INTERVIEW: These two TV stars have ‘Reasonable Doubt’
Photo: Reasonable Doubt features Chris Anderson and Fatima Silva investigating old crimes to see if a person was wrongfully convicted. Photo courtesy of ID / Provided by press rep with permission.
The hit reality series Reasonable Doubt returns for a new season Tuesday, Aug. 9 at 10 p.m. on Investigation Discovery. On the show, criminal defense attorney Fatima Silva and retired homicide detective Chris Anderson examine a variety of cases to see if the party who was found guilty is actually serving an unwarranted sentence. Could the person be innocent? They look at each individual with open minds and objective lenses, according to press notes, and ultimately they are all about seeking the truth.
When the network and production company come knocking each year with the offer of producing new episodes, Anderson and Silva say yes, but sometimes there is a slight hesitation.
“For me, there’s always a slight hesitation because we always want to do better than what we did last season,” Anderson said in a recent phone interview in advance of the season five premiere. “We always want to top what we did before. We know the team that we have. We know the producers we have, how the network supports us, so it doesn’t take very long for us to say yes. I want to make sure that my partner is going to be good with us doing another season because both of us are happy with what we’re doing and happy with the effect that we’re having on our criminal justice system.”
Silva said she especially loves working with the crew, and the rewards thus far have been plentiful. They have been helping families answer some difficult questions, and they have been putting their skills together to investigate these older cases.
“So your heart is always like, yes, this is meant to be,” Silva said. “My mind or my brain go: Pump the brakes, because it’s time for logistics — just because I do have a law office, I do have a toddler, I do have a family, and we’re on the road so much. But thankfully, although I hesitate, my family is always supportive. My husband says, ‘You’ve gotta do it. Yeah, it’s a tough six months for us, but we’re proud of you. And it’s what you’ve gotta do. It’s meant for you.'”
The season premiere deals with a harrowing case involving a California probation officer who gets a life sentence for allegedly murdering his wife in a fit of rage, according to an ID press release. His family believes he was wrongfully convicted, and Silva and Anderson turn up to start asking the hard questions. They approach the case from different perspectives, but ultimately they are a team — perhaps serving as a model for how the criminal justice system could work in the future.
“It’s something you don’t see often, and the reason you don’t see it often is because it tends to be the way our criminal justice system has always worked,” Silva said. “It’s as if we’re all on opposing sides. You have the criminal defense attorney, and then you have law enforcement with the prosecutor. And then you have the judge, who is supposed to be in the middle, but we know how that goes, too. But at the end of the day, that’s probably one of the reasons that our criminal justice system has not been working the way it should, and it could be better if we just cross that line a little more, have more communication and have more understanding. … Chris knows this because he was part of an integrity unit, but that’s something you’re seeing across the country now — an integrity unit or innocence project popping up within prosecutor’s offices. What they’re doing is they’re getting innovative, and they’re including defense attorneys and other experts to all work across the aisle and together. That’s really crucial for these folks who might be innocent because we have to stop just looking at the process and the finality of that. We have to really say, could this person be innocent? How can we overturn this conviction? How can we give it a second look and be fair?”
Anderson agreed with Silva. He believes communication is key to improve the criminal justice system and to help those who were wrongfully convicted. There’s also the personal dynamic between these two TV stars, and that seems to assist the investigations.
“I think the reason why she and I work so well together is because we’re family,” Anderson said. “I believe in her; she believes in me. We can sit down, and we can talk about these things and come together under the same type of mindset. … I’ll echo what she says. I think communication has been the biggest problem in our criminal justice system, and as long as we sit and believe that we all work on polar opposite sides, we’ll never correct the problem.”
So, what makes a conviction a candidate for a re-investigation? There are several factors. For Anderson, it’s all about the original investigation and the crime scene. He said that cases are essentially won and lost based on crime scenes.
“I teach this to my Criminal Investigations class that I teach,” he said. “When the cases are messed up from the beginning, the foundation of the case is messed up, and it usually gets worse from there. So, for me, it starts off with the crime scene and then goes over to the investigation, and once I see those two things that have not been done correctly, that’s when I want to dig deeper. That’s when I really want to dive into what actually happened. How did the not-so-well investigated cases affect the outcome of the case?”
For Silva, her focus is on the evidence. What exactly was the evidence that got a person convicted? Was there eyewitness testimony? How many eyewitnesses were there?
“If it’s a one-witness eyewitness testimony, that always raises a brow for us because we know how faulty eyewitness testimony can be, and when you only have one person or even two and their stories are not aligning, that’s problematic,” she said. “We also look at whether it’s heavily circumstantial or direct evidence. If it is heavily circumstantial evidence, that’s always going to be very interesting evidence. You’re putting puzzle pieces together, and sometimes prosecutors can tell a really nice story. But at the end of the day, is that really what happened? Breaking each piece apart and trying to say, OK, this explains that and this explains that, that’s always interesting to do, especially when a family is saying a person for many years has been proclaiming their innocence for so long.”
She added: “Everybody thinks that everyone in prison is claiming their innocence, and that’s not true. A majority of people, if they committed the crime, they’re not proclaiming innocence. They’re just not saying much; they don’t say anything. But those people who have been 20-30 years writing everyone and doing what they can and saying this the whole time from the very start of their arrest until years later that they’re innocent, and then you look at evidence and it’s lacking, that’s definitely something to look into.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Reasonable Doubt, featuring Fatima Silva and Chris Anderson, returns Tuesday, Aug. 9 at 10 p.m. on Investigation Discovery. Click here for more information.
