Making a Murderer - NetFlix series

[Thor]

Yeah the total lack of blood in a dirty trailer home and garage is the biggest red flag, and of course the back of the RAV4 where bloody hair strands had touched the bed, clearly she was killed in or around the RAV and then burned, car moved to an obvious place on the Avery property, burned remains put in his pit.

[TSXCman]

Originally Posted by Locke

The Judge at the sentencing is dictating the alarming trend of escalation of Avery's crimes. From what I understand there were a couple of robberies, something involving a cat and then this. But the judge was talking as though Avery had committed the rape, assault and attempted murder that he was fully exonerated of.

I just completed this series. What a ridiculous statement from that judge with the trend of escalation. Completely incorrect and he drops that on his final ruling?

All in all, I think Avery needs another trial and Brendan needs to be released. There was a ton of motive for the county to manipulate everything that they could, but there is still a reasonable probability that he is guilty. Similarly to many of you, the lack of blood and real evidence is pretty crazy.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by TSXCman

I just completed this series. What a ridiculous statement from that judge with the trend of escalation. Completely incorrect and he drops that on his final ruling?

All in all, I think Avery needs another trial and Brendan needs to be released. There was a ton of motive for the county to manipulate everything that they could, but there is still a reasonable probability that he is guilty. Similarly to many of you, the lack of blood and real evidence is pretty crazy.

I also thought that it was unfair that the Judge wouldnt allow the Defense to argue that the Police didnt look anywhere else, question anyone else or even consider the possibility of other suspects.

Again, local prosecutor, local Judge, local Jury and suspicion of being framed by the local police. Its set up to fail.

I really liked Dean Strang's interview where he expressed his opinion that no lawyer wants to take on a case where the defence is that the defendant was framed, much less that he was framed by the police, but that he felt morally compelled to do it due to the evidence.

[Locke]

Ultimately, no one here is comfortable shouting from rooftops that Avery is innocent, but at the very least he deserves a fair trial and it seems irrefutably clear that neither he nor Dassey got one.

At the end of the day the prosecution stacked the deck with the coerced Dassey confession and subsequent press conference in conjunction with heavy handed local pressure and frankly either incompetent or complicit attorneys (in Dassey's case).

If the prosecution are so confident in their evidence then they should have no qualms or concerns about presenting it in front of an unbiased jury on a level playing field.

That being said, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest this and subsequently ignore the fact that via the existence and popularity of this documentary that the same tactic has been employed, just as much as the Dassey Confession Press Conference stacked the deck against Dassey and Avery so too does Making a Murderer stack the deck in favour of the other players.

So now after this documentary is released we see the standard defences of 'evidence was omitted' and 'you dont know all that we know' from the side that is all of a sudden being opposed by the very same public opinion that they used initially as a strength.

Its all well and good when its on your side but public opinion is a fickle mistress.

What boils my blood is that the people charged with ensuring justice miscarried it quite egregiously and suffered no consequences for it. That isnt right.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Originally Posted by Krovikan

I really do not this really applies Morgan Spurlock is a modern day snake oil salesmen in my opinion and Michael Moore while starts discussions are insanely one sided and mostly propaganda that sometimes does a disservice to the conversation. US isn't the only one that has horribly bad documentaries as well within the first 15 minutes of The Hole Story I had to shut it off as their comments kept on making me say wait one second I'm pretty sure that is either wrong or misleading and every time I fact checked it, it was either misleading or wrong.

That said, I couldn't really find anything that was critical that was left our of the documentary. They didn't pain Steven Avery as a saint, in fact that they painted him from the start as someone who was consistently in trouble with the law and someone who seem to have really poor decisions making skills, for example responding to harassment by a family member by running her off the road. Steven Avery doesn't seem like a nice guy.

I don't even know if he killed her or not after the documentary is over; and I don't think the documentary set out to say that. The documentary set out to investigate a story and they found a disaster of an investigation.

As for Ken Kratz comments about them leaving things out, of course they did; however he doesn't provide any details about what was left out. His comments seem like more garbage to me. As for his legal issues being included I think this was important to include, it shows a pattern of unethical and illegal actions, and does make you question Kratz's statements and motives.



