Millions of viewers world-wide have now watched the Netflix 10-part documentary “Making a Murderer”, dealing with the conviction of Steven Avery in the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005 in Manitowoc County Wisconsin. Avery had previously spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit – eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
Polarising and confronting, it's hard not to be outraged and somewhat disillusioned with the justice system, as it’s been applied to Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey in this doco. There are no warm fuzzies at the end of the series, just a nasty feeling that something is very wrong here, and the justice system doesn’t seem to want to fix it. At every turn it appears Avery is being set up by law enforcement. Or is this a case of sloppy, lazy police work where law enforcement made the evidence fit, because they were so sure that Steven Avery had committed the crime? Or is it a bit of both?
The Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutors of the case maintain Avery’s guilt, and argue that Making a Murderer showed clear bias towards the Avery family, and omitted facts and evidence that did not fit their agenda. The creators of the series, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi deny this claim, but concede that they had to fit 10 years’ worth of news segments, interviews, trials, recorded phone calls, and police interrogation footage into a 10-episode series — which means some details were left out. But Demos and Ricciardi say it would “just be impossible” to include every fact in the series.
Where does the truth lie? There’s certainly plenty of information available – a quick online search will bring up Facebook pages dedicated to supporting Avery and Dassey in their claim of innocence, and newspaper articles and Twitter feed from Avery’s new lawyer Katherine Zellner. All claim that their release from jail is imminent, fully exonerated thanks to new techniques in DNA and other technology that was not available at the time of Avery’s trial. Reddit is brimming with amateur sleuths and detectives who are devoting a good portion of their lives to developing alternative theories as to what really happened to Teresa Halbach. Speculation is rife and discussions heated and passionate – it seems the only thing that everyone agrees upon is that the treatment of Brendan Dassey by his own lawyer and law enforcement officials was shameful.
So what exactly are the facts and evidence that law enforcement claim were omitted or mis-represented in Making a Murderer? The inference is that, had they been included in the series, there would be no question in anyone’s mind as to Steven Avery’s guilt. This is where it gets tricky, as it seems that while the Manitowoc County Sheriffs’ Department and prosecutors like to throw this accusation around, they find it difficult to back it up with any examples that are credible or meaningful. Is there a whole bunch of important evidence and stuff that we don’t know about, and if so why won’t they tell us what it is? Various websites list “Facts left out of the show”, but most are un-verified, unproven or irrelevant. None prove the guilt of either Steven Avery or Brendan Dassey.
Hopefully more will be revealed in Making a Murderer 2 - Filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos have confirmed a second season of the Netflix doco, and promise to unearth more gritty details and delve further into the cases against Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. Personally I can’t wait!!