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Oh thank christ there's a thread for this. I started watching it last weekend before heading off for Xmas and am just picking it up again now that I'm back home...my Xmas travels took me to Manitowoc County so I was constantly reminded of this drat thing while I was away from it. The HTR (local paper) did 2 big front-page stories about the documentary on the 22nd, one that was more straight-up PR and the other a reaction piece including quotes from the current Manitowoc sheriff and others. They're not exactly gripping journalism, but here you go: http://www.htrnews.com/story/news/local/2015/12/18/netflix-releases-steven-avery-documentary/77561088/ http://www.htrnews.com/story/news/local/2015/12/21/sheriff-making-murderer-movie-not-documentary/77715576/ mcmagic posted:I'm pretty sure that Avery killed her. That doesn't make anything the Cops did any less despicable though. The story about him lighting a cat on Fire didn't leave my mind during any of the 10 hours... That's the thing for me: I am less interested in his innocence than I am in seeing law enforcement and the courts operate properly. Kampfbereit posted:It's nice to see that cops all over the US are using the exact same methods when they are coercing mentally challenged people and/or children. They did the same thing to the West Memphis Three, they focussed on the retarded kid and forced a confession out of him, then used that to convict the others. I feel so bad for Brendan Dassey in all this, there should be safeguards to protect suspects like him from being blatantly taken advantage of. But it is absolutely true that the same type of thing happens practically everywhere in the US.
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Dec 27, 2015 09:20
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Arms_Akimbo posted:Effort post incoming: That all sounds pretty lovely, but I grew up in Two Rivers and I can tell you it was...not like that. For one thing, Manitowoc has something like 30,000 people so it really isn't rural at all, especially for Wisconsin. Two Rivers is a about 1/3 that size, which is still 10x the typical little Wisconsin village. The public school system was award-winning in the 80s (and thanks to your story, I now understand why). Resources for bright or ambitious students were non-existent but we had quite a few competent, dedicated teachers. My understanding is that the support for slow and special ed kids was pretty decent. I'm just on episode 6 now, when they talked about turning jurisdiction over to Calumet County for some reason I thought that would mean Appleton, i.e. an area with a more urban, (hopefully) professional sheriff's department and sufficient manpower to really run the investigation. It wasn't until the news clip talked about busing jurors to Chilton that I looked up what Calumet County actually entails; it's far smaller than Manitowoc County and really had no business managing a major crime investigation like this. No wonder the Manitowoc County deputies kept ending up back at the Avery property; it's probably SOP in Calumet County to call Manitowoc for help even on less intensive projects. Juror selection is a toughie because I'm not sure there were untainted jurors available in the United States. I know I have a special interest in the area as an "ex-pat" but I was well aware of Avery's arrest and the allegations based on Brendan's testimony even here in California. Probably the best case scenario would have been to relocate the trial to Milwaukee and hope the real city folk just don't give a gently caress about hick news. Short of that, I'm not sure any change of venue would have helped because all of northeastern Wisconsin tends to be pretty interrelated. Carew posted:what are you basing your judgement on if not by the evidence presented/argued by the people who want to put him away? do you know something we don't Because I don't have dozens of cousins dotting the landscape like my peers I don't have as much of the local low-down as I might otherwise, but the impression I get (mostly via Facebook) is that there are quite a few people who strongly feel the guy is guilty because they've met him and found him to be a dirtbag. I am totally willing to believe he is indeed a dirtbag, but I would like to live in a country where even dirtbags receive a fair trial. kaworu posted:A lot of less scrupulous individuals have probably been inundating all sorts of people with crap though, I am sure. No doubt. Even the Manitowoc PD seems to be getting poo poo on, and they didn't even have jurisdiction over any part of this story whatsoever. Pinky Artichoke fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Dec 28, 2015 |
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Dec 28, 2015 13:28
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aslan posted:Oh god, yes. My friend works in Manitowoc and has a similar (but entirely distinct) job title to one of the story's "villains"--a job she's held less than two years--and is still getting absolutely flooded with emails cursing her out for her role in the case. A friend of hers who works at the city historical society says even they're getting hate mail over it? If people who had nothing to do with the case are getting that much harassment, I'm sure the actual baddies are getting 20x more. I feel bad for your friend and everyone else who is absorbing this poo poo. I wish people would channel their outrage into something more productive than dumping on the town. Literally the only thing that made this case noteworthy was Avery's stubborn refusal to plead out on the 1985 charge; there are plenty of similarly vulnerable people rotting in prisons around the country. Our public defender system is a joke in many areas, even getting a Len Kachinsky-level chump would be a godsend to some defendants. Threatening little old lady museum volunteers in Manitowoc will do nothing to improve the situation. PrincessKate posted:Also, I would be so hesitant to ever have a jury trial because people are so incredibly stupid, but the judge in Avery's case makes me realize a bench trial would be just as hopeless. I've sat on two different juries now (because apparently I look reasonable and I'm not a big enough rear end in a top hat to pull the jury nullification card), both for quick, penny ante stuff. The judge's instructions make a ton of difference to the jury's process and outcome. The first judge basically let us come to our own conclusions with no real instructions as to what we could or could not consider and did not make a point of instructing us on the law. The second judge was much more conscientious about instructing us on the letter of the law and what material we could or could not consider; the quality of our deliberations was much higher. In this case, I think it would've taken an extraordinary judge to wring a fair verdict out of a jury -- which by the way may still have been guilty based on the specific material that jury is allowed to consider.
