'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' Los Angeles Dodgers Once Cleared A Man Charged With Murder

By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) -- The internet rejoiced Tuesday at HBO's announcement declaring that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will be returning for a ninth season.

It is, of course, a one-of-a-kind comedy that's enjoyed by all walks of life. But it also helped save a man's life.

Juan Catalan was arrested in 2003 and charged with murder for a crime he claimed to have not committed. His alibi was that he was attending a Dodgers game with his 6-year-old daughter at the time the murder took place. As the story went, Catalan had his ticket stub, but police didn't believe him.

Catalan's lawyer, per reports at the time, scanned through the footage from the TV broadcast of the game but failed to identify his client. It seemed like a dead end.

Yet in a stroke of magnificent fortune for Catalan, it turned out that Larry David and the "Curb" crew were filming that very same night at Dodger Stadium for an episode titled "The Car Pool Lane." Some footage (which is a bit too colorful to share on this family website) can be found on YouTube.

Catalan remembered that the show was filming that night, because he remembered that "Super Dave Osborne" was in the ballpark. That's a comedic character played by Bob Einstein, who also played Marty Funkhouser on "Curb."

Catalan told his attorney about the filming.

From a Los Angeles Times story:

HBO allowed Melnik to look through the footage, and he found a shot of Catalan with his 6-year-old daughter and two friends. The footage was time coded, confirming that Catalan was at the ballpark shortly before the time of the slaying 20 miles away in the San Fernando Valley.

"There he was in the outtakes," said Gary S. Casselman, the attorney handling Catalan's lawsuit. "He's glad it's over. It's terrible to be in jail, and he thought he would never see his daughters again."

...

Records of a cellphone call, made from Dodger Stadium, between Catalan and his girlfriend also helped persuade a judge to release him, but the footage from the comedy show cemented his alibi.

Catalan was not a fan of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" before his time in jail. "He is now," Casselman said.

More details about the case from an old CNN.com story paint a harrowing picture for Catalan. The evidence was flimsy, witnesses described a gunman that didn't match Catalan's appearance, and the perceived motive that Catalan sought retribution for the victim testifying against his brother in a gang violence case didn't exactly fit, because she had actually testified against the brother's co-defendant.

"I asked to take a lie detector test, and I was denied three times," he said.

Fortunately for him, Larry David opened his doors and allowed the attorney to look through all the footage, including the shots that didn't make it into the final cut of the episode. That's what secured Catalan his freedom.

"This experience was a nightmare," he said. "It was the worst time of my life."

For his trouble (aka spending five-plus months in prison on murder charges that could have resulted in the death penalty), Catalan was awarded a $320,000 settlement from Los Angeles, something that likely wouldn't have been possible if not for "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

"I'm quitting the show to devote the rest of my life to freeing those unjustly incarcerated," David joked after the story came out.

Fortunately for the show's many fans, that did not turn out to be true. Yet there's nobody on the planet more thankful for the existence of "Curb" than Juan Catalan.

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• Los Angeles Dodgers