As you can see from my rating this review will not be of the popular opinion.

First I would like to state that I had started defendant when utnhad just finished airing, but then I put it on hold since then, only to decide to rewatch it 3 years later simply because I had all the episodes downloaded so I thought it would be a waste not to. I do not regret having watched it, maybe because it helped me rethink the concept of rewatching or watching an older drama however popular it may have been , especially after watching many dramas of the same genre that have come out since.
I was hating a lot of things with this drama's story but deep inside I knew it was mostly because my standards as a viewer had become high thanks to many other solid dramas of the same genres, whether it be law, crime, prison, or revenge. I have watched shows that share similar genres like stranger (forest of secrets), signal, prison's playbook, and I hear your voice, dramas that are by no means masterpieces but which enjoyed strongly woven stories that above all showed respect to the viewers' intelligence and boasted solid and believable character development for both protagonists and antagonists.

First let me discuss where this drama scored points...the acting. Ji sung and full stop! Solid performances by all, especially uhm kijoon, but ji sung's alone would have been more than an enough to still make me give acting such a high score. He was able to capture the raw emotions and pain of our hero, you felt for him from start to finish. As for our antagonist, while uhm kijoon performance was to point from start to finish I had my reserves as to the relatability of his character as a villain, which was due to the writing and by no means due to a problem on his part.

Now to where this drama did poorly; the story.

This is in a nutshell a story that had a smart concept but dumb execution.
Let me put it this way, If a drama forces its viewers to have to exercise a fair amount of suspension of disbelief in order to watch, guessing and questioning plot holes and filling in missing gaps every now and then, then the story writing is simply failing right there. End of story.

First off, this story relied on too many conveniencies to work, ranging from the trivial to the huge. To give just a few examples, the brother in law who works as a correctional officer, the mother of the villain who has dementia so can't cause too much trouble recognizing the identity swap, the wife of the good twin who was previously dating the evil twin and also has a son from (ie can be blackmailed into silence.), The DA in charge being a friend of the suspect who happened to visit his house minutes before the murder (in turn becoming an accomplice in the cover up).

The story also stretched the chaebol power card too far (which was in itself one of the biggest conveniencies of all). They show us the cheabol who not only has connections in multiple sovereign bodies such as the police, the DA and the prison, but almost has total control over some corrupt high ups, with such corruption reaching extreme heights at some points (forging fake lab results, stealing confidential case files from the NFS and killing off suspects in prosecution custody etc). The writer must know that the more his villain has to use his connections to cover up his tracks, the more he is creating loose ends and leaving behind even more evidence. Which is exactly what happened in the final epidode where everything unraveled....so miraculously if I may say (to be discussed later).

Another thing that bothered me with the story was that a big portion of the drama felt like a cat and mouse scenario, where the good side takes a step forward, the bad side takes couple of steps back. This while in no means an uncommon tool in this genre, here was done in a very obvious (like minho declaring at one point that it was a race to find the daughter), repitive and following an almost never changing pattern. it became kind of frustrating to be watching the good side plotting a way out and only awaiting the bad side to squash their attempts with a simple wave of the hand (through a call to the high ups or another hit job or both). And for God's sake how easy is it to run a car over with the same huge orange dump truck and get away with it each and every time!!!!!

Worst thing of all was the finale.
In terms of making fun of the viewers' intelligence, those last two episodes were by far the worst. It felt like the writer thought to himself "well they stuck this far, didn't they" and decided to go crazy with the story.
Not only does multiple sides who had sided with the villain for so long decide all of a sudden to come clean (from secretary to wife to corrupt DA friend), but also the smart and conniving villain does a bunch of unbelievably dumb stuff such as meeting with his minion, who is being charged with murder, inside the DA office after interrogation and straight out telling him where he hid a murder weapon!! I was screaming to the screen "haven't you ever heard of voice recorders?!" Worse, the supposedly smart manipulative villain who in an attempt to keep an accomplice under control had been blackmailing him with a recording, turns out that recording included his voice admitting to murder all along!!!! If you have to resort to sudden and inexplicable change of character whether it be intelligence-wise or conscience-wise then you are doing something wrong, Mrs writer.

To sum it up..this drama had a good premise and marvelous cast, but the execution of the story and the details felt sometimes sloppy, sometimes rushed, and other times downright dumb. The pace also felt awkward rushing through the important parts especially at the begining and towards the end, but going super slow and thorough at other parts to the point it felt draggy.
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The above is my review of the drama and below are some of the points that bothered me the most while watching this drama.
only read if you have watched this drama recently or have an excellent memory of the plot :D
Any discussions regarding regarding these points will be greatly appreciated ;)

1) First and most importantly why did minho choose such a complicated method that involves framing jung woo of murdering his family instead of just killing him. If he had killed him on the same night he would no prevented him from holding the press conference where he had planned to reveal minho's true identity. And please do not try to convince me that he was working by the concept of an eye for an eye, and that he wanted him to feel the loss of a family member just like he did when he was forced to kill his brother!! Not buying it because most surely minho must have suspected jung woo to be receiving help from his colleagues who most surely will continue digging into the case even after jungwoo was incarcerated.

2) so min ho was surprised to learn that the bag that was supposed to be carrying hayeon's body was found empty, and we see a flashback where they explain that sungyu's job was to put hayeon's body inside the bag (or did I get this part wrong?). my question is how did that happen, if minho's plan was to kill hayeon and dispose of her body how come jung woo ended up with an empty bag? Or was minho angry not at the bag being empty but that it was found in the first place?! I didn't quite understand that.

3) how did jung woo know at the crime scene that minho's blood was on the knife he used to stab ji soo?!!! We know he is a DA and all but sure he has no forensic lab at his house. And also how cine minho didn't notice he had a cut through hus gloves, That was too much of a stretch by the script writer imo. Also for crying out loud, what kind of shi**y CSI job did they do that they can't even make a proper comparison between the weapon found at the crime scene and the wounds inflicted on the victim.

4) during the prosecutors investigation it was mentioned that the CCTV footage didn't show anyone other than the apartments' tenants going in and out of the building. we know that the prosecutor friend jung hyuk covered up the fact that he visited the apartment on the day of the murder by deleting the cctv footage. But later on he mentions to minho that the cctv showed him exiting the building after the murder. Minho surely had the dep. Head at the DA's office ready to alter any evidence that connects him to the crime scene, so how come the DA in charge was able to access the footage in the first place.

5) concerning the sequence of events at the night of the murder, if jung woo took the empty bag in his car and buried it, How did he return to the house and get arrested there when we know he left the car with the knife hidden inside at a parking lot near where he burried the bag. Did he take a ride home?! And if he had done just that, what kind of a sloppy investigation was it that they never bothered searching for the missing vehicle.