Making Of A Murderer

Checkout my bro's Op-Ed in the Washington Post about the lessons we can learn from this series: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...18d_story.html

"Millions of people are talking about this documentary now, but discussion is not enough. We need to take a hard look at our criminal justice system — a much harder look than a 10-episode documentary allows.

"We can and must, for example, change the way police collect eyewitness identification evidence — as many departments are beginning to do — to eliminate suggestion by law enforcement and comply with science-based best practices. We must mandate that all law-enforcement agencies record interrogations and that police change interrogation practices so they are less coercive, suggestive and presumptive of guilt. We must ensure that the forensic disciplines we rely on are based on science and that forensic analysts are shielded from biasing information and allegiances that can taint their analyses. We must ensure that the use of incentivized witnesses is regulated and that promises of leniency in exchange for testimony are disclosed to the defense. We must ensure that we provide adequate financial support for prosecutors and defense lawyers alike, so that prosecutors can adequately screen cases and that competent defense lawyers can present vigorous defenses. We must expand criminal discovery — the process by which the parties share evidence before trial — to avoid trial by ambush, and then we must hold state officials accountable when they conceal evidence pointing to a defendant’s innocence. We must make the system more responsive to post-conviction claims of injustice and less bound by blind obedience to finality."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trapp

I can't get over Colborn calling Halbach's license plate/vehicle in, even though he claims he didn't see it. He just called it in from memory for no reason? Am I missing something?

---

This too blew me away. The direct questioning and his responses. Why, for any reason, would a cop call in a plate number to identify a vehicle if he wasn't looking at the car? He provided the number to dispatch, did he just randomly remember the number and decide to call in for no reason like he said? This was one of the most damning and obvious things that made me believe there was a police conspiracy to frame Avery, whether he did it or not.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...ocial_facebook

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lev

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...ocial_facebook

---

Seems thoughtful, but the author is talking down to the viewers of the series, like everyone who watched the show has been led to believe they were innocent. I don't know if Avery killed Halbech but I do think he deserves a new trial. Also she talks about the moral implications of making a spectacle of violent crimes and it's victims. Why is she even writing the piece if she thinks this? It just adds to the spectacle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lev

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...ocial_facebook

---

The author, who appears to have zero legal training, misses the mark with this concluding statement:

Quote:

---

Toward the end of the series, Dean Strang, Steven Avery’s defense lawyer, notes that most of the problems in the criminal-justice system stem from “unwarranted certitude”—what he calls “a tragic lack of humility of everyone who participates.”Ultimately, “Making a Murderer” shares that flaw; it does not challenge our yearning for certainty or do the difficult work of helping to foster humility. Instead, it swaps one absolute for another—and, in doing so, comes to resemble the system it seeks to correct.

---

She erroneously turns the process on its head. In a criminal action, the prosecutor has the burden of poof, and it is a high one: reasonable doubt. The prosecution is required to prove guilt by such standard, but the defense is not required to prove innocence. It is beyond question that the prosecutor and the cops had "unwarranted certitude," but IMV the documentary did not portray that Steve Avery's attorneys had an absolute belief of SA's innocence. Good criminal defense attorneys don't think that way. (Indeed, in E10, Strang said that part of him "hopes that Steve Avery actually committed the crime.")

Instead, the film revealed many irregularities and lots of circumstantial evidence suggesting that SA was framed. Hell, as evinced by this thread, many viewers walked away with the notion that the cops may well have framed a guilty man.

And the author glosses over Brendan Dassey's confession and the larger issue that many are rotting in prison based on false confessions extracted via manipulation and deception, e.g., the Central Park Five and thousands of others about whom there is not documentary.

Late to the party and already knew the outcome. Wasn't super interested in it but ran out of shit to watch on Netflix. Only 20min into episode 5 right now and Ho. Lee. Fuck. I have no faith in our court system, fucking sad.

That said I echo basically everyone here in that he probably had some play in it, but to lose that case on a reasonable doubt is insane.

Oh and FUCK THA POLICE

Couple of observations as we sit down to watch episode 10.

1. Seems like there should be a little more to Avery getting 38 years for the sex assault in the 80's. Seems pretty steep unless he had a prior record or a completely terrible defense.

2. The DA Kratz looks and sounds like Janet Reno. I tried to post pictures of them side by side but was defeated by the TGR. I wonder if they've ever been seen in the same room?

I was riding my moto around Wisconsin last weekend dodging storms on an afternoon of pop-up scattered thunderstorms, aimless of final destination, letting the Gods lead me to a day of adventure. I got pushed south and East of Green Bay, and decided to ride out to Avery’s. That area is indeed creepy, with dark shady hollows, farmland giving way to thick hilly forest, a kind of insular provincial feel with a lot of hard, hollow-eyed stares from random roadside folk on porches and outside the bar in Michicot. I didn’t go all the way in because the Avery road sign is gone and the sign for the business is also no longer out on hwy 147, leading me to suspect the family isn’t interested in somebody like me riding in there just to look around.

I got a good immersive feel for the area though, and now it’s especially easy for me to understand how more-urban/suburban Manitowoc or Appleton or Green Bay locals would have harbored a kind of unspecific nervousness about that part of the county, and also (now that I try to write this) how the overall sense you get from being someplace can be difficult to adequately relate. It reminded me of an area of far-southern Ohio I got the creeps traveling through, an area where I later learned they were in the midst of extremely severe heroin and meth problems.
It reminded me of a creepy spot near where I grew up that I pointed out to my wife when we drove past it this spring. She didn’t get it and wanted to drive in and see what I meant, so I drove us into this creepy old road and as it narrowed and narrowed toward the bridge-out at the end, we ended up getting boxed in by a shitty old car driven by a probable meth cooker who had followed us in there with a shotgun….and having to very carefully talk our way out.

Something is off out there, the setting, the people…the well water(?). I was happy to point it the other direction and glad I didn’t get a flat tire or run out of gas.