What Juan Catalan endured at the hands of the Los Angeles police is no laughing matter.

But incredibly, as 60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett revealed, it’s comedy that saved him.

In August 2003, the young father was targeted by ten undercover police officers and violently placed under arrest.

Catalan was being charged with the murder of 16-year-old police informant, Martha Puebla.

In the first of many coincidences surrounding Catalan’s case, Puebla had been a star witness in a court case where his brother, Mario Catalan, was a defendant.

Unlike his brother, Catalan was a law-abiding citizen and doting father.

But being a relative of one of LA’s notorious Vineland Gang members was enough to make him a suspect.

Catalan was arrested and sent to prison where he spent six months awaiting trial.

It’s a moment in time that still haunts him today.

“Even though I was looking at a possible death sentence, it felt like I was already halfway there because I was away from my family,” he told Bartlett.

“Since the day I was arrested, I just felt like I was being framed.

“Like why? Why is my life going to end here?”

Returning to the scene of Puebla’s murder, Bartlett reveals that she was shot on the street while talking to her friend, who panicked before running away.

He was the only eyewitness to the crime and helped them to create an identikit picture – the only description being a Latino male with facial hair.

Homicide detectives on the case, Martin Pinner and Jose Rodriguez, were certain Juan Catalan was their killer, and in shocking police interview tapes it becomes clear they weren’t listening to a thing he had to say.

In court, the file was handed to Beth Silverman, a prosecutor proud of never losing a murder conviction.

With the presumption of innocence missing from the start, Catalan needed an alibi - his life quite literally depended on it.

He quickly enlisted lawyer Todd Melnik to defend his case.

“It’s just mindboggling of all the what-ifs in this case to make this alibi, at least a good portion of this alibi to come to life,” Melnik told Bartlett.

Catalan told Melnik he was at Dodger Stadium watching a baseball game with his seven-year-old daughter Melissa the night of the murder. He just had to prove it.

Scanning through the three hours of videotape from the game, Melnik was able to pinpoint where Catalan and his daughter were sitting, but the video resolution wasn’t clear enough to definitively show in a court of law.

By pure coincidence, comedian Larry David was filming an episode of his hit show Curb Your Enthusiasm that same night.

Of the 58,000 seats filled with fans, filming took place right near where Catalan was sitting.

“We went through, probably, the first five tapes and there was no Juan on it,” said Melnik.

“And, of course, everybody at Curb said, ‘You're crazy. You're never going to find your client on a tape.’

“And on the, probably the fifth tape I think it was, Juan walked right into the camera shot, and the rest is history, as they say.”

Just as the case finally started to lean in Catalan’s favour, another obstacle arose.

The timecode on the Curb Your Enthusiasm vision read 9.09pm, and the murder happened at 10.40pm - an hour and a half later.

The prosecution argued that Catalan had enough time to drive home and commit the murder, so Melnik took a strategy from arguably the famous criminal case of all to defend his client.

“During the OJ Simpson case very early on I learned that they had used cell tower pings in order to locate OJ on that slow speed chase and that has always stuck in my mind,” he told Bartlett.

Thankfully, the night of the accused crime Catalan’s wife had called him just as he was leaving the stadium with their daughter – at 10.13pm.

The call was pinged by the cell tower right alongside Dodger Stadium.

Taking into account traffic congestion, the judge accepted there’d be no way Juan could have been at the crime scene at the time of the murder.

After dancing with death, Juan was a free man.

“From getting the tickets on the day of, to being caught on camera, to what are the chances that out of 56 – 58,000 seats they’re filming on my aisle?” Catalan said.

“I look at it like I did win the lottery because I got a new opportunity at life with my family. I’m so happy and grateful for that.”

Homicide Detectives Pinner and Rodriquez eventually admitted they set Juan Catalan up to solve the case.

Following the acquittal, they were both reassigned posts within the LAPD but never formally penalised for their conduct.

Pinner is still a police officer to this day.