The Staircase

I went through a similar ordeal with law enforcement and the assistant DA that wanted to win a promotion to DA. My son was accused of a crime that he did not do and they had zero evidence and and he had never had any brush with the legal system but they wanted a good case that would make headlines. I had always trusted the law enforcement system and believed you are innocent until proven guilty but it the opposite. You are guilty and we had to spend $247,000 on legal costs before he was found not guilty by a jury of 12. The state wasted so much money and we are still paying off those we borrowed money from and he was also on 3rd party for a whole year. It was over four years ago now but I still suffer from depression and anxiety from this horrible, unbelievable failure of our legal system. I will never trust it again nor will any of my family. I don't even care whether Michael Peterson is guilty or innocent. Just the lies and misconduct of the procsecution team was glaring and oh so familar. They , too, did not care if he was guilty or innocent: they just wanted to win. Instead, everybody lost. The hundreds of thousands of dollars the state spent could have been spent on public "pretenders" for those pitiful prisoners that came into court chained together and their only choice was a plea bargain, which always meant guilty

If you think "I'm not into true crime documentaries, I'll pass" please do yourself a favour - don't think of it as a "crime doc".

This case has been one of the biggest and most controversial cases in recent times and if you have no idea of who Michael Peterson is you will be gripped by all the episodes.

Having previously watched the released episodes before Netflix premiered the series, adding 3 more, I had already formed an opinion and thought that 3 episodes would not make a huge difference. I was wrong. If the twists, turns, anger, love and incredible, mind-bending insider views weren't already enough, every single episode added had an incredible emotional charge to them.

This is not your usual "true crime" documentary. Yes, we have seen how the genre has expanded to showing the BTS footage, how Making A Murderer caught the attention of the whole world but trying not no spoil it... I would say MAM leaves a lot unsaid or "to be presumed" by the viewer. While The Staircase focuses on Michael Peterson and can easily be argued as "biased", I don't see how this particular case would have been fairly presented without that "bias". Meaning, all that is revealed (until the very last minutes of the last episode) will make you understand why Michael Peterson had the opportunity to be presented the way he is in this documentary.

If Making a Murderer did come up with several issues and questions were raised, they were just that - opening lines for possibilities that never got solved or resolved (most of them are still open for dispute).

But The Staircase is filled with facts and presentations of evidence that will for sure make everyone rethink about the whole justice system.

If you are familiar with the Owl Theory and don't understand why this wasn't discussed I would guess that it was a good effort to keep the bias to a minimum - not attempting to offer a solution, the viewer is left with what I believe to be the main core information. The flaws of a system are exposed - the flaws that everyone knows about but no one seems keen on solving... It is very disturbing (even for someone who is a fan of the true crime genre) to hear and clearly understand from the words and actions of the players involved in a murder case what *exactly* can go wrong - and why.

This was a brilliant, gripping series I watched in only 2 days because the revelations never end. I was not expecting to know much more about the case I was already familiar with but I was wrong.

I hope this documentary finds its way out of the true crime genre because even though it starts from a murder charge, everything else comes down to empathy, emotions, social and family relationships and a whole lot about how we, as a society, can be easily swayed from our very core beliefs.

You will laugh, you will cry, you will yell at the screen. No matter how you *personally* welcome what the director presents you, the raw honesty and the human emotions will affect you - from everyone involved in this tragedy.

I would say this is probably the best true crime doc I've seen, easily. And from someone who watches trials and live streams of these cases, I had never learned so much about the humanity (or lack thereof) and emotions going on in these procedures.

Don't read spoilers, don't read about the case if you have the chance to avoid it. This goes way beyond what is presented in any website you might read about it.

There's much (apparent) simplicity on the way the images are presented but they do serve a higher purpose - for the viewer to be able to live every situation as if it was happening to them.

Congratulations on the marvellous completion of 13 episodes and I truly hope every documentary lover will watch this, not only true-crime genre fans...

I found this to be a very captivating documentary. I didn't find it to be too long like other reviewers mentioned but I will agree that it is somewhat biased. I've never seen a doc that goes into as much detail as this one did. If you enjoy watching lawyers argue and try to prove their points to a jury then you will definitely enjoy this.

I knew nothing about the Peterson case before watching this film obsessively over a weekend. Even with Lestrade's clearly biased presentation, I came to the same conclusion the jury did - testament to the strength of the autopsy evidence. Res ipsa loquitur - she simply could not have died from a fall down the stairs given the lacerations and the blood. And nothing to suggest that an intruder caused her death. Sure, I winced when Freda Black went on and on about the porn, as if its existence on Peterson's computer in and of itself indicates anything. But all in all it was an interesting lesson into how the skilled storyteller can skew anything towards his chosen bias. And the score was absolutely exquisite.

If you want to watch a police documentary don't watch this one because the mystery is still here (even though there are certain theories going around on the internet, I'll let you look by yourself).

This documentary is about a broken justice system that doesn't allow the defendant the fair ability to defend themselves. The State is the prosecution so why would they handle themselves all the evidence? It needs an unbiased third party to handle such evidence. Politics come into play in all aspect of society and it's just sad that it also colors the justice system, which should be politic-free and unbiased, always.