During college had a business law course and they explained, over 50% is civil court, reasonable doubt it is 100% sure they did it.

This is not a documentary but something different in story telling. It's a story told in the eyes of a Director. I'm not taking away to it's brilliance, but there are things left out and information put in t keep you watching a ridiculous episodic structure for profit and not for the true story. This is similar to Serial, and The Durst type "Documentaries". It's story telling to an audience and not a documentary. This is why I put the link there.

[Krovikan]

Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest

This is not a documentary but something different in story telling. It's a story told in the eyes of a Director. I'm not taking away to it's brilliance, but there are things left out and information put in t keep you watching a ridiculous episodic structure for profit and not for the true story. This is similar to Serial, and The Durst type "Documentaries". It's story telling to an audience and not a documentary. This is why I put the link there.

Based on your response you haven't even kept up with this thread let alone done any research on the documentary.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest

This is not a documentary but something different in story telling. It's a story told in the eyes of a Director. I'm not taking away to it's brilliance, but there are things left out and information put in t keep you watching a ridiculous episodic structure for profit and not for the true story. This is similar to Serial, and The Durst type "Documentaries". It's story telling to an audience and not a documentary. This is why I put the link there.

I don't think you know what a documentary is.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Locke

Ultimately, no one here is comfortable shouting from rooftops that Avery is innocent, but at the very least he deserves a fair trial and it seems irrefutably clear that neither he nor Dassey got one.

At the end of the day the prosecution stacked the deck with the coerced Dassey confession and subsequent press conference in conjunction with heavy handed local pressure and frankly either incompetent or complicit attorneys (in Dassey's case).

If the prosecution are so confident in their evidence then they should have no qualms or concerns about presenting it in front of an unbiased jury on a level playing field.

That being said, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest this and subsequently ignore the fact that via the existence and popularity of this documentary that the same tactic has been employed, just as much as the Dassey Confession Press Conference stacked the deck against Dassey and Avery so too does Making a Murderer stack the deck in favour of the other players.

So now after this documentary is released we see the standard defences of 'evidence was omitted' and 'you dont know all that we know' from the side that is all of a sudden being opposed by the very same public opinion that they used initially as a strength.

Its all well and good when its on your side but public opinion is a fickle mistress.

What boils my blood is that the people charged with ensuring justice miscarried it quite egregiously and suffered no consequences for it. That isnt right.

There's little chance the initial sexual assault conviction wasn't set up. That alone begs for consequences that never came.

An evidence box that contains a crucial piece of evidence for a figure case has very clearly been tampered with and no follow up? A key to the victims vehicle central to the prosecution is not there until it shows up in an obvious spot when an officer being sued by the defendant shows up? Come on. Not even am investigation???

[blankall]

Another issue people are failing to take into account, is the notoriety this case contemporaneously received. Avery was a George Zimmerman like figure, and there was huge public pressure to convict. While Zimmerman's case was wrapped up into broader (and very real) issues of racial inequality, so too was Avery's case wrapped up into broader issues about violence towards women.

When the story broke, everyone was eager to take Avery's actions to the worst possible degree. Hence, the stories about Halbach being tied up, chained, tortured, raped by multiple people, etc... fed to Brendan.

This is a story about the public's reactionary tendency to form a lynch mob before all the facts have become clear, just as much as it is a story about police and court corruption and incompetence.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

There's little chance the initial sexual assault conviction wasn't set up. That alone begs for consequences that never came.

An evidence box that contains a crucial piece of evidence for a figure case has very clearly been tampered with and no follow up? A key to the victims vehicle central to the prosecution is not there until it shows up in an obvious spot when an officer being sued by the defendant shows up? Come on. Not even am investigation???

Not even an admission of possible impropriety! No 'sorry our bad' or anything.

I'm no specialist or anything but if an investigator who has a legal conflict of interest, has been expressly told NOT to be involved in the investigation or in fact be anywhere near it disobeys all of that and finds a key piece of evidence isnt that evidence at the very least suspect and at worst inadmissible?

