My mean-ass editor warned us all last week how visual “true crime” dramas could potentially undermine the justice system.

[Just] as [the power of visual drama] can be used to create the appearance of a documentary, of being able to watch as reality unfolds before your eyes, that appeals to your sensibilities, it can also be used to create the same false sense of reality that can be used to persuade you that an innocent person is [guilty.]

Tuesday’s broadcast of “Dark Side of the Ring,” the critically acclaimed Vice TV series produced by Jason Eisner and Evan Husney, proved him right. The latest installment, titled “Jimmy Snuka and the Death of Nancy Argentino” served as a vehicle to find James Reiher, better known by the moniker “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka*, guilty of murder in the court of public opinion.

It’s been almost five years since a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania grand jury indicted Snuka of third degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. The charges alleged Jimmy Snuka violently beat Nancy Argentino to death in an Allentown motel room in May of 1983.

Authorities didn’t charge Snuka until 2015, when journalists Kevin Amerman and Adam Clark of the Allentown Morning Call published a thirty-year anniversary piece on Argentino’s death. The article, combined with revelations from a copy of Nancy’s autopsy report, essentially pressured the district attorney’s office into bringing a thirty-year-old cold case before a grand jury.

Snuka was seventy-two at the time, battling dementia and stomach cancer. When I learned of the case, I asked a simple question: what’s the point?

Reiher’s life has already been “extinguished,” regardless of the decision in this case. His WWE Hall of Fame profile has been stripped from the company’s website, and his legends contract suspended. The company owning the rights to his legacy is busy whitewashing his existence from its history. No outcome will bring back Nancy Argentino, and the trial is only going to open more wounds and potentially further traumatize her family and Reiher’s.

Judge Kelly Banach came to the same conclusion in 2016 when she found Snuka mentally incompetent to stand trial after a four-day hearing. She eventually dismissed the charges in January, 2017 as the aging grappler’s battle with stomach cancer worsened.

During a closed-door hearing Tuesday in Allentown, Judge Kelly L. Banach granted defense attorney Robert Kirwan’s motion to end the case, which stalled in June when the judge found Snuka, 73, incompetent to stand trial.

“It was time for there to be closure,” Kirwan said after the hearing in the judge’s chambers.

“The medical evidence showed that he was not getting better, and in fact he’s getting worse.”

The charges were dismissed. The Argentino family was angry at what they perceived to be justice delayed, then denied. Jason Eisner and Evan Husney needed ten new tales to tell after signing a contract for Season 2 of “Dark Side of the Ring.” So they duo called Nancy’s sisters, Louise Argentino and Lorraine Salome, and asked if they wanted to share their story.

Much of the show centered around Louise and Lorraine’s accounts of Snuka as a violent, abusive cocaine addict. Snuka’s widow Carole and friend Sam “The Tonga Kid” Fatu act as his defenders, but the fundamental narrative is very clear. According to “Dark Side of the Ring,” Jimmy Snuka beat Nancy Argentino to death in May of 1983 and never faced the music for his wrongdoing thanks to lax prosecutors and a promoter who didn’t want his star attraction on trial for murder.

Surprisingly, one voice calling bullshit on the show is Irv Mushnick, a sports writer, son of legendary promoter Sam Mushnick, and someone who’s loudly accused Snuka of guilt for years.

While Dark Side of the Ring left the overriding impression that Snuka did it, and even ambushed two new voices into inadvertently revealing as much, executive producer Evan Husney and crew also left on the cutting-room floor the most important points I had made in our sit-down interview last October in Las Vegas.

But worse than the show itself was their cut-and-paste mash-up of a post-show panel discussion…There, the VICE team violated their representation to me, prior to our April 3 taping, of a “live to tape” session. Blatantly, shamelessly, they censored almost every single supplementary remark I made.

Mushnick’s gripes are twofold. First, he’s mad the Morning Call didn’t cover Argentino’s death back in 1983. Second, he’s upset the show didn’t mention the District Attorney who finally secured the indictment was an ADA at the time of Nancy’s death. It’s almost cute someone raised in a business based on secrecy and suspension of disbelief is upset that television producers would use the same tactics to produce a slick, inviting narrative.

Regardless, Mushnick was a star “witness” in this televised hit job on a man never found guilty by a trier of fact. Hopefully his words, along with those of all parties featured in the show, help everyone involved move on with their lives.

Unfortunately for Jimmy Snuka and his widow, there’s no production crew ready to help “Superfly” get his reputation back. As long as “Dark Side of the Ring” garners money and critical praise, it’s doubtful anyone will try.

*For the sake of ease, I will refer to James Reiher as “Jimmy Snuka” unless it’s a quote from a source.