At 24 years old, Juan Catalan was sitting in jail, wrongly incarcerated for five and a half months. If convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, the father of a six-year-old faced the death penalty. In an incredible feat of determination, Catalan and his lawyer, Todd Melnik, worked tirelessly to prove his alibi: a Dodgers game on May 12, 2003. To do it, Melnik pored over 80 minutes of raw “Curb Your Enthusiasm” footage from “The Car Pool Lane” episode.

In this episode, Larry David looks to attend an LA Dodgers game. However, he has jury duty to get out of and some errands to run first. As Larry would do, he finds a way to avoid the worst of LA traffic: the car pool lane. Since he’s driving solo, he picks up a sex worker so that he can qualify for the express lane. Mind you, he only hired her to ride in the passenger seat. He ultimately brings her to the Dodgers game. Shooting the episode required the Curb crew to attend a live game.

It just so happened that Juan Catalan was attending the same game with his cousin and his six-year-old daughter. In fact, Catalan remembers that a production assistant actually attempted to stop Catalan and his daughter from returning to their seats after the child asked to go get a snack. She ultimately let them through.

An eyewitness to a murder on May 12, 2003, erroneously identified Catalan as the killer. After Catalan’s arrest, authorities shrugged off his alibi. What’s more, the assigned prosecutor had never lost a case and typically went for the death penalty where applicable.

Catalan’s attorney, Todd Melnik, had spent hours watching security footage provided by Dodger’s Stadium, to no avail. Catalan and Melnik were eventually able to connect the dots to the camera crew from “Curb.” Melnik reached out to HBO, which provided the raw footage from “The Car Pool Lane.”

Incredibly, there were Catalan and his daughter, moving in the background exactly as Catalan described: walking down the aisle to their seats after getting their snack.

While there were additional legal hurdles and alibi items to present, including cell phone records pinging to the stadium at the time of the murder, Catalan was ultimately released, and all charges were dropped.

The turn of events was so unique that a documentary was released in 2017 titled “Long Shot.” It’s still streaming on Netflix.

The story is a chilling reminder of how fragile criminal charges can be. Thanks to his lawyer’s work, HBO’s cooperation, and “The Car Pool Lane,” Catalan is free.