And on top of that the key had only Avery's DNA on it. Not the DNA of the person who used it thousands of times, only the DNA of a guy who may have at best used it once. Found by an officer who was being sued by that very same man and that wasnt supposed to be there and that other officers didnt find the 5 other times they searched that room.

That was one of those table-flipping moments when it happened. I was watching and just yelling "Come on!! How do you not see this?"

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Locke

...What boils my blood is that the people charged with ensuring justice miscarried it quite egregiously and suffered no consequences for it. That isnt right.

This is a very good post, thanks.

My wife and I binge watch this series last week, and I echo many of the thoughts and comments already posted here.

But what this documentary series really emphasised for me was the terrifying fragility of the US justice system. I don't watch courtroom proceedings on television, and have virtually no experience with them beyond what I know from film and television dramas. I have to say, watching how entrenched the outcome of this case was made on pontification, persuasion and anecdote was nothing short of alarming. It astonishes me that in this day and age people are so readily convinced by the power of oration and correlation.

[mrkajz44]

Originally Posted by Locke

That was one of those table-flipping moments when it happened. I was watching and just yelling "Come on!! How do you not see this?"

This series just had too many of those:

-Key being found after umpteenth search but somehow was in plain view
-DNA test on blood from the bullet was botched, yet still was allowed to carry weight as evidence
-Officer calls in Theresa's missing licence plate 3 days before it is "found" and identifies the vehicle on his own somehow (even though he wasn't actually looking at the car or licence plate apparently)
-Dassey's story about what happened in the trailer bedroom has zero physical evidence to back it up
-Some of Theresa's voicemails were deleted by someone after her disappearance, but the only person to call in to the voicemail didn't do it...

I could go on, but those are just top of mind. What I found interesting that was never really talked about was the fire. If Avery actually burned Theresa in the fire that night, why the heck would he call up Dassey and invite him over to it? It also sounded like there were other people there at the fire. It would be beyond moronic to burn someone's body in that fire and then invite others to come over and watch.

Every time the defense team was talking after each day at the trial, I was starting to believe they had done enough to prove there was a reasonable doubt that Avery actually did this. There were so many moments where they caught the prosecution in tough spots to explain things.

I just think some stubborn jurors effectively put him away based on what they had wrongly heard in the media.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

This is a very good post, thanks.

My wife and I binge watch this series last week, and I echo many of the thoughts and comments already posted here.

But what this documentary series really emphasised for me was the terrifying fragility of the US justice system. I don't watch courtroom proceedings on television, and have virtually no experience with them beyond what I know from film and television dramas. I have to say, watching how entrenched the outcome of this case was made on pontification, persuasion and anecdote was nothing short of alarming. It astonishes me that in this day and age people are so readily convinced by the power of oration and correlation.

And further, what really burns me is that every court of appeal all the way up to the state Supreme Court upheld that unfair conviction to the point where, as Strang says, Avery literally exhausted every avenue of legal recourse.

I get it, law enforcement sticks together.

Ultimately I feel that every Judge who heard that case had one thing going through their mind:

"If we allow him a new trial and he isnt convicted Steven Avery is going to sue the State of Wisconsin for every penny they have a few that they dont. He has to stay in jail."

Based on little to no evidence. That is terrifying. Made even more terrifying by how easy it seemed to be as well as the fact that the people who did it get to keep on keeping on as though nothing happened.

The Sheriff and DA from the 1985 conviction are living at home, retired and collecting their generous state pensions. No consequences for gross negligence bordering on criminality whatsoever.

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by Locke

The Judge at the sentencing is dictating the alarming trend of escalation of Avery's crimes. From what I understand there were a couple of robberies, something involving a cat and then this. But the judge was talking as though Avery had committed the rape, assault and attempted murder that he was fully exonerated of.

Just for some perspective:

Steven Avery threw a cat into a fire, in front of a group of his friends, and watched it burn alive. And he admitted as such. The filmmakers had no qualms glossing over that little nugget...