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Dec 28, 2015 20:29
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Grem posted:People keep bringing up the $36m civil rights case, but the documentary said that the Avery Bill that was passed right when Teresa went missing gave Avery $400k. I'm almost positive that was going to be the extent of his restitution, I don't see the state adding another lump of money on to what he was probably going to win anyways. I can't find if his case ever closed or what, but the way he was buddy buddy with lawmakers in the state I can see them offering the $400k and him dropping the civil rights lawsuit in exchange. That is a separate thing. The lawmakers wanted to increase the restitution from the state to exonerated former inmates from $5k/year to $25k/year (it's not clear to me whether that provision remained in the bill after Avery was arrested for the Halbach murder, but the bill also included provisions about recording interrogations and handling of evidence). The civil suit was specifically against Manitowoc County and associated individuals in reference to their malpractice in the 1985 case.
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Dec 28, 2015 22:38
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Leon Einstein posted:/\ There's been some of that on my FB as well. I figure people saw a shitton of media coverage back in 2006-7 plus all the gossip that happens when practically everyone is related to someone in law enforcement and/or the Avery family and I can't really fault them for having strong feelings. Anyway, it'll all be drowned out by mourning for Lemmy for the foreseeable future. OK, different issue, I'm almost finished (had to stop in the middle of episode 10) and I had to laugh a little when Steven says he never expected to go to jail again. Come on, man, you're a felon in possession of a firearm. You're still a reckless driver. You're putting yourself into compromising situations with an underage girl. Being exonerated in the past doesn't give you a Get Out Of Jail Free card for all of the petty bullshit that would've had you in and out of jail all along if Penny Beerntsen had never been attacked.
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Dec 29, 2015 07:25
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MrCodeDude posted:Did I miss this? What underage girl? It's something Brown County was investigating when the Halbach murder charges came up: http://archive.htrnews.com/article/99999999/MAN0101/60420064/Avery-assault-charges-delayed Even if you take his denial at face value and nothing happened between Steven and the girl, any sensible adult man would realize that spending too much time one-on-one with a young girl is suspicious, and probably something you should knock off ASAP if the girl's parents are unhappy with it.
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Dec 29, 2015 12:29
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kaworu posted:It's funny, I think the juror angle is probably... under-discussed, if anything. I feel like given the split verdicts, the circumstances, the length of the deliberations, that this case probably should have ended in either a mistrial or a hung jury. Thinking about the fact that the jury had specifically asked for ALL of Bobby Dassey's testimony, and were told by the judge "We can't do that. Tell us specifically which part you want." Huh? Since when is a jury not legally entitled to have all the evidence/testimony at their disposal during deliberations? Why should the judge be involved at all at THAT point in deciding what evidence they can and cannot look at? I have been there as a juror and that is normal. The judge and counsel must confer -- I'm not sure of the content of this conference since the jury is not in the room but I assume that they need to come to an agreement that there is no material in that testimony that should have been stricken from the record.The court reporter also can't just dump off transcripts in the jury room but must read them back; I assume she also keeps some sort of record as to which passages exactly the jury rehears. I assume the jury could systematically request the testimony chunk by chunk but that is beyond my experience.
