Criminal Justice Season 1 May 2026

He knows now: He did kill her. The heroin didn’t make him do it. The rage did. The shame of rejection did. And the justice system let him go not because he was innocent, but because the story the police and jury built wasn’t solid enough.

The jury returns.

He wakes hours later, disoriented. Mel lies next to him, her throat cut, blood everywhere. He has no memory of the night. In panic, he flees, leaving fingerprints, DNA, and his jacket behind. He doesn’t call police. He goes home, showers, and tries to pretend it never happened. criminal justice season 1

Inside prison, Ben transforms. He stops being the meek boy. He learns to fight, to lie, and to survive. He also begins to remember fragments of the night: the argument, the knife in his hand, the look of betrayal in Mel’s eyes. He confides in Rashid: “I think I might have done it.” He knows now: He did kill her

Ben breaks down. His mother screams in relief. Juliet shows no emotion. Ben is released. He walks out of the courthouse into the rain. No one waits for him but his father, who says nothing and drives him home. The shame of rejection did

But there is no happy ending. That night, Ben sits alone in his childhood bedroom. He stares at his hands. A final, silent memory surfaces—a flash of Mel’s face, the knife going in, her gasp. He remembers. Not in anger. Not in psychosis. In a moment of pure panic when she screamed for help, and he kept pushing the knife .

Ben insists: “I didn’t do it.” But his lies (about taking heroin, about leaving the flat) make him look guilty. His own barrister, Juliet Miller, initially believes he’s guilty too. Ben is sent to HM Prison Belmarsh to await trial. There, he is placed in a cell with Rashid, a volatile but intelligent young Muslim dealer who runs the wing’s drug trade. Rashid initially bullies Ben, but later protects him from violent predators in exchange for Ben running errands (delivering drugs).