Netflix adds another real crime series to its lineup with its latest six-part documentary Trial By Media. The series, which was produced by CNN, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin, George Clooney, and Grant Heslov, focuses on six high-profile criminal cases that were substantially influenced or aggravated by media attention.
Trial By Media brings tragic and riveting stories from the archives back to public notice. The first episode of the docuseries looks at the murder of Scott Amedure, 32, by his friend Jonathan Schmitz, three days after Scott admitted on The Jenny Jones Show that he had a secret crush on Jonathan.
The show was never broadcast. Jones and her program became Exhibit A in an indictment of the alleged excesses and manipulations of talk shows and tabloid television in the criminal and civil cases that followed – Schmitz was sentenced to 22 years in prison for second-degree murder. Even as individuals on all sides of dramatic criminal trials try to twist media obsession in their favor, many other TV program presenters did and still do exploit the same notion, as demonstrated in a new Netflix series Trial by Media.
Another guy, Schmitz’s acquaintance Scott Amedure, had a secret love on him, and three days after the show was taped for transmission, Schmitz acquired a shotgun, knocked on Amedure’s home, and fired two deadly rounds at him. Schmitz then went to a gas station, phoned 911, acknowledged his crime, and claimed he was ashamed on national television when asked why.
He told an emergency operator when asked why he killed Amedure: “Because he played a very f**king bad thing on me. He took me on Jenny Jones.”
He was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in jail. He was first sentenced to two years in prison before being tried and convicted a second time in 1999, after the original judgment was overturned on appeal.
The Amedure family sued The Jenny Jones Show, Telepictures, and Warners Bros. in the same year for their sensationalist methods and alleged carelessness, which attorneys said led to the murder.
Schmitz was manic-depressive, had Graves’ illness, and had been up all night drinking and using marijuana the night before the homicide, according to the verdict. His lawyers claimed that he became emotionally disturbed as a result of Amedure’s advances.
When Schmitz was released in 2017, Geoffrey Fieger, an attorney who represented the Amedure family, told PEOPLE, “He spent 22 years [in prison], so that sounds like he’s completed virtually his entire sentence. I’m not absolving Schmitz of his crime. I’m just saying that The Jenny Jones Show and the people that were behind the show were equally responsible.”
Fieger said, “That show set him (Schmitz) up and certainly took Scott Amedure’s life for no reason.”
Jones’ program aired until 2003, and she remained certain about the show’s innocence in Scott Amedure’s death. She blamed the media for making the matter sensational, and she declined to take part in Netflix’s Trial By Media
In addition, the Amedure family was granted $25 million in a civil complaint against the program and its collaborators, including Warner Bros. On appeal, however, the judgement and reward were reversed.
“If they’d never gone on The Jenny Jones Show those two kids would be alright today,” Scott Amedure’s father, Frank Amedure Sr said.