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Dec 29, 2015 19:17
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Steve2911 posted:Are they not just given all the transcripts? If not then what was the point in the whole trial thingy? No, no transcripts. You can take notes with pencil and paper and you must leave them with the court at the end of the day (so good luck getting everything down and no organizing it later). You also aren't supposed to make up your mind about anything as the evidence is presented. Attorneys on both sides can say things that aren't strictly true if they don't directly relate to the content of the case as presented (e.g. Kratz implying that a not-guilty verdict vs. Steven would directly and immediately destroy Lenk and Colburn's careers, or the defense in one of my cases claiming that a witness slept around). It's all very weird and formalized and strongly depends on jurors' individual recall. Leon Einstein posted:I don't care how slanted the documentary is, the footage of the interrogations and the court proceedings should make any reasonable person think that he and his nephew deserve new trials. The whole situation was a huge miscarriage of justice. Yeah, it would be possible to cut this together with all of Kratz's news conferences and all the sensationalistic media coverage of the time to give a more full picture, and still come to the conclusion that this was not executed correctly. ghetto wormhole posted:I'm about 25% into episode 4 and I genuinely hope that everyone involved in this county's legal system gets the guillotine someday. You know what, because of my mom's work (not an attorney, but she did have to go to court on occasion) I grew up with a lot of the circa-1985 Manitowoc County legal establishment as household names, usually in the context of doing right for a vulnerable person. One Manitowoc lawyer in particular (not involved in these cases) made a huge impression on me as a kid because of how passionate he was about using the law to protect vulnerable individuals, and how well he articulated that even to a kid. It's extremely hard for me to reconcile all that with the "kill them all" anger towards the entire county establishment that this documentary has stirred up in strangers. Another thing about smaller, comparatively poor counties like this is that they're kind of the end of the line. If you're an ambitious young LEO or lawyer, do you want to practice in a small community with little money and few career-building cases? Uh, no. You either end up there because you have ties in the community and are willing to sacrifice to be there, because you need a job until something better comes along, or because you're just too bad at your job to hack it elsewhere. It's the same story with teachers, doctors, social workers, etc. I think that kind of "incompetence falls to the level that has no choice but to tolerate it" explains a lot more about some of the actors in this story than anything else.
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Dec 29, 2015 22:33
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Steve2911 posted:But trials go on forever. It makes no sense not to at least have the testimony itself written down or filmed so they can work out which parts actually make logical sense. Otherwise they're just stuck with whatever impression the defence or prosecution left them with weeks earlier. I think most trials are pretty quick (1-2 weeks, of which a good proportion of jury time is spent on lunch break or waiting for the judge and counsel to do things behind closed doors). It's just the occasional bigger case that takes longer to try. But I agree the system is pretty ridiculous especially with our current state of technology. Realistically the jury should be able to get video playback of any portion of the trial. Judge and counsel could still do their thing wrangling over the specific chunks to be shown and the bailiff could control playback.
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Dec 30, 2015 00:20
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Junkenstein posted:Yeah, it feels like the jury is basically saying, 'we think he killed her, but it didn't go down how it's been presented'. Which makes it all the more infuriating that Brendan is found guilty of the whole kidnapping and mutilation version. I've been in a position where I had to vote not-guilty on something that the defendent ABSOLUTELY did because the prosecution did not meet their burden of proving beyond reasonable doubt that the action met the letter of the law. We don't see much of that part of the trial, so it could easily just be something like that. It sucks pretty hard as a juror. XboxPants posted:I know I'm gonna get poo poo for this, but to me one of the biggest utilities of this documentary is to serve as a story for white people to be able to empathize with what's happening de rigueur in the black and other disenfranchised communities all around the country every day. It's usually not quite as bad as in this case, sure, but it's not too far off, either. This doc is just a snapshot of the current state of modern law enforcement prejudice against low-class (or "dirty", as LEO would say) communities & families in modern-day America. I've absolutely thought that, too. I think too many white Americans are comfortable thinking "only" black defendants get railroaded. In this case you get to see bias and unfairness at play towards white trash so there's no facile visible excuse not to empathize. A lot of the stuff about how black kids get treated growing up (more and harsher discipline in school for lesser infractions, etc.) is also true of how kids from "trouble" families are treated in all-white areas. Pinky Artichoke fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 19:36
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Basebf555 posted:I don't think anyone is arguing that though. The idea would be that one of the people living on the Avery property killed her, loaded her into her car, burned her body out at the quarry and left. Then the cops found the bones and the car and moved them closer to Avery's property. I wouldn't be surprised if the cops found the bones and the car and then convinced one of the other highly intelligent people living on the Avery property to move them, or even if that part happened independently of the cops (e.g. one of the family members knows about or comes across the crime scene and is concerned it won't be tied to Steven as-is).
