Netflix' Series "Making a Murderer"

[(PeteCresswell)]

Anybody seen this series ?

I'm on epi 8.

Seems like fodder for a long thread.

[Unquestionably Confused]

I've watched the entire series.

It's a grabber but without introducing "spoilers" I will only say that episode 10 is good, but. . .

Investigation Discovery will be airing what you could call a rebuttal by the prosecution.

Making a Murderer had a story to tell and took sides. Likewise, the prosecution has a story to tell and will put their best foot forward.

When all is said and done, we will not see all the cards played by either side in a television program (or series of them),

The only folks who get to sit down (without popcorn and their favorite beverage) and see/hear the best shots of both the defense and prosecution are the jurors. That should count for something.

[bob_villain]

It's just entertainment...this guy is a creep of the 1st order and threatened the woman that vouched for him. This happened not far from here...so it's all hype and little truth to it.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Unquestionably Confused:

Maybe they will include the recent Nancy Grace interview with Avery's

1st girlfriend:

[Tekkie®]

(PeteCresswell) posted for all of us...

The is in the news for at least a week. It's one sided; not a true documentary.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

In which she characterizes Avery as a Jekyll/Hyde type...

[trader_4]

That's what I've heard too and Netflix is taking a lot of heat. It appears they put in everything favorable to the convict and left out most of the incriminating evidence, like that he had been threatening the women, harrassing them, his DNA was found on the dead woman's car, etc.

[Frank]

I avoid these type trial series.

I learned in the nearly a year wasted time following the O J Simpson trial with a major disappointment in the verdict. Piss poor jury, piss poor judge and piss poor prosecutors got the rich defendant off. I'm sure the media knew it but they just wanted to suck you in to watch it.

One of my sons was in law school at the time and I asked him how his professors felt about the O J trial and they told the students to avoid watching it. They were right.

If you like the entertainment, I guess it is OK. If you want the truth, I'd avoid it.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per trader_4:

After Googling alternative views, I would agree that the documentary was more biased than I would have expected.

But I also think they surfaced two legitimate issues that I had never even heard about, much less given any thought to:

- The widely-used "Reid" interrogation method. More at

but the bottom like seems to be that any competent team of interrogators can get somebody whose mental functioning is sufficiently below normal to confess to just about anything you can think of - in spite of the fact that he did not do it. The kid they nailed had an IQ of about 70 - and, after confessing to a rape/murder, he asked the interrogator if he could go back to school..... Something seriously lacking there...

- A general mentality of getting a confession rather than seeking the truth. Maybe baked in to an adversarial system, but the cops and prosecutors seem to take it too far when they get a gut feeling that somebody committed a crime and then dedicate themselves totally to proving it - instead of being open to other possibilities.

On Avery's first time around - when he was proven innocent after 18 years in the can - the actual perpetrator was suggested by another police agency, but the locals pushed that aside and just kept on with their case.

Also, I think the documentary made a reasonable case for evidence planting, especially the car key: seven days of investigation and nobody sees it, and then there it is in plain sight on the floor ?..... and the only DNA on it was Avery's ?.... After being used for years by the victim ? Doesn't compute.

I also came away wondering about the lack of blood. Seems like, in the police scenario, there would have to have been considerable victim blood wherever the murder was committed....but they looked really hard and found none.

But evidence tampering/planting and a forced confession are not, IMHO, incompatible with Avery's actually having killed the victim.

The impression I get so far from all the stuff I have seen and read is that the Avery family in general were undesirable, to say the least, and the cops in question were looking for any means possible to get at least some of them off the street.

Listen to the interview with Avery's 1st girlfriend at

and you come away thinking either she's psycho or Avery is a real Jekyll/Hyde character who probably did kill the victim - albeit maybe not in the way the police got the halfwit nephew to confess to.

I enjoyed reading the thread at

which seems to be contributed to by intellectually-careful people who really know how to think and argue - in short, people much smarter than I...

[Unquestionably Confused]

That would/might apply to Dassey(Sp?) but hardly to Avery who continued to maintain he was innocent.

A bucket of fries short of a Happy Meal, for sure.

Very bothersome. Explains why they were in negotiations to settle up with him for the wrongful conviction

And the apparent tampering with the evidence from his prior case.

