The Last Defense

The Last Defense is good enough television not to show all its cards in the first hour. That’s also its power.

It offers a powerful argument that people can be convicted as much by emotion and prejudice as by evidence. ... Defense is more straightforward than some of these [true crime] contemporaries. ... What “The Last Defense” does have is a clarity of moral purpose. Whether or not you find its arguments in these specific cases exonerating, it makes a disturbing argument about the potential for error in capital cases.

Doubts are raised, and convincing ones, but none are fatal blows, while the program is forced to concede at the end--in an on-screen bumper--that "post-conviction DNA testing has so far come back inconclusive."

Both Routier and Jones’ guilt seems open for debate--as does, in the end, their innocence. In surer hands, that ambiguity might have enlivened the series. Between its calculating tactics and unpersuasive reasoning, however, The Last Defense proves guided by activist intentions that interfere with its objectivity to the point of clouding its judgment.