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Dec 30, 2015 22:32
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Josh Lyman posted:Forget the EDTA test, how could there be no fingerprints in the RAV4? I think fingerprints are just not as reliable and easy to develop as we all like to think.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:16
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McSpanky posted:And they'll still be just as great because if they don't give everyone the same effort in their representation, they're just as guilty of twisting the law into vengeance as the cops and prosecutors in this case. That is the thing for me. I followed a case here in the bay area this year (some people I know were already following it and then I kind of took notice when the defendant escaped from jail back in the spring), including attending a few days of the trial. Other than maybe the jury's personal emotions -- some of those people were clearly ready to murder the guy after the first day of victim testimony -- I was so impressed with how fair and respectful the entire process clearly was to him, even though he was an enormous scumbag and a guilty verdict was pretty much inevitable. Big cities have more resources and more practice at this, and maybe it's easier to do well with living victims and a smart defendant. Who knows. But that -- a fair trial -- is what every defendant should get.
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Dec 31, 2015 18:44
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CHaKKaWaKka posted:I binged through the entire 10 episodes shortly after reading Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon(Great book by the way) and the one thing that struck me is how juries don't actually pay much attention to the evidence. There's a case where a cop got shot in the head twice and lived, there's a witness who identifies the shooter, and the jury deliberates for hours on whether or not he's guilty. When the detective asks one of the jurors after the trial is over why it took so long and what was going on, she basically tells him that the majority of the jurors did not care at all and would have voted either guilty or innocent if it could get them out of there faster. There was one juror who had decided that the shooter was innocent from the beginning because she didn't trust cops, but she agreed to vote guilty when it was getting late and she decided she just wanted to go home. That sounds like a failure of the voir dire process. Basically, any potential juror who is unable to come to an unbiased verdict because of personal experience, opinions, etc. or unable to meet the demands of sitting in the court room being bored out of their skull listening to testimony in English are supposed to be excused before the jury is even seated. In a case where the victim is a police officer, the prosecution *absolutely* should have asked whether anyone felt a strong bias against the police. So either the prosecution did a lovely job, or that juror lied in court to get onto the jury (why? Take the excuse and run, sheesh). I do have faith in Strang and Buting that they got Steven the best jury they were able to sit, given the pool available.
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Jan 2, 2016 00:07
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Catsplosion posted:I honestly dont get how people can still see Steven as guilty. I think there is a reasonable distinction to be made between believing Steven is guilty and believing the prosecution's theory of the crime...or I guess I should say theories, since the crime was described differently in the two separate trials. Obviously, the prosecution's theory is bogus. That doesn't mean Steven didn't do the murder.
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Jan 3, 2016 04:12
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Jimlit posted:I like that the only people with any real motive here are the cops. It seems like before the documentary came out some people liked one of his brothers for it, too. Earl sure acted suspicious but his alibi buddy would've had to have lied.
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Jan 3, 2016 07:11
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Steve2911 posted:I'm assuming that Brenden doesn't meet the scientifically or medically approved criteria of mentally challenged or they wouldn't have allowed the interviews into evidence. He's probably a borderline case where the lines are incredibly blurred. The Crime Writers On podcast mentioned that Wisconsin has a unique method of determining whether a suspect is intellectually impaired enough for special treatment or not, and that that may be under review. Regardless, if they really barred Barb from the interview as she claimed, that's inappropriate. Not that I would expect Barb to be a huge help to Brendan.
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Jan 3, 2016 20:30
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In 1990 I had a job in Two Rivers where I worked a cash register. Most of the customers were perfectly fine but I remember one gross dude who felt the need to tell me in detail what he would like to do to me. The gross dude looked a lot like Gregory Allen -- not a surprise, a lot of guys in Wisconsin look like Gregory Allen -- and since watching this I can't help but wonder. Also apparently Allen's up for parole this October. So I'm sure that will be great for the community.
