Happy holidays, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and as you can imagine,

Britt and I are both taking some much needed time off today to spend with our families.

But I have a feeling you know what I'm going to say next. I couldn't break our

2023 trend here so I'm giving you the last two episodes of my series

precedent to wrap up the 10 that we dropped throughout the year.

And while this is the end to our series, who knows.

Maybe we'll explore new precedent setting cases

in the future.

Now every year, hundreds of thousands of people stand accused of crimes in the United States.

Some of them are truly guilty of those offenses, and others are not. The judge will ask,

how do you plea, and the defendant answers,

guilty or not guilty.

But in a small number of cases,

there is a type of third option.

The Alford plea.

When defendants choose an Alford plea, they are telling the court that they are innocent

while at the same time pleading guilty to the crime.

And they do this because they recognize that the case against them is overwhelmingly strong

and they don't have a solid enough defense to counter.

And that is exactly what happened in North Carolina

in 1963, sparking a debate that rages to this day

about how exactly justice can be served to a person who claims they are both innocent

...