Defending Jacob is based on William Landay's 2012 novel of the same name and was ordered straight-to-series by Apple with eight episodes on September 20, 2018.

Chris Evans was cast in the lead role at the time the series order was announced, while Michelle Dockery and Jaeden Martell joined in March 2019, and Cherry Jones, Pablo Schreiber, Betty Gabriel and Sakina Jaffrey joined in April 2019.

J.K. Simmons' casting in the series was only revealed in a trailer released in March 2020.

Filming took place in Newton, Massachusetts, the same city where the novel is set, starting in April 2019, with key locations including Cold Spring Park, Newton Highlands, and the UMass Amherst Mount Ida Campus.

Production moved across numerous Massachusetts towns including Belmont, Salem, Walpole (at MCI Cedar Junction), Lowell, Medford, Worcester, Watertown, Leominster, Needham, and Waltham.

In Watertown, the facade of the old Watertown Police Station was used to represent the Newton Police Station in the series.

Scenes set in Mexico were actually filmed on September 25, 2019, at the Grand Velas hotel in Nuevo Vallarta, in the Mexican state of Nayarit.

The miniseries reportedly became the second most popular show on Apple TV+.