Kim Kardashian releases first true crime podcast on Spotify

The reality star has been an advocate for criminal justice reform since 2018

Kim Kardashian has released the first two episodes of her true crime podcast series on Spotify.

The reality star’s original podcast, titled Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith, focuses on criminal justice reform and is available to listen to worldwide.

Kardashian, who passed the baby bar exam in December 2021 after failing the first three times she sat for it, narrates the series alongside true crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi.

Ansaldi is a leading expert on prison reform. Together, the women tell the story of Keith, a man from Ohio who was convicted for triple homicide and has been working to prove he was wrongly accused for nearly 30 years.

Keith was arrested and charged with three murders in February 1994 despite a lack of physical evidence linking him to the crimes. He has spent 28 years in prison, with some of those years on death row.

Ohio governor Ted Strickland commuted Keith’s death sentence in 2010, but he is currently serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

In the first episode of The System, Kardashian says in an interview with Keith: “I’m really hopeful for this podcast, just to get your story out there, because I think it’s so important for people to understand that… our system is so f***ed up.”

Last month, Kardashian opened up about her journey towards becoming a lawyer in Interview Magazine.

She said it began when she read a story about a woman who “answered the phone as a mule for a drug case and got the same sentence as Charles Manson”.

“When I saw that, I was like, ‘I don’t get it. How did this happen? Did she need a better attorney?’,” she said.

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“Once I saw how broken the system is, I couldn’t stop. I have to help as many people as I can. These people are thrown away and put in prison and no one cares. It’s so heartbreaking.”

Kardashian and Spotify partnered with two justice organisations for the podcast, including Colour of Change, the biggest online racial justice organisation in the US, and Calling All Crows, which encourages music fans to support movements for justice and equality.

It comes after Adnan Syed, who was the subject of the wildly popular 2014 podcast Serial, had his murder conviction overturned.

On Monday (19 September), the decision was made after Baltimore prosecutors filed a motion for retrial based on new evidence.

Syed had been serving a life sentence in prison since 2000, when he was 17 years old, for the murder, robbery, kidnapping and imprisonment of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

The first season of Serial, a podcast by journalist Sarah Koenig, shone a spotlight on Lee’s death and Syed’s conviction. It questioned official police and the prosecution’s narratives.

On 16 September, Baltimore prosecutors filed a motion saying that “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction”. Syed has since been released.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, said: “We are not yet declaring Adnan Syed is innocent but we are declaring, in the interest of fairness and justice, he is entitled to a new trial.”

Kardashian been an advocate on behalf of criminal justice reform since 2018, when she successfully advocated for Alice Marie Johnson.

At the time, she petitioned former US president Donald Trump for clemency in Johnson’s case after she served more than two decades in prison as part of a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offence.