A federal judge has found that Netflix could have defamed a Kentucky man whose picture was lifted from his social media for use in a documentary that allegedly implied he was involved in a murder.

In the 2023 true crime documentary The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, a photo of Taylor Hazlewood is shown, with audio saying “stone-cold killer” and captions stating, “You can never trust anyone.” He sued Netflix in April, claiming that pictures of him were taken without his knowledge from his Instagram and that use of the photos were defamatory because of the “sinister” context in which they were shown.

The documentary centers on Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, who rose to viral stardom in 2013 when he saved a woman by bludgeoning her assailant with a hatchet before he was later convicted for the murder of an attorney in an unrelated incident. Netflix used a photo of Hazlewood, who wasn’t involved in the crime,...