Summary
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
‘s legacy is not just about entertainment, but also saving a man from false imprisonment and the death penalty. - A man named Juan Catalan was wrongly accused of murder until footage from a specific episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm
proved his alibi, and thus, his innocence. - Despite its focus on ambiguous ethics, the show had a real-life impact by exonerating Catalan and preventing a wrongful conviction. That’s pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Well, that’s it. Curb your Enthusiasm has aired its supposed series finale, and it was pretty, pretty, prett-ay good. Ironically, the 12th and final season ended in court just like Seinfeld (though flipped that show’s finale around topsy-turvy like), touching on David’s consistent theme of ambiguous ethics and karmic justice. While the series was a cultural milestone, looking back, perhaps its most significant contribution was almost exactly 21 years ago, when Curb Your Enthusiasm saved an actual human life, exonerating a man and saving him from the death penalty.
It all starts on the night of May 12, 2003, when 16-year-old Martha Puebla was found shot to death in front of her home in the San Fernando Valley. The suspect who fled the scene was described by the LAPD as “a medium build male Hispanic, 19-25 years of age, 5’8″ to 5’10″. He had very short hair and a mustache and appeared to be a gang member.” Puebla’s death was considered retribution and the silencing of a witness; according to the Los Angeles Daily News:
Days earlier she had testified at a preliminary hearing for Jose Ledesma, a Vineland Boyz member who was on trial for a 2002 shooting death that occurred outside her house. Puebla testified that she did not see the shooter.
Later, a 24-year-old man named Juan Catalan was driving to work before being blocked off by police cars and surrounded with cops pointing guns at him and his very young daughter in the backseat. He was accused of Puebla’s murder, arrested and charged, and spent five months in jail awaiting trial. Catalan was facing the death penalty. He insisted upon his innocence, claiming that he was at an L.A. Dodgers game with his six-year-old daughter at the time of the murder. Unfortunately, lawyers couldn’t find any evidence of this. That is, until they discovered that HBO was filming an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm at Dodger Stadium that very night.
Coincidence or Happenstance: Larry David’s Show Saves a Man’s Life
A segment of the classic Curb Your Enthusiasm episode “The Car Pool Lane” was being filmed at Doger Stadium the evening of May 12, 2003. The episode chronicles David’s scheme to hire a sex worker simply to have a seated passenger to utilize the carpool lane on the interstate. It ironically features David’s innocent friend, Marty Funkhouser (the late, great Bob Einstein), being wrongly arrested (for carrying marijuana that was in David’s jacket).
Lawyers for Catalan contacted HBO and the Curb Your Enthusiasm team and sifted through all the footage that they filmed at the baseball game. It was a needle in a haystack situation — how do you find one person in a stadium that seats 56 thousand people, using footage only taken in one specific section?
Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Best Episodes, Ranked
Larry David’s HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm explores everyday annoyances everyone can relate to, and these are the best episodes.
Well, the wild karma of Curb worked in Catalan’s favor. It just so happens that Catalan had left his seat to purchase some candy for him and his daughter, and while HBO was filming a shot of David walking up the section’s stairs at Dodger Stadium, Catalan can be seen returning to his seat with the candy. The footage was timestamped and became irrefutable proof of the man’s innocence. The district attorney had to drop the case and they awarded Catalan a settlement of $300,000.
The real murderer, Vineland Boyz gang member Raul Robledo, was convicted in July 2008. The helpfulness and kindness of Larry David’s character in Curb Your Enthusiasm may be questionable at best, but the actual David and his show came through when it mattered the most. This story was covered briefly by HBO in a video essay and was later the subject of the Netflix original documentary, Long Shot, which you can watch below:
