Netflix - Making a Murderer

[Pantlegz]

I really wonder how "poor" the Avery's really are or at least as poor the show made them appear. Seems as if they have lots of equipment ( tractors ,car crusher, vehicle lifts etc.)at the salvage yard that seems somewhat valuable plus the yard is 40 acres (30 of which appear to be bumper to bumper scrap cars which just in scrap valu must be worth a good chunk of change.

Probably as poor as most small farmers, they've had the land for years and slowly built up what they have. Most of their income goes to new equipment which is absurdly expensive. They're clearly not rich as Brenden was using court appointed attorney's for most of his defense. And Steven had to take a settlement from the county to afford his. And they were going to put up their land for the initial bail for Steven. They might not be dirt poor but their disposable income can't be very high.

 

[Pantlegz]

I didn't see this posted anywhere in the thread, but here's a link to a petition for a Federal investigation of the courts/police departments involved.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pe...manitowoc-county-and-calumet-county-wisconsin

 

[ultimatebob]

Can't be bothered to watch the show or read this entire thread.

Did he do the crime or not?

I think that he definitely had a part in it, but I don't think that the prosecution proved their case well enough to eliminate reasonable doubt.

Honestly, I'm not fully sure if the cops planted the evidence or the Avery's were just too stupid to clean it up properly.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I didn't see this posted anywhere in the thread, but here's a link to a petition for a Federal investigation of the courts/police departments involved.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pe...manitowoc-county-and-calumet-county-wisconsin

The scary part is this is a double edged sword. Let's suppose he got a retrial or the police were investigated, and everything still pointed to Avery and Dassey being guilty (or even w/o a question guilty) and the cops weren't planting evidence and they were just bad at their job. It would set a poor precedent for future questioning of law employees or it could even make it so people turn a blind eye in the future.

 

[Charmonium]

Can't be bothered to watch the show or read this entire thread.

Did he do the crime or not?

That's why you have to watch. Each person is going to pick up on specific things as being convincing evidence of guilt or innocence. And if not innocence, then the existence of reasonable doubt.

Having said that, I didn't watch on netflix but used a video player that I have set to do 3 second advances when I hit the 'forward' button on my mouse. And I did at least a thousand of those 3 second jumps over the 10 hours. So you don't have to sit through every single second of the show, but you do have to watch most of it.

 

[Skeeedunt]

Crazy stuff. A few thoughts.

I don't get the argument that he was "too dumb" to clean up the crime scene. Certainly it would be arduous, and by some reasoning impossible, but it hardly requires any tremendous mental capacity. What am I missing here?

They had one expert on the show (who wasn't part of the trial, sorry I forget his name), who at one point was pointing out how absurd their prolonged investigation of the crime scene was. That most often a scene would be investigated for a day or whatever, and then handed back to its owners. Is that generally true? If so, the many repeated visits, particularly those involving Manitowoc County, seems amazing.

 

[iamwiz82]

Crazy stuff. A few thoughts.

I don't get the argument that he was "too dumb" to clean up the crime scene. Certainly it would be arduous, and by some reasoning impossible, but it hardly requires any tremendous mental capacity. What am I missing here?

They had one expert on the show (who wasn't part of the trial, sorry I forget his name), who at one point was pointing out how absurd their prolonged investigation of the crime scene was. That most often a scene would be investigated for a day or whatever, and then handed back to its owners. Is that generally true? If so, the many repeated visits, particularly those involving Manitowoc County, seems amazing.

They claimed she was killed in the garage and to prove so they excavated a portion of the garage floor where a crack existed, near the bullet, assuming that blood would have to travel down it. When they tested the rubble no DNA was found.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Interesting article and letter by the rape victim that got him put away the first time. Honestly, she paints him in a pretty good light all things considered.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/health-penny-beernsten-the-rape-victim-in-204859887.html

 

[Ns1]

I'm on episode 7 now and so angry.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

As a LEO who watched the entire documentary, I'm not convinced Avery had nothing to do with it, but there was a lot of shady practices by Manitowoc County deputies/prosecutor/brendan's own defense attorney and a lot should have been thrown out of court.

