Netflix show Making a Murderer - Steven Avery case, etc

haha yeah. that theory must implicate every mechanic, body shop worker and 16 year old kid in town.

Also, I don't get why guilt vs innocence was so strongly played in both of these cases. i mean you don't have to be innocent. you just have to not be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Innocence seems a lot to shoot for in both of these situations (innocent as either party may have been).

there are different theories to it among trial lawyers. one of the biggest theories is you have to sell a narrative of innocence because not all jurors can grasp the concept of reasonable doubt and the burden of proof and it is less of an uphill battle if you can tell dumb (and even not dumb) people a story of how your client is innocent.

i was not sure what was left out of brandon's trial by the filmmakers. his testimony could have been a lot stronger but his inability to testify well to help himself could be an artifact of his cognitive limitations too.

it made me wonder how "cognitively limited" does one have to be to get declared incompetent? just watching and listening to his interviews with the detectives, the investigator, his mom ... he seemed to have the mental capacity of a child

short answer ime is the bar is very low and he probably would be found competent i just wondered if it was even tried

just a few episodes in

when the fiancee gets out of jail and comes home to find things all dumped on the floor in her home -- is that really how the police left it, or was someone in there because it was never really secure and anyone could wander in?

you would think they'd have an interest when no one was living there to at least keep things arranged in some way, since they might have to get a warrant yet again?

and what the hell is with people repeatedly referring to Avery as "cold-blooded?" he did some stupid shit when he was really young, but was thrown in jail for something he didn't do at age 23. was he really violent in prison? was there some incident of him being aggressive to reporters when he got out?

there's this repeated "i've got a bad feeling about him" vibe when the show really only shows that members of this family are kind of uneducated or not completely competent, lower class, and get into legal trouble that a lot of people do -- but do more repeatedly when they don't really have resources to dig out of it

this interrogation tape with Brendan is heartbreaking, it's people prodding a kid to say anything incriminating

oh god the kid's attorney saying it's common for kids to be questioned without their parents or representation there

fuck this guy

Yeah that narrative re: Steven's past is maddening—esp. the notion that "his crimes keep getting worse," "at this rate who knows what he's capable of" etc.

he did set the family cat on fire, which is something that sociopaths/psychopaths tend to do, apparently

the narrative is that they were being dumb and throwing it around, including over the fire?

i'm #1 cat lover over here but stupid kids and small animals are not a good combination

he wasn't a kid ... he was a young adult i think?

he was around 20 and with an IQ of 70? idk

though apparently the nephew also had an IQ of 70, and compared to him Steven seemed smart

I think "IQ of 70" is, with IQ being kind of a bullshit measurement, shorthand for "baseline legally competent"

this series is one of the most upsetting things i've ever seen

i wish that the filmmakers had gone outside the scope of the trial to offer up some theories on what might have happened to teresa but i understand why for various legal reasons they (and/or the lawyers) might have chose not to. because of that it's hard to understand what even might have happened to her and at whose hands, but i find it pretty hard to imagine that steven was involved. the case they built against him was nonsensical and he never altered his story, plus i just don't understand what his motive would have been. him killing her just makes no sense to me and weirdly the prosecution didn't seem to need or want to offer a motive, which seems unusual to me.

im just talking out of my ass here but clearly brendan wasn't involved in the killing. that said i do feel like he saw something that fucked him up (the whole part about him isolating himself and losing weight) which makes me think someone else in the family might have done it

the one thing i can't quite figure out in my mind is, depending on who might have done it, at which point the cops decide that they are gonna try and pin it on steve

somehow i feel like brendan's first attorney's investigator (the focus of the final episode) might be the most evil person in the entire thing

I'm guessing, if the whole framing thing is true, sometime between the last deposition in the civil suit and the day of the murder.
If the framing isn't true then they ran into some incredible luck with the murderer dumping the car in Avery's yard. Xpost.

I'm guessing, if the whole framing thing is true, sometime between the last deposition in the civil suit and the day of the murder.

meaning the cops orchestrated her murder? for some reason i want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't do that thought it's not like they deserve it

if she died for some other reason, i'm curious as to when they plausibly could have figured out they might be able to put it on steve and then what they needed to facilitate to make that happen (i.e. was the car already there or did they move it? were the bone fragments there or did they place them? etc)

I would not put it past them. That comment the sherriff (?) made about how "it would have been easier to kill him" is chilling. When you think about what was at stake for these guys—careers, reputations, civil suits that would surely bankrupt them personally—plus the 36 million from the county, and add in the general sense they seem to have had that the Avery's were subhuman trash (the investigator's incest rant) I don't think it's much of a stretch that they would do it.

somehow i feel like brendan's first attorney's investigator (the focus of the final episode) might be the most evil person in the entire thing

Yeah this creep with his constant nervous smile. The investigator and prosecutors and cops, at least they were evil in the course of their actual jobs. I wonder if this guy gets any sleep at night.

