The Last Defense

:

Season 1
  • Network: ABC
  • Series Premiere Date: Jun 12, 2018
Metascore
67

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4

Critic Reviews

  1. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: James Poniewozik
    Jun 12, 2018
    80
    It offers a powerful argument that people can be convicted as much by emotion and prejudice as by evidence. ... Defense is more straightforward than some of these [true crime] contemporaries. ... What “The Last Defense” does have is a clarity of moral purpose. Whether or not you find its arguments in these specific cases exonerating, it makes a disturbing argument about the potential for error in capital cases.
  2. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Ellen Gray
    Jun 12, 2018
    80
    The Last Defense is good enough television not to show all its cards in the first hour. That’s also its power.
  3. Newsday
    Reviewed by: Verne Gay
    Jun 12, 2018
    63
    Doubts are raised, and convincing ones, but none are fatal blows, while the program is forced to concede at the end--in an on-screen bumper--that "post-conviction DNA testing has so far come back inconclusive."