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Yamer

Just for some perspective:

Steven Avery threw a cat into a fire, in front of a group of his friends, and watched it burn alive. And he admitted as such. The filmmakers had no qualms glossing over that little nugget...

They didnt gloss it over, they interviewed him and he admitted it, it also happened when he was a kid.

Technically from my original point from throwing a cat into a fire and then transition into some minor robberies the severity of his crimes actually declines.

But you have to accept the fact that he did not rape, assault or attempt to murder that woman in 1985 and his guilt in this murder is far from ironclad and even then if you are guilty of murdering someone then no matter what you've done in the past, unless its murdering several people, a murder would by its very nature be perceived as an escalation.

[Krovikan]

Originally Posted by Yamer

Just for some perspective:

Steven Avery threw a cat into a fire, in front of a group of his friends, and watched it burn alive. And he admitted as such. The filmmakers had no qualms glossing over that little nugget...

They didn't gloss over it, they stated it right from the start

[Atodaso]

Here's an article I found quite interesting.

http://indie88.com/steven-avery-migh...eresa-halbach/

Spoiler!

He suggests his brothers Earl and Charles did it.

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by Locke

They didnt gloss it over, they interviewed him and he admitted it, it also happened when he was a kid.

Technically from my original point from throwing a cat into a fire and then transition into some minor robberies the severity of his crimes actually declines.

But you have to accept the fact that he did not rape, assault or attempt to murder that woman in 1985 and his guilt in this murder is far from ironclad and even then if you are guilty of murdering someone then no matter what you've done in the past, unless its murdering several people, a murder would by its very nature be perceived as an escalation.

Originally Posted by Krovikan

They didn't gloss over it, they stated it right from the start

Locke: Yes, I agree on the point you were making completely.

And for the record, I too believe the trial was unfair and he should receive another one.

Even so, here is the quote from the dozen seconds or so they spent on the cat incident:

Another mistake I did, I had a bunch of friends over and we were fooling around with the cat and, I don't know, they were kind of negging (sic) it on...I tossed him over the fire and he lit up. You know, it was the family cat. I was young and stupid and hanging around with the wrong people.

That sounds a lot better than "I poured gasoline and oil on my cat and threw it into the fire and watched it burn to death". The filmmakers deliberately omitted the details, and I understand why.

I knew the details of the Avery case before watching the series, so it more than upset me that they were that dismissive of that incident. Not that it supersedes any miscarriage of justice during the trial, but what he actually did to that cat was some pretty sick ####.

[Locke]

Okay, yeah, I'm not familiar with that if he actually did that to the cat. Thats awful.

But we're on the same page in terms of the punishment. That Judge essentially locked Avery up and threw away the key and in the midst of that he gives this verbal diarrhea of a speech about Avery's shocking and egregious escalation in the severity of his crimes.

I'm listening to this and sitting back thinking "What the hell are you talking about? What is this, your first day as a Judge?"

I dont know how anyone, let alone a Judge, could have sat through that trial and done anything but a double-take when reading that verdict and then to top it all off with his own personal brand of stupid was infuriating.

[dammage79]

The only thing I took away from this series is if you mess with the wrong people who are spreading rumors about you, they'll get you. And if they don't get you the first time, they'l perfect it the 2nd time.

There's just no way the FBI doesn't get their hands in this after the messed up history of the entire system in Wisconsin. Blatant conspiring by the Sheriffs office, the DA and the Judges. How does this investigation not go federal?

EDIT: And how the hell do they get away without being held accountable for the victims of the real rapist that kept at large in the community after Avery was wrongfully imprisoned? They should be suing the pants off of the county and state for that matter. Because if every one wasn't conspring against Avery and actually did their fracking jobs right, none of those people would be victims of a known serial rapist.

I also don't care if Avery did it or not (I don't think he did, far too much of a simpleton to actually keep a grabage dump clean of DNA evidence in which there should have been plenty of), the biggest thing for me is the considerable collateral damage done to many other innocent people because of the Sheriff and county and state all the way up to the Supreme Court.