There's no way that she was killed the way they stated she was though. That is for certain.

 

[Charmonium]

As a LEO who watched the entire documentary, I'm not convinced Avery had nothing to do with it, but there was a lot of shady practices by Manitowoc County deputies/prosecutor/brendan's own defense attorney and a lot should have been thrown out of court.

There's no way that she was killed the way they stated she was though. That is for certain.

So in your professional opinion, from what you know of criminal law, do you think that Avery should get a new trial? In your opinion do you think the federal courts would look favorably on a denial of due process appeal? Any other thoughts?

 

[IamDavid]

He did it.
He shouldn't have been found guilty.
The cops\system did everything they could to convict him, even to the point of breaking the law.

Main take away is how grossly inept many of our civil workers today. Such a low standard for anyone to become a police officer, lawyer or just about any other position these days. Sad because the situation will only continue to get worse and the people will lose more and more trust in the system.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

So in your professional opinion, from what you know of criminal law, do you think that Avery should get a new trial? In your opinion do you think the federal courts would look favorably on a denial of due process appeal? Any other thoughts?

I believe both he and Brendan should get a new trial, yes. Like I said, I'm not convinced Steven had nothing to do with her death, but the fact that Manitowoc County said they'd stay out of it and then they find the majority of the evidence, plus the railroading of Brendan by everyone involved, there's no way either of them had a fair chance. A lot of stuff shown in the documentary wouldn't fly in my department or our county's courtroom.

Only other thoughts at the moment are during this time where police corruption seems to be a major focal point, this documentary doesn't help shed a positive light on those in my profession. Just a shame.

 

[ultimatebob]

Crazy stuff. A few thoughts.

I don't get the argument that he was "too dumb" to clean up the crime scene. Certainly it would be arduous, and by some reasoning impossible, but it hardly requires any tremendous mental capacity. What am I missing here?

They had one expert on the show (who wasn't part of the trial, sorry I forget his name), who at one point was pointing out how absurd their prolonged investigation of the crime scene was. That most often a scene would be investigated for a day or whatever, and then handed back to its owners. Is that generally true? If so, the many repeated visits, particularly those involving Manitowoc County, seems amazing.

I'm thinking about things like the blood on the dashboard of the RAV4. Only a total moron wouldn't have thoroughly checked that car for blood if they actually used it to move the body, which makes me think that it was planted.

 

[jackstar7]

He had access to a car crusher and an incinerator. If he was so meticulous as to clean his crappy home (and miss that key that lacked for Teresa's DNA, but somehow has his), why wouldn't he avail himself of all his obvious resources?

Sorry, just finished and very troubled by the experience.

 

[dethman]

just like many, i think he's guilty. the manner in which he was prosecuted though is very questionable. ken kratz seems like a sleazeball to me. a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards steven though is not presented in this 'documentary.' definitely skewed towards avery being innocent. though it's not that clear cut IMO.

 

[Blanky]

I've never seen a documentary that wasn't severely biased. I know nothing about this case, had heard nothing until recently, but a bit concerned that netflix's creation of a series ultimately for the enjoyment of its viewers is enough to make a cause celebre for so many people who have no meaningful knowledge of the law nor really care about this kind of thing otherwise. In other words I wonder if netflix has bamboozeled some of you. Certainly a petition to have him pardoned by obama because somebody went on a netflix binge watch is a farce.

 

[Charmonium]

Only other thoughts at the moment are during this time where police corruption seems to be a major focal point, this documentary doesn't help shed a positive light on those in my profession. Just a shame.

Yes. Unfortunately the quality of police forces can and does vary wildly from one jurisdiction to the next. I used to know a lawyer who had been a county prosecutor and later worked as one at the municipal level. From what I could tell, cops and prosecutors see themselves on the same side and that can lead to suborning perjury, to failure to disclose exculpatory evidence, to a whole range of abuses that one can easily fall into if you really believe that you have the right man and feel you need to get the "right" result.

Hell, before the NJ State Police finally got called out on it, they had been doing profiling for decades. It was a standing joke that if you were heading north on the turnpike with out of state plates and you weren't white, you could be guaranteed of being stopped and "consenting" to a search of your car.

