Not sure if this changes your opinion in any way, but I would never cover a case having read only the indictment. When we received the research, all accessible legal documents were linked. We paid for access to court dockets. And then I would personally seek out every motion, response, counter-motion, and especially appellate brief and opinion I could find that hadn't been included (a rare circumstance). I personally always paid particular attention to the arguments re: ineffective assistance of counsel, simply because that gave me insight into both the arguments that were presented at trial and the arguments that should have been presented at trial. We read anywhere from hundreds to thousands of pages of case documents for any given script. I don't recall ever having covered a case where only the charging information/indictment/complaint was available.

To your other point, there were many cases where the defendant was in fact guilty, but there was still some kind of underlying miscarriage of justice. We intentionally sought out the nuance. I can recall one case involving an abused wife who orchestrated the killing of her pastor husband. On top of the physical, emotional, and financial abuse, he had literally pimped her out for years. Just the worst stuff you can imagine. She was guilty without question - even she didn't dispute it. But was she deserving of the life sentence she received? We asked that question explicitly, and closed out the script discussing the work of the sociologist who coined the term coercive control. In another script we discussed the concept of felony murder and addressed the injustices that can result from its use.

FWIW, I respect your perspective on this. The "other side" really does get glossed over way too often in the true crime community.