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Jan 3, 2016 23:10
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precision posted:And as the documentary points out, at that point in time, those cops were the only ones who knew she had been shot in the head at all Given how much of forensic science turns out to be hokum, I wouldn't even be surprised if she was never shot in the head in the first place and the beveling of the skull bone fragments was post mortem, perhaps even from that extremely professional and careful fire pit excavation.
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Jan 4, 2016 04:13
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Zasze posted:Aug. 2, 1983: Gregory Allen suddenly comes up over the sand dunes along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Two Rivers and starts stalking a woman walking in front of him. He pulls his shorts down, begins masturbating and then lunges at the woman —who gets away. Allen later calls the woman twice at her home and asks her to drop the charges against him. The prosecutor against Allen is Denis Vogel. The charges were reduced from indecent exposure to disorderly conduct. How the gently caress did he get her contact info? The more I think about this guy the more pissed off I get at the Sheriff's department.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:04
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ghetto wormhole posted:Was it ever explained why they seemed really reluctant to go after Allen even though he was being actively monitored at all times for being a crazy sex maniac? Like is he some well connected person's family member or something? Honestly, I think Vogel just figured what the gently caress ever and gave into the Sheriff's preferred theory/perpetrator. It's not like he would've thought Avery was otherwise an upstanding citizen from his previous contacts with the guy. I can't be 100% sure but I think if Allen was connected to someone worth mentioning I'd hear about it.
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Jan 4, 2016 06:20
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Bird in a Blender posted:Really, the whole thing is completely hosed up. I kept thinking I was living in some bizzarro world where I was the only one seeing the lack of evidence, but the jury bought into it. It was said by one of Steve's lawyers early on that these are country people, and have way more trust of the police than if they were from the city. I know I don't really trust the police where I live at all, and would completely believe they were trying to set someone up because they've done it before! People know the police can be power-tripping morons, but I think that understanding is more...individualized? Like if a particular officer is an rear end in a top hat, you probably know someone who went to high school with him and can remember that he was an rear end in a top hat back then, too. There is also a social class and reputation element to how the police treat you, and I'm not sure everyone on the lucky side of that divide is interested to examine it. Over all, though, it's probably more accurate to say that people expect the important actors in the system -- lawyers, judges, department chiefs, etc. -- to respect and follow the law. JakeP posted:You would have been excused during Voir Dire (or jury selection rather i dont remember if voir dire is the right phrase) Probably not. They don't really question whether you'd stick to your guns during deliberation (arguably that's desirable), they would question whether your mind is made up before you hear the case. Pinky Artichoke fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 19:37
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Schurik posted:Best part of the whole thing are the lawyers and cops who jumped right out of (an episode of) Fargo. Had to check that I wasn't duped into watching fiction a couple times. Yah der hey.
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Jan 5, 2016 03:04
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kaworu posted:Sort of amazing how all the anti-Avery people are usually from Wisconsin or close by and experienced all the media coverage, and thus already had their minds made up about the case. I don't think that's accurate. A lot of the people in Wisconsin who I've heard/seen comment on this were very open minded about the case, and on the other hand I think it's entirely possible to watch the documentary with relatively little previous exposure and conclude that Avery is probably guilty. MrBuddyLee posted:As for the lack of EDTA on the Rav4 samples, EDTA is a stable substance and doesn't degrade in the environment. Since there was no EDTA in the RAV4 Avery blood smears, then the blood in Teresa's car came from Avery directly and not from the tube. There's no other reasonable explanation for Avery's blood in Teresa's car besides "Avery bled on her car while loving around in it." There are just too many problems with the EDTA evidence to find it compelling, in my opinion, first among them that the guy didn't test all the samples. quote:I was all in favor of the guy getting $34 million from the state, and his heir/family should receive that. But committing a murder after his release shouldn't be ignored just because he got falsely imprisoned once. I'm not, I'd hate to see what that would do to people who need services in the area. Realistically, though, even if he hadn't been forced to settle to pay for his lawyers the eventual payout would've been much lower than $34m. Even if the award was fairly high, say $20m, I doubt he'd end up collecting on all of it. quote:You have a reasonable explanation for how Avery's blood is all over the inside of Teresa's car? If not, that's enough