I associated A&E's long-running cop reality show "The First 48" with re-run marathons. But when I learned that it was mentioned as a factor in the 2024 exoneration of a man convicted of murder in Minnesota, the state I live in and cover, I perked right up. Thread 🧵 Edgar Barrientos-Quintana spent nearly 16 years in prison for the murder of Jesse Mickelson, who was killed in a drive-by shooting behind his house in Minneapolis. The investigation by police was featured in a 2009 episode of “The First 48” called “Drive-By.” propublica.org
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The show follows Sgts. Dale and Gaiters from the 911 call to the arrest of Barrientos-Quintana. The narrative is simple and clean: Witnesses name the shooter as “Smokey,” a nickname for Barrientos-Quintana. The investigators arrest him and he denies involvement, but his alibi doesn’t check out.
In the episode’s final scene, the detectives go to the victim’s family and tell them, “We have made an arrest.” The family thanks them. There are tears. A title card reads, “Edgar ‘Smokey’ Barrientos was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life without parole.”
But 16 years later, that tidy narrative unraveled. Last year, the Minnesota AG’s Conviction Review Unit released a 180-page report concluding that Barrientos-Quintana's conviction “lacks integrity.” Barrientos-Quintana walked out of prison a free man in Nov. 2024. ag.state.mn.us
Both the report and the judge’s order also highlighted one unique issue: the role of “The First 48.” "Events happened out of order, and Sgts. Dale and Gaiters staged scenes for the producers... a wholly inaccurate picture,” wrote Judge John R. McBride. ag.state.mn.us
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The attorneys who reinvestigated the case for the Minnesota AG’s office were very disturbed by the “First 48” episode, which aired BEFORE Barrientos-Quintana’s trial. “It’s a false narrative,” the Minnesota CRU director told me. Here’s a few examples of what the report says the show got wrong: About a half-dozen witnesses told police that the shooter was bald. “Shiny bald,” one even said. There is no mention of that in the episode, which clearly shows Barrientos-Quintana with a full head of hair at his arrest. His attorney told me she saw that as an “intentional omission.”
Near the end of the episode, Barrientos-Quintana tells Dale, “I just want to get myself a lawyer.” In the show, the interrogation stops. But his request was ignored, the report says. A third officer even told him that the detectives would not listen to him if he kept asking for representation. Dale also makes a phone call to a “family friend” of Barrientos-Quintana’s, a conversation implied to have blown his alibi apart. But the girl he had been with was in a separate interrogation room, confirming his story. She said they’d gone to a grocery store around the time of the murder. Months later, the police finally obtained security camera footage that showed Barrientos-Quintana at the grocery store just 33 minutes before the shooting. This is also not mentioned in the episode of “The First 48.”
Barrientos-Quintana was convicted at trial. But after the guilty verdict, the prosecutors wrote a memo to their supervisors listing eight ways that “The First 48” had caused problems for their case.
The MPD, Dale and Gaiters all declined to speak about the case. One of the two prosecutors, Susan Crumb, sent me a message saying she disagreed with the exoneration. Crumb added: “The filming of the First 48 created problems the defense used to try to sow doubt regarding the Defendant's guilt. If there was any ‘hindrance to the administration of justice’ in this case, it was only to the detriment of the prosecution, not the defense." One person who believes strongly in Barrientos-Quintana’s innocence is the victim’s sister, Tina Rosebear, who cared for Jesse Mickelson like a son.
She told me that she’s horrified that the show might have played a role in a wrongful conviction. “I feel like it was all done for the TV show,” she said. “But that was unfair to him, and that was unfair to us.” Multiple messages seeking comment from the companies that produce “The First 48” were not answered. A spokesperson for A&E Network declined to comment. Read my full investigation into Barrientos-Quintana’s portrayal on the show and his eventual exoneration here: propublica.org
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By the way, this isn’t the only time “The First 48” has been the subject of controversy. After learning about Barrientos-Quintana’s story, I wanted to dig into other examples. I found plenty. Judges, prosecutors, DAs and city officials have complained for years about allowing the show to film homicide investigations. I highlighted 3 examples from Mobile, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Dallas. Here’s the companion to my story about Barrientos-Quintana propublica.org
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