventeen episodes quickly.
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