The series began development in 2008, originally planned to air on AMC with Walton Goggins set to play the lead role.

Three years after being originally developed at AMC, sister channel Sundance TV picked it up and ordered six episodes, making it Sundance TV's first original scripted series.

In April 2012, Abigail Spencer, Clayne Crawford, Adelaide Clemens, Jonah Lotan, and J. Smith-Cameron were cast, with Aden Young joining as the series lead in May 2012.

Luke Kirby was cast in June 2012 as Daniel Holden's lawyer Jon Stern, replacing Jonah Lotan who had originally been cast in that role.

Production on the second season began on February 3, 2014, in Griffin, Georgia, and production on the final fourth season began in April 2016.

The fourth and final season received a Metacritic rating of 99 out of 100 based on 11 reviews, making it the highest-rated season of a television series on the site at the time.

The series won a 2014 Peabody Award, which praised it as 'a powerful, subtle dramatic series about a death-row inmate released after nearly two decades thanks to new DNA evidence.'

Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three who was wrongfully convicted and spent nearly two decades in prison before being released partly due to DNA evidence, wrote that the show mirrored his own life so closely he wondered how much of his story had influenced the script.