On yesterday's Law and Order, we had yet another case where the DAs had an open-and-shut case which they vacated when crusading DA Serena Southerlyn, checking up on one last little detail (completely irrelevant to the case against the actual defendant) figured out that someone else was the real killer. On Law and Order, this seems to be happening now once every few weeks.

Meanwhile, in Tulia, TX, it took years of activism to start to overturn dozens of convictions based entirely on the uncorroborated and laughable testimony of one rogue cop.

It's possible that real New York DAs are as punctilious as the Law and Order crew. But given recent developments in the Central Park jogger case, where coerced confessions let the real attacker go free for years, I feel entitled to some doubt.

Who cares? It's only a TV show.

But it's TV shows like this which give a whole lot of Americans these days their ideas about how the justice system works...