User Reviews

The Pilot of Proven Innocent shows that the initial defence team of the convicted people in jail must have been so inept, it is doubtful if they even passed any legal exams.

Madeline Scott and her brother were wrongfully convicted of murder as teenagers. Maddy and her brother were exonerated after 10 years. She qualified as a lawyer and together with the attorney who represented her, 'Easy' Boudreau, they run a group who examine miscarriages of justice. Her brother Levi meanwhile is struggling with life in the outside.

Maddy also has on her sights, the prosecutor who put her in jail. The prosecutor Gore Bellows (Kelsey Grammar) has announced he will run for Attorney General for Illinois.

Maddy and Easy want to go after him as they think he has convicted people by bending the rules.

In the pilot Maddy and Easy re-examine the case of a black woman jailed for killing her child by burning down her house. She was known as the evil satanic Goth killer because of her make up.

According to Maddy, she was the wife of a preacher. Her husband wanted nothing to do with her after she was accused. Her husband gave testimony that damned her.

However her Goth look was down to soot from the fire. She was never cleaned up when they took the police photographs. The defence team soon discover that her husband could not even speak English so he could not had understood the statement that he had signed. You can see how bad this woman's original defence team must have been.

Although legal procedures need to be short cut for these types of drama, there is something not quiet right and believable with the legal procedures in this show. It all seems to be too easy and convenient. In reality there would be a wholesale review of not only the Prosecutors office but the various defence attorneys given the events of just this episode.

Maddy is driven but bombastic. The show has an arc where we get flashbacks to the killing that she and her brother were implicated in. However I felt the first episode had some horrible dialogue and it felt clunky.

I try to watch shows about the law or the legal process with an objective eye, but as an attorney, I found this one so bad I had to force myself to watch the pilot episode through to the end. Aside from the fact that defendants are 'found not guilty' and not 'proven innocent,' which survives barely as an expression involved in an appeal, this show made so many mistakes depicting the legal process, in the interest of saving time, that I literally stopped counting them. For example, at the end of the episode, the Judge says 'based on the evidence,' even though NO evidence had been 'admitted.' Also, and needless to say, if you're going to speak that disrespectfully to a judge, you better be prepared to spend a few nights in jail and write several checks to the court. I don't know if this show had a legal consultant, but if they did, that person should consider another career.

From a character standpoint, it's too soon to see how they will develop, but this show makes the all-too-often mistake of making attorneys out to be hardasses who form one thought and then never question themselves. This, coupled with the horrendous depiction of the legal process, makes this show unwatchable from a legal standpoint.

What a waste of time. This is all about everyone being a victim of the American justice system. Weak whinny characters. I usually give series at least three episodes to show their value, but this is so bad I'm dumping it after one episode. Too bad, the cast is loaded with good actors.

The lead character is played by a weak actress (Rachelle Lefevre) who could grow but she seems stretched to her limit. Other stronger actors (Russell Hornsby,Nikki M. James, and Kelsey Grammer) are under used and seem more like professional studio musicians used to back up singer who just doesn't have the goods...