evidence to convict right there. If I recall correctly, *Teresa's* blood was all over the inside of the car, his was just in that one spot near the ignition. That's part of what makes me skeptical of the EDTA testing: if he tested samples from elsewhere in the car but not that one in particular, of course there would be no EDTA. Since we don't see his full testimony, we can't know for sure. Much more damning to me is the sweat evidence under the hood. The main thing I would've had to hear as a juror, though, is that it was conclusively Steven and not just a familial match. quote:The level of detail of much of Brendan's two interviews, in totality, is way too in sync with dozens of pieces of physical evidence to be completely bullshit. Just because some details don't match up or some of the techniques were leading doesn't mean you disregard the entirety of both interviews. Brendan brought up rape first. I believe he brought up stabbing first. I believe he brought up bleaching the garage with Avery first and getting bleach on his pants, and the details about where the RAV4 was moved, and where the body was moved various times. The kid was too accurate, and wasn't led into EVERY fact. I just can't trust anything that Brendan said because he is *such* an unreliable witness. Even if he was describing actual events in one or two quotes, they're embedded in so much bullshit. I also don't trust that a kid who has to go back and live with these people (he thinks) would necessarily implicate the correct person if fingering Steven rather than Earl/Chuckie/Bobby/Scott (pick one or more) seemed like the best way to feel safe at home. quote:Steven Avery admits to standing with Brendan at a bonfire, in a pit behind his house where Teresa's corpse was found, on the night of the murder. He stoked it with tires and a car seat to get it to burn hotter. It's mindblowing that anyone can look at that and reasonably think he wasn't torching a body. I don't know, man, having a bonfire on freaking Halloween night is not really suspicious behavior. And I have a hard time getting over the bones in the quarry.
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Jan 5, 2016 05:11
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computer parts posted:By the very design of the documentary, it's hard to conclude that a fair trial was conducted. There's a difference between thinking he did the crime and thinking the trial was fair. joshtothemaxx posted:I'm pretty sure both of those guys have solid alibis. There's a reason why the defense team did not mention the brother as a potential suspect. The defense didn't successfully bring up the ex-boyfriend (or anyone else) as a potential suspect because Wisconsin has a specific test for determining if an alternative suspect is admissible and no one met the criteria. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/ev...a-to-amend.html
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Jan 5, 2016 07:28
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MrBuddyLee posted:Clearly, twelve jurors who saw the totality of Brendan's interviews and cross-referenced them with the physical evidence believed Brendan was there and did plenty of what he originally said he did. Zero jurors agree with you, or with anyone who thinks his interviews were 100% horseshit. Yeah, well, I sat on a trial as a juror where I was supposed to disregard everything I know about organic chemistry and pretend an "expert witness" who sounded like he had no idea that alcohol might contain carbon and/or hydrogen was the ultimate authority on how blood alcohol tests work. One of the things that's misleading about this documentary and frankly every depiction of jury trials ever is that we just can't know how the jury was instructed and what they were allowed to know. Retail Slave posted:I'm from Wisconsin, but some of the accents in this series drive me bonkers. Especially the phone conversations. I had neighbors growing up who moved into town from Chilton and whoa boy. It's not just the accent but also the grammar. My accent isn't all that strong (and I use my pronouns correctly) but I still get razzed a bit.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:59
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pentyne posted:Plus it's not against the law to be a creepy gently caress to a woman you're interested in. I'm not sure the towel thing was even being creepy towards a woman specifically and not just being a dude with dumb ideas about when to shower and/or lounge around in your underpants. It doesn't sound like her scheduling was super-precise (it would be difficult to be with the distances she covered), and I feel like practically everyone I know has a story about being half out of the shower when someone knocks on the door. Kal Torak posted:How much does this even matter? Jurors are human and I'm not sure how much the instructions from the judge really matters when forming an opinion on whether or not a person is guilty. It matters because how the jurors understand the task -- including what it means in context to be guilty -- shapes the outcome. It's not always as clear-cut as you'd think. Like I said before in this thread, as a juror I have voted not-guilty on something I know for a fact that the defendant did. If we'd had some lazy judge who didn't take jury instruction seriously, no doubt we would've convicted that smirking fucker.
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Jan 5, 2016 21:55
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Well, hey, now a juror is out claiming he/she/it changed to a guilty vote because they felt unsafe. So that's exciting. I was just thinking that if for some reason I felt unsafe as a juror I'd go to the bailiff ASAP but in this case, um, whelp...
