Exhibit A Recap: Are You A Dog Person?

This recap of Netflix’s Exhibit A Season 1, Episode 3, “Cadaver Dogs” contains spoilers. You can read our full recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.

Exhibit A episode 3 explores the use of Cadaver dogs in police investigations. A dog handler at the start of the chapter (who does not like being called just a dog handler) explains how these dogs can be trained to sniff out forensic evidence, i.e. dead bodies. The entire process is compelling; the trainer teaches the dog to sniff out alternatives rather than finding food.

Episode 3, “Cadaver Dogs” quickly turns into one of the weaker episodes in Netflix series Exhibit A. It tells the story of D’Andre Lane, a father imprisoned for the murder of his 2-year old daughter. He claims that his car was hi-jacked with his daughter present, but the police quickly turned the investigation towards pinning a murder on the father.

Exhibit A explains the use of Cadaver dogs; how a single dog went inside D’Andre Lane’s car and sniffed the remnants of a deceased body. Episode 3 tries to weigh both arguments that these dogs are merely doing their job to help build a case, but the other argument is that these dogs are sometimes not accurate, and their sniffing senses are not specific to a person.

It’s easy to feel sorry for the parents in episode 3, “Cadaver Dogs” because their daughter’s body has still not been found, and the mother is wholly convinced her daughter is still alive due to witnesses stating they have seen her.

But then Exhibit A episode 3 becomes the battle of whether you like dogs or not, and it becomes less about the potential injustice, and more about the viability of Cadavers. I sensed that the people interviewed in this documentary provided their view on the merit in whether they liked dogs or not. It was a flaky episode, with little depth to understand the full story.

Our coverage continues – to read the recap of the final and fourth episode, click these words