Larry David, Champion of Justice?

Remember the recent "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry winds up having to take a prostitute to a Dodgers game?

According to the New Yorker, that episode has now saved a wrongfully accused man, Juan Catalan, from going to jail -- and perhaps even getting the death penalty.

Catalan was accused last May of murdering a 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla. Catalan, however, believed he had a strong alibi: He was at a Dodgers game the night of the crime. That's when lawyer Jack Melnik went to work, negotiating with the team to view Dodger Vision footage and trying to find any proof that his client was indeed there.

Somewhere along the way, Melnik was told that Larry David and company happened to be shooting scenes for that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode during the game. Melnik contacted David, who was at first skeptical, but later popped his head in and watched as the lawyer combed through the footage. And then he found the money shot: Catalan sitting there, watching the game.

Writes Jeffrey Toobin:

The HBO footage also included time codes, so Melnik was able to pinpoint precisely when his client was at the ballpark. He also located records from a cellular-phone tower which proved that Catalan had received calls in the vicinity of Dodger Stadium at the time of the murder.

Melnik presented the HBO footage and other documentation in a preliminary hearing earlier this year, and the judge dismissed the case against his client. Juan Catalan was released from jail, where he’d been for five and a half months, and he has returned to work at his father’s machine-tool shop. (Ledesma and Mario Catalan are still awaiting trial.)

As for David, he said, “I tell people that I’ve now done one decent thing in my life, albeit inadvertently.”