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Jan 6, 2016 04:03
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L-Boned posted:I hope social media and the internet ruin the lives of every single person who participating in framing Avery. I that was my family member, I shutter to think how I would respond. I've been getting some stuff on Facebook of the general format "we miss Teresa and therefore it's disgusting that anyone would give Avery attention/think he's innocent". I really feel for her family, this all has to be difficult and sad for them. Real nightmare material. But I can't make the logical leap to from sympathy for them to certainty about him.
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Jan 6, 2016 07:41
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Catsplosion posted:I'm pretty sure the reason they had the juror who left due to a 'medical emergency' in the documentary is because he is the one the people who created this series are saying has come forwards on regards to being pressured into a guilty vote from an outside party. I don't think so, he never got as far as casting a vote. I think he was in the documentary because, having left early, he didn't participate in the "pact of silence" with the other jurors.
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Jan 6, 2016 14:17
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kaworu posted:Even if he had a "legit script" I wouldn't believe it was a legit script. It would have been unbelievably easy for a person in Kratz's position to get whatever prescription he wants from one of the good ol' boy WI doctors, I imagine. That's just how this stuff works. He was already getting hate mail/calls on the 21st, so you figure he's now entering week 3 of receiving the internet's rage on the daily and considering the slow-uptake people are just getting started on the show now the end is nowhere in sight.
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Jan 6, 2016 15:19
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mobby_6kl posted:Oh man, this article just got posted elsewhere, it's probably even worse than the Avery case This led me to the article on the Reid technique, which was also demonstrated in the Avery/Dassey interrogation tapes (and described not by name by I think Strang): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique Interesting little bit of trivia: wikipedia posted:Critics of the technique claim it too easily produces false confessions,[4] especially with children.[5][6] The use of the Reid technique on youth is prohibited in several European countries because of the incidence of false confessions and wrongful convictions that result.[7] Kal Torak posted:Yeah it's amazing how great those Manitowac deputies are and how much evidence they uncovered after other law enforcement had already searched. Manitowoc: 1 A, 2 Os. Or if your fingers will not obey go with Manty.
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Jan 6, 2016 16:58
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Retail Slave posted:Which is remarkable in itself, because with as right-leaning as Fox News is, they suck prosecutor and cop dick whenever they can. So this really tells you something. Megyn Kelly is kind of a special case, though. Even though she looks like the other Fox News fembots she has her own agenda. This is her finest moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1lJ3tfQFpc Perfection. MrBuddyLee posted:The only aspect of the "bleaching the garage" story that Brendan changed is that now he claims he didn't know what he was cleaning up in the garage on Halloween night. He basically threw Steven under the bus with this admission--it is not disputed by the defense. It just seems weird that someone of Steven's limited processing power and housekeeping skills would successfully clean up the *only* example of Hallbach's blood in an otherwise grimy and cluttered garage (not counting the bullet, which could've been tracked in separately). It would make more sense to me if the stain was just some innocent substance even if he did kill her (in her car or off-site).
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Jan 7, 2016 00:22
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TheAbortionator posted:Also the innocence project will be taking Steve's case again but not brandons. Brendan has good representation already from an innocence project that specializes in wrongly convicted youth: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictionsyouth/ I hope they're getting an outpouring of donations as a result of this documentary. With respect to Kayla: I remember how kids talk about anything remotely sensational...hell I remember how the older kids used to talk about Eddie loving Gein as if any of us was even born before he went away to Mendota (also, he lived on the far side of the state and I doubt anyone near me was remotely connected to him). Could Brendan have spun some poo poo about his notorious uncle and toes in the fire to make himself sound interesting? Maybe. Could he have just wandered the halls of the school telling the true story about taking part in a murder? Maybe. I'd like to imagine that even someone as slow as Brendan would know he should keep his mouth shut if any of those things were true, but I have no idea. Smarter kids have done dumber things. The problem is that anything having to do with Brendan is so polluted with garbage that even trying to separate fact from fiction at this point is a lost cause, and frankly I'm a lot more interested in the process by which that happened than sifting through it all.
