by Taylor Kate Brown

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This piece was originally published in Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country. Sign up to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Edgar Barrientos-Quintana left prison last November, he told reporters: “Happy to be out here. … It’s the best week. And more to come.” It was an understated moment from a man who had been in prison for close to 16 years for a murder that officials said he didn’t commit. And it provided a stark contrast to the reality television show that depicted the investigation that led to his arrest.

Barrientos-Quintana was freed after the Minnesota attorney general’s Conviction Review Unit found he had been wrongfully convicted and recommended vacating his conviction. The unit’s 180-page report cited failures by police, prosecutors and Barrientos-Quintana’s own defense lawyers. But it also mentioned something reporter Jessica Lussenhop had never seen before in a wrongful conviction case: the involvement of popular true crime show “The First 48.” The show begins each episode with the premise that the chance of solving a murder is “cut in half” if police don’t have a significant lead within 48 hours of a killing — which also creates a sense of deadline pressure.

In two stories ProPublica recently published, Lussenhop follows the show’s involvement in the murder investigation that landed Barrientos-Quintana in prison, and how the show’s two-decade history of filming in cities across the U.S. has left

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