Imagine, you and your coworkers are enjoying or trying not to slam your head against your desk at work. You get to the end of your work day and you go into the parking lot, and there you see it: one of your co workers has been strangled and beaten to death in the parking lot of your little company. Without any evidence to support their claim, you get put into handcuffs, thrown in the back of a police unit car, and spend a decade of your life behind bars for a murder that you didn't commit. Does this sound surreal to you? It shouldn't, and this is what happened to Ryan Ferguson, the star of the new show on MTV called Unlocking the Truth.
Ferguson, who is now out and a personal trainer, worked for a small editing company in Missouri, his hometown. On Halloween, when he went out into the parking lot, it was found that one of his fellow co workers had been strangled and beaten to death. Another one of Ferguson's coworkers said that it was a robbery attempt gone wrong, and that Ferguson was the one who had ultimately ended the man's life. Ferguson was found guilty and was slapped with a hefty sentence of 40 years in prison for a life that he did not take that day. After a decade of being behind bars, he was finally released, at age 29. He had spent all of the years of his 20s behind bars.
Because of this experience, he has dedicated his life to finding the flaws within the justice and legal system and fixing them. It is estimated that around 60,000 people are inmates, when they should be free to walk amongst civilians, due to the fact that they were wrongly accused. The show, Unlocking the Truth, seeks out cases where someone has been wrongly put behind bars, and Ryan Ferguson, alongside Exoneration Project's Eva Nagao, get hundreds upon hundreds of cases every single day, with new cases landing in their lap with every passing day.
From what I have seen, and I've only seen one episode, they seem to focus on two cases per hour long episode. The two cases that I've seen involved violent crimes. The basis of the show is to find out whether or not these people are violent predators. For instance, in last week's episode, they were trying to figure out if a man had stalked a pregnant woman and beat her so bad to the point where she had to be in a coma for ten months straight. The show tends to focus on violent offenders, but it's amazing to see the support that they capture from the communities that they travel to throughout the United States.
I've only seen one episode of this series, but so far, I would give it a 5/5, and I can't wait to see what it has in store for its viewers.