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Jan 7, 2016 18:46
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WanderingKid posted:What does "fully innocent" even mean? The defendant is either guilty or not guilty of the charge. Its really simple. For guilty to happen, it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the state. Maybe guilty = not guilty. There are two parallel avenues of conversation, right: 1. Did the state prove Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey guilty of this crime? Were their methods ethical and legal? 2. Separately, did Steven Avery commit the crime? Was Brendan involved? Bonus: If not Steven and Brendan, then who? Unfortunately not everyone is on the same page as to which conversation is happening in a given post.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:59
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hepscat posted:At this point I wish the documentarians had tried a little harder to put in the details that Kratz et. al. claim weren't included because they make Steven Avery seem like a jerk. I think they were a little too glib in handwaving away details like answering the door in a towel, or calling TH 3 times that day (and hiding his number so she wouldn't know it was him!) because it wasn't damning enough: There were a few moments towards the end of the documentary when they let more of the dirtbag nature of Steven Avery slip in just a bit, I remember being a little bit shocked by it in context. The thing is, though, the defense obviously isn't going to get up there and testify "our client is a huge dirtbag" so necessarily it wasn't going to come out from the side that was more willing to talk to the filmmakers. If Kratz had gotten over himself and spent some time with them, I'm sure they would've had more of that kind of material to draw from in assembling the documentary. The other thing that excuses this a little bit for me is that they were embedded in the community when that area was just awash in publicity about the trial and all the associated speculation and hearsay, so they may be suffering a little bit from assuming the audience already knows (or maybe already vaguely remembers) something of that.I know my impressions are colored by having ties to the area, but I certainly remembered Avery as a creepy guy from the 2005-2006 coverage. Shath Hole posted:We watched through episode 4 so far, and the last WTF moment for me was when the Sergeant or Chief, I'm horrible with names, was being questioned by Dean about Steven's innocence in the rape trial from 85 and his response was something along the lines of "well yeah, but I don't fully buy that". The dude STILL doesn't believe it even after the scientific DNA evidence presented and ultimately exonerated Steven. And in thinking about it more, it seems that is the overall view up there of Steven from the community (based on the letters the attourneys were reading) and Steven could never have gotten a fair trial of the murder of TH with a jury full of Manitowac County residents. I am pretty loving incensed with those guys. They let a serial rapist just cruise around our community because they were so loving sure their guy was the guy and wouldn't even consider otherwise.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:12
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precision posted:I like the part where the one cop literally doesn't know what "cursive" means. Jesus, what a shitshow. Christ those cops talked a lot. It's bad enough when they're just monologuing -- I imagine this is their interpretation of "Step 2" of the Reid Technique but it just makes them sound like tools and I doubt Brendan even understood what they were saying half the time -- but then half the testimony about the fire is them telling him what they imagine he saw.
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Jan 8, 2016 03:45
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Der Shovel posted:E: also, someone earlier in the thread said that the prosecutor's job is to get a conviction. I think that's a problem right there. His job should be to uncover the truth. The assumption that not getting a conviction is a failure leads to the sort of unethical lying and shenanigans that Kratz got up to during the trial. Being a self-aggrandizing drug addict with a personality disorder (all part of the public record) who was out of his depth dealing with a major case is what lead to Kratz's shenanigans.
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Jan 8, 2016 11:56
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Murphy Brownback posted:I think it's far too optimistic to hope for any kind of retrial or exoneration. If new evidence was there to find it'd probably have been found by now. It would take something drastic like you say of a juror saying they were coerced into giving a guilty verdict or something, and you better believe the prosecution would attack that juror's credibility as much as they could, so even that wouldn't guarantee anything. Imagine the lawsuit that would come after a second unwarranted prison term - they'd do everything they could to bury it. I don't really understand how the whole habeas corpus procedure works or typical outcomes, but I think there is some hope for Brendan based on how he was interrogated, Len Kachinsky's fuckups, etc. I sort of expect the federal magistrate to order a new trial, but who knows. The thing that troubles me, though, is imagining what might happen if Brendan did secure his release. He's not a high-functioning individual to start with, and now he's missed critical years for trying to figure out how to adult. He would be going back into a community that is pretty strongly convinced he helped rape and murder a girl. His family is a poo poo show. Who knows what sort of PTSD or other damage he picked up in prison. It's a little too easy to picture Brendan being found with a rifle in his mouth in a year or two.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:03
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Shath Hole posted:Also, in case you haven't seen enough...another documentary is on the way! I'm sure that will be a high-quality production. It would be contrary to the "Investigation Discovery" brand and level of effort, but it'd be neat if they instead did a series on questionable trials. There are plenty beyond these two.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:36
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