Criminal Justice Season 1 |top| Review

The jury returns.

He wakes hours later, disoriented. Mel lies next to him, her throat cut, blood everywhere. He has no memory of the night. In panic, he flees, leaving fingerprints, DNA, and his jacket behind. He doesn’t call police. He goes home, showers, and tries to pretend it never happened.

More importantly, the heroin in Ben’s system was at a level that would have rendered him unconscious for 6–8 hours. Forensic expert testimony suggests the murder likely occurred while Ben was in a deep nod , making it physically impossible for him to have committed the act. criminal justice season 1

But Ben doesn’t want to believe he’s a killer. He remembers Mel kissing him, then suddenly turning cold. He remembers her saying, “You’re just a boy.” He remembers pushing her… but the stabbing? A blank. Juliet Miller, a chain-smoking, sharp-tongued barrister who has seen every kind of guilty client, begins to doubt the prosecution’s case. She realizes that DI Munday suppressed evidence: Mel had a history of violent arguments with an ex-boyfriend, and her phone records show a call to that ex the night she died, after Ben passed out.

He knows now: He did kill her. The heroin didn’t make him do it. The rage did. The shame of rejection did. And the justice system let him go not because he was innocent, but because the story the police and jury built wasn’t solid enough. The jury returns

Ben insists: “I didn’t do it.” But his lies (about taking heroin, about leaving the flat) make him look guilty. His own barrister, Juliet Miller, initially believes he’s guilty too. Ben is sent to HM Prison Belmarsh to await trial. There, he is placed in a cell with Rashid, a volatile but intelligent young Muslim dealer who runs the wing’s drug trade. Rashid initially bullies Ben, but later protects him from violent predators in exchange for Ben running errands (delivering drugs).

The police pick him up within 48 hours. DI Munday presents a damning picture: Ben’s prints on the murder weapon (a kitchen knife), his DNA mixed with Mel’s blood, a neighbor who heard a man’s angry voice that night, and Mel’s diary entries that suggest she feared a younger lover. He has no memory of the night

He does not confess. He does not tell Juliet. He simply goes to bed, pulls the covers over his head, and lives with what he has done.