In June 1996, Keith Zon Doolin was sent to death row for two murders and four attempted murders on six female sex workers. He's been claiming his innocence since then. His 75-year-old mother, Donna Larsen, went back to law school to become a paralegal and get a better chance to help him prove his innocence - she's been relentlessly fighting for 22 years. But the question is this: if Keith is innocent as they claim, why was he arrested in the first place? Why did he appear on the Fresno Police Department radar? Following Donna, and a private investigator who worked on the case, this first episode goes back to the origins of the case: the crimes themselves and Keith Doolin's arrest.
Death penalty cases usually take at least one to two years before going to trial, leaving time for the defence team to investigate and build a case. Keith Zon Doolin was arrested in October 1995 and sentenced to death only eight months later, which did not leave enough time for the defence team to investigate thoroughly. It's been proven since then that Keith's trial attorney had a gambling addiction and used the trial money to pay his own debts. This second episode focuses on the guilty phase of the trial, the different leads that were not followed up on and tries to understand how it was possible to send a suspect to death row in such a short period of time. But does being railroaded make you an innocent man? One of the surviving victims doesn't seem to agree...
At the time of the trial, David Daggs, an old friend of Keith, was called as a witness. He testified that he was with Keith on the night of one of the crimes. This third episode focuses on the importance of the different testimonies at trial, leading to the death sentence announcement, still vivid in Keith's relatives' memories. Keith's new post-conviction lawyers just came up with a troubling and striking new lead that could finally reveal the truth... whatever the truth is.
Last year a Fresno lawyer, David Mugridge, revealed some big news: he stated that he owned exonerating evidence regarding Keith Doolin's case. Mugridge said he got these pieces of information through a former client, Josefina Saldana, who passed away 15 years ago after being convicted herself for murder. Unfortunately, Mugridge is still bound by attorney-client privilege and cannot disclose the evidence to anyone. Will the court allow him to disclose what he knows? What is Josefina Saldana's secret? 22 years after his death sentence, Keith Doolin's faith is once more hanging on a court decision... a decision that could be a life-changer.