If you tie the place of her killing to what Dassey said, you're correct. Had her throat been slit, etc. in his bedroom, there is no way, short of burning the place to the ground and grinding the ashes that some trace of blood would not have been found. So... she wasn't killed there.

Remember, too, that they looked at the garage as a possible scene and supposedly checked out a crack in the pavement and, I think, some mention was made of bleach. Again, maybe maybe not, logically you would think that he'd have done the deed in close proximity to the house but. . . Maybe not.

Even a broken watch is correct two times a day. As for the planting of the keys - it certainly looks bad for the prosecution but that trailer was a rat's net and I suppose it's possible.

Said it before and it's worth repeating.

Both the prosecution and the defense had an opportunity to make their case in front of a jury. Only the jury got to see everything that both sides had. They saw it and they convicted. That counts for a great deal in our system of justice. The appeals courts can only look to mistakes made by - or allowed - by the Court and, to limited extent, NEW evidence. That said, twelve jurors voted to convict so Avery isn't likely to skate out.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Unquestionably Confused:

Yes, I would agree. Although Avery's IQ is also supposed to be about

70 also, his thinking seems much clearer.

Did you see epi 10?.... My takeaway was that the jury was mostly in favor of acquittal except for three very stubborn members who had their minds made up on Day 1.... and those 3 wore down the rest....

If I got that part right, then I have to wonder if it was, perhaps, a combination of fatigue, wanting to go home, needing to get back to work, and some gut feeling about Avery rather than a rational decision based on the two sides' arguments.

Did you watch the interview with his 1st girlfriend?

Either she's some sort of psycho or Avery is a real-live Jekyll/Hyde character. I'd kind of like to her what her IQ is.... in fact, my morbid interest would extend to knowing if the whole bunch had room-temperature IQs and not just Avery and Dassey.

[Unquestionably Confused]

If you take the entire Avery family and look at it two things are apparent 1) The only time you'll get a full set of teeth is if they pose for a family portrait and 2) the average IQ probably falls south of the mean summer temperature in that part of Wisconsin.

That said, there is a difference between IQ and innate animal cunning.

I saw it but... if the source of that "box score" was the juror who was excused, I think I'll call bulls**t on that. Number 1, he was only privy to about 4 hours of deliberation before he bugged out. Number 2, it makes no sense that three could lock up the jury and make them come over to the guilty side if nine were in favor of acquittal. I've seen it go the other way. One or two will dig in and hold out for acquittal and you wind up with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. For that premise to be true you'd have to agree that nine people thought him "innocent" and didn't have the stones to hold their ground and allowed three others to "force" them into voting guilty.

Disagree. I can see the proponents of a not guilty swarming and overcoming one or two jurors and having them give in and say "aw, what the hell, let him walk" more easily than what we see here.

I think the only non-mouth breather in the entire show (other than the cops and lawyers, etc) was the victim, Teresa.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Frank:

OTOH, it seems to have provided a veritable treasure trove of material for stand-up comics..... -)

[(PeteCresswell)]

Here's a link to some intelligent-sounding comments on some of the basic issues:

[Frank]

You're right. Would have better spent my time watching them:

[Dr. Cheswick]

OJ was found innocent because it was cheaper than to have OJ's fan club riot/loot/burn down America's cities.

[taxed and spent]

Same reason the Rodney King's white cops had to found guilty the second time around, after being found innocent.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

Looks like it might get even more interesting.

A heavy hitter defense lawyer named Kathleen Zellner has taken up on behalf of Avery:

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

And the root page for the Reddit discussions is

An interesting (to me, at least...) aspect of this is that it may be the first time that a major murder case has effectively been crowd-sourced.

Once Zellner gets up to speed, she will have the benefit of the Reddit discussions where smart, observant people have been combing through the evidence and picking up on things like the photo that shows the victim next to her Rav4 holding keys - presumably the car key among them.... but attached to a bunch of other keys..... OTOH, the key "discovered" in Avery's trailer was detached...

And another person went back over the photos of the piece of furniture that was supposedly tipped/shaken to make the magic key fall into plain view after 7 days and found that there were coins laying on it and which had not changed position between before and after the key was found....

Stuff like that.... Whichever side one favors, it's got to get interesting....