Man who was facing death penalty was saved thanks to one-in-a-million sitcom footage
Juan Catalan could have faced the death penalty if he had been convicted, but new information cleared him
A man was acquitted on a murder charge after evidence emerged from an unexpected source.
Juan Catalan was charged with the murder of Martha Puebla, 16.
Martha had been shot dead on her doorstep at her home in Los Angeles in May 2003.
Had he been convicted, Catalan could have faced the death penalty, but new evidence was found which corroborated his alibi.
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How Catalan proved his innocence is the subject of 2017 Netflix documentary The Long Shot:
At the time, police believed that Catalan was responsible for carrying out a hit on the teen, which had been arranged by her ex boyfriend Jose Ledesma and Catalan's brother Mario.
He was arrested and charged before he spent five months remanded in custody while awaiting his trial.
Catalan provided an alibi, insisting that he had been attending a baseball game with his six-year-old daughter when the killing happened.
Unfortunately, his legal team did not find anything which proved categorically that he had been at the game.
That is, until they got a bit of help from Larry David
Somewhat incredibly, an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (season four’s 'The Car Pool Lane', where Larry David hires a prostitute, who then gets his father high on pot) was filmed in the stadium that night.
And unaired footage filmed for the episode showed Catalan at the game, which, of course, corroborated his alibi.
The DA was forced to drop the murder charges and award him a settlement of $320,000.
The incredible case was covered in Netflix’s 2017 true-crime documentary The Long Shot.
Filmmaker Jacob LaMendola said it took five years to get the documentary made, but added: “I knew that it was worth taking the time to tell it correctly.”
During an interview with the Indiewire in 2017, LaMendola said it took him a ‘long time’ to earn Catalan’s trust to feature in the documentary.
And that was just half the battle - he then had to get David on board.
He revealed: “The very first thing he said when he got on the phone was, ‘There’s no way that I would ever be a part of this’.
“I think I just went into shock… We had gone so far, we had every piece, and I just didn’t want it to end.”
When LaMendola started to explain how much effort he had invested into getting the film off the ground, David asked: “So wait, you just want to interview me?” to which LaMendola said yes, and David replied, “‘OK, I’ll do it.’”
Kit Roberts