by Jessica Lussenhop, photography by Sarahbeth Maney

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Eleven days after 18-year-old Jesse Mickelson was gunned down in a South Minneapolis alley, homicide detectives returned to the home where Mickelson had been playing football moments before his murder. The detectives had good news to share, so Mickelson’s family and friends squeezed around the dining room table to hear it.

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“Yes,” someone said. “Thank you.”

Dale and his partner, Sgt. Christopher Gaiters, told the family they had arrested a suspect, a man witnesses said they saw firing from the back seat of a white Dodge Intrepid as it rolled down the alley. His name was Edgar Barrientos-Quintana, and the police had the 25-year-old in custody.

As the family members hugged one another and cried, Mickelson’s father stuck his hand out to Gaiters, then wrapped the detective in a hug.

“Thanks a lot, man,” he said quietly. “Thanks a lot.”

The scene in the grieving family’s dining room was captured in October 2008 by cameras for the A&E true crime reality television series “The First 48.” The premise of the show, as explained by a deep-voiced narrator, is that homicide detectives’ “chance of solving a murder is cut in half if they don’t get a lead within the first 48 hours.” In each episode of the program, which debuted in 2004 and is currently in its 27th season, camera crews follow along with police as they work to beat a clock that counts down in the corner of the screen.

The episode, titled “Drive-By,” tracked the detectives from the moment Mickelson’s family dialed 911 to the arrest of Barrientos-Quintana. Under moody, dark music punctuated by dramatic sound effects, Dale and Gaiters determined that Mickelson, a lanky high school senior with icy blue eyes, was “a pretty good kid” and the unintentional victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting. Based on interviews with witnesses, their faces blurred and voices distorted for TV, the detectives pieced together that “Smokey,” a nickname for Barrientos-Quintana recorded in a police database, was the shooter.

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The episode aired in April 2009, about a month before Barrientos-Quintana went to trial.

In court, the case against Barrientos-Quintana that Hennepin County prosecutors presented built on the clean, conclusive narrative of the episode. Witnesses from rival gang cliques testified they either were in the car with Barrientos-Quintana when the crime occurred or saw him shooting at them.

The prosecutors also told jurors that Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi, that he’d been with his girlfriend at a grocery store across town before the murder, still allowed him time to get to the crime scene.

After a jury found Barrientos-Quintana guilty, reruns of the episode ended with a title card that read, “Edgar ‘Smokey’ Barrientos was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life without parole.”

Sixteen years later, that tidy narrative unraveled. Last year, the Minnesota attorney general’s Conviction Review Unit released a 180-page report concluding that Barrientos-Quintana's conviction “lacks integrity” and ought to be vacated. In November, Barrientos-Quintana — who always maintained his innocence and was never linked to the crime by any physical evidence — walked out of prison.

At a press conference led by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who made the decision to dismiss the charges, Barrientos-Quintana shifted back and forth on his feet and smiled nervously, the grey in his beard a notable difference from his appearance in “The First 48” episode.

“Happy to be out here,” was all that he offered to the reporters asking how he felt. “It’s the best week. And more to come.” Barrientos-Quintana, through his lawyers, declined an interview request.

The Conviction Review Unit report that ultimately convinced both Moriarty’s office and a judge that Barrientos-Quintana should be freed outlined dozens of issues with the investigation and trial, many of them hallmarks of wrongful convictions. Long, coercive interrogations. Improper use of lineup photos.

Both the report and the judge’s order also highlighted one unique issue: the role of “The First 48.”

“In the episode, events happened out of order, and Sgts. Dale and Gaiters staged scenes for the producers that were not a part of the investigation,” wrote Judge John R. McBride. “What is more, the episode failed to include other, actual portions of the investigation, painting a wholly inaccurate picture of how the MPD investigation unfolded.”

Conviction Review Unit attorneys concluded that police and prosecutors became locked into a narrative they did not deviate from. In essence, the unit alleged, instead of the case shaping the show, the show shaped the case.

“They said, ‘We got the right guy. We got him,’ before they knew or really looked into the existence of Edgar’s alibi,” said Anna McGinn, an attorney for the Great North Innocence Project who represented Barrientos-Quintana. “It’s on TV. I mean, that’s problematic.”

Barrientos-Quintana’s exoneration may be the first in the country related to the “The First 48,” but it is not the first time the program has found itself embroiled in controversy, though not necessarily because of its conduct. In 2010, for instance, “The First 48” was filming when a Detroit police SWAT-style team raided an apartment and an officer shot and killed 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. In Miami, a man featured on the show as the prime suspect in a 2009 double murder sat in jail for 19 months before the police finally determined he wasn’t responsible. In both cases, subsequent lawsuits accused the police of shoddy investigations and hasty decision-making in the service of creating good TV. Both cases ended in settlements — $8.25 million in Detroit — paid out by the cities, not “The First 48.”

“No one cared that my boy was killed, and the cops just rushed it for a damn show,” the father of one of the double murder victims told the Miami New Times.

Prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys and city officials across the country have bemoaned their police departments’ decision to allow the show into active crime scenes to film officers investigating sensitive homicide cases. It’s even been raised as an issue by an attorney who represents a death row inmate in Tennessee.

“I wish that the city would never contract with........

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