And to be sure, that did end up resulting in a lot of drug busts. People don't realize that when you pressure the police to deal with a problem that can't really be effectively dealt with, like say the war on drugs, what you're really doing is telling them it's ok to bend the rules. And once you start doing that, it becomes a lot easier to justify out and out disregard of the rules.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Thing is...garage wasn't clean, neither was the house. Look at the photos. Things there hadn't been touched in ages.

Also:

No DNA of Theresa anywhere in the home or the garage (EXCEPT for the bullet in the garage, that mysteriously had DNA, but not blood DNA)

No DNA of Brenden in the house or garage.

No fingerprints from Avery or Dassey on/in the vehicle but there was blood drops and some sort of (sweat?) DNA of Avery's under the hood.

No DNA from Theresa on her own key, but Avery's was on it.

Bones found in 3 locations (1 of which was off the property)

No evidence of bleach used to clean up said blood

No evidence of bed sheets/blankets/etc in burn piles


Now, let's say he did clean the garage meticulously, or even the house. Then, he would have had to burn the body and her possessions.

One could say he stashed the car quickly meaning to come back for it, and not thinking anyone would actually find it in that lot. (The mindset being he had time because no one knew to look there).

But...

I will play both sides by saying. All the so called evidence in the old case said he was guilty too. So...makes you wonder how concrete some of the existing evidence is considering all the motive to make him disappear and the story related to how he was convicted before (as in...basically all evidence was made to look like it was him). Like the sheriff said, would have been easier to just kill him, because that wouldn't have looked suspicious or anything with a 35million dollar lawsuit or anything. (ie: that would have definitely pointed to them as motive).

 

[ImpulsE69]

I've never seen a documentary that wasn't severely biased. I know nothing about this case, had heard nothing until recently, but a bit concerned that netflix's creation of a series ultimately for the enjoyment of its viewers is enough to make a cause celebre for so many people who have no meaningful knowledge of the law nor really care about this kind of thing otherwise. In other words I wonder if netflix has bamboozeled some of you. Certainly a petition to have him pardoned by obama because somebody went on a netflix binge watch is a farce.

I do think the documentary looked biased. I thought that as I was watching it, however his innocence or guilt really isn't the question here. It is the misconduct by law authorities and the attourneys. Since you didn't bring that up, I'm going to assume you didn't watch it and your opinion is no better than those you are criticizing.

Watch it, or don't participate. Better yet, watch it, then research the transcripts and videos that are out there. The points that Kratz says are missing, are not damning at all and still leaves plenty of room for reasonable doubt. It still doesn't dismiss the conduct of the law.

 

[Ns1]

nm

 

[Charmonium]

I've never seen a documentary that wasn't severely biased. I know nothing about this case, had heard nothing until recently, but a bit concerned that netflix's creation of a series ultimately for the enjoyment of its viewers is enough to make a cause celebre for so many people who have no meaningful knowledge of the law nor really care about this kind of thing otherwise. In other words I wonder if netflix has bamboozeled some of you. Certainly a petition to have him pardoned by obama because somebody went on a netflix binge watch is a farce.

Well, there's the law and there's fundamental fairness. Not everyone will necessarily understand the former but I think everyone can understand the latter. And that really what due process is - fundamental fairness.

There's probably not much doubt that the producers of the show have some bias. That's unavoidable. It's why we have an adversarial system of justice. However I don't think it's a hatchet job. They do give you both sides of the issue.

If only a fraction of the evidence they highlight in the show is true, I don't think there's much doubt that Avery and Dassey deserve new trials.

 

[JSt0rm]

that dudes biggest mistake was not gtfo of that county while he had that lawsuit going. His civil lawyers should of put him up 2000 miles from that county.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Anyone else get annoyed with the "dramatizations" of the court room reporters? The attorneys and DA would answer questions in 480p resolution then it would cut to the court room reporters looking frustrated and confused in 1080p. They were clearly actors/actresses.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Disgusting what they did to him in both trials. More so in the first one. I still don't know if he killed her or not. I don't believe he should have been convicted on the evidence they produced though. I have no idea how they contend he shot that woman in the garage and then removed all the dna evidence.