It's also saddening how in the immediate aftermath of the Steven verdict, Strang and Buting—disingenuously, to my eyes—felt they needed to soften if not entirely walk back their contention that he was framed. These are a couple of righteous guys and even they understand that if they ever want a decision ruled in their favor again, they're expected to chalk the conviction up to a vaguely "broken system." I had the sense during that conference-table reunion a few years later that these men were broken, depleted...not because they lost the case (which is part of the job) or even because they know the county got away w/ basically abetting a murder, but because they personally ran up against the same hard ceiling their client did—fuck with the police at your own peril.

I haven't made it through the last few but Brendan's first attorney, and his investigator, made me so angry I had to walk away from watching for a day. His consolation prize for coming in third for a DA election in middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin is the publicity of not even attempting to defend a client? fuck that guy

the thing that really riled me throughout was the da and his cohort talking about what a disgrace it was that the defence was accusing police officers of wrongdoing. like as if just by dint of being in the police, someone is a paragon of virtue. they seemed to keep reinforcing that point, as if a great police force is by necessity built on a refusal to even consider the fact that it could be corrupt - i mean obv corruption is guaranteed where you have public figures with power...

i've seen the staircase/paradise lost etc but the cops in this really came across far worse.

hmmm watched one hour of this stuff and can't imagine watching 9 more hours of it. not that i need 'suspense' to string me along but it felt like such an overview that i don't even know how to get motivated to watch any more of it.

well the first ep kinda is an overview of a huge period of time - the actual story develops after that...

hmmm watched one hour of this stuff and can't imagine watching 9 more hours of it. not that i need 'suspense' to string me along but it felt like such an overview that i don't even know how to get motivated to watch any more of it.

― i got a really big steen, and they need some really big zings (some dude), Saturday, December 26, 2015 7:01 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

breh you're out here watching every minute of the new rob lowe show you can find the time

yeah, the rest of the season isn't about reiterating the first episode. It's not even that much about what happens in the first episode.

the show's called "making a murderer" and there's not even any murder in the first episode ..................................

ah ok i thought the entire series was primarily about what they outlined in that one

My god this show. Can't get over Steven's "the poor always lose" quote. This shit is so heartbreaking

Did the first two of these over the weekend. What strikes me most about it is how malicious and dark but at the same time SMALL TIME the conspiracy (assuming it's that) seems to be. Like there's no bigger intrigue here, afaict, he wasn't a political figure or a double agent or someone who was going to bring down the governor, he was just a small town dude who some other small town dudes didn't like and wound up with an even bigger vendetta against him when he went after them for going after him.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarettwieselman/making-a-murderer-burning-questions-answered?utm_term=.kqNxvan4p

started this i like it a lot

― #amazing #babies #touching (harbl), 20. december 2015 15:34 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok i'm ashamed to admit i just binged it all instead of doing anything i was supposed to do. wow!

― #amazing #babies #touching (harbl), 21. december 2015 02:01 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nobody has mentioned how awesome these two posts are :) I watched eight episodes yesterday. So chilling.

i assume you've all seen paradise lost and the staircase... if not, they're both on youtube. make sure you find the paradise lost version where each episode is about 2 hours long or more.

both are about as good as this, and quite similar.

fucking hell, this was devastating. the slow realisation in the final episode that Steven and Brendan wern't going to be free by the end was awful.

also, Brendan's resemblance to Paul Dano as Brian Wilson was uncanny.

I'm sure that Teresa's brother was in full "Justice for Teresa" mode, but I found him a bit despicable in the documentary.

'we love the police!' is not a good look for anyone in this story for sure

yeah, could be that the prosecutor coached him in the tone to take in the media interviews?

condemning the victim's family is not really a feeling I trust, and may be my source of greatest unease wrt the documentary. but I suppose a respectful distance leaves us only with those very public comments made not long after a great trauma.

i found him more pathetic and sad than anything

like, his trauma was so great that he blinded himself from a broad obvious truth (that the case built against avery was at best deeply flawed and corrupted)

the narrative is that they were being dumb and throwing it around, including over the fire?

i'm #1 cat lover over here but stupid kids and small animals are not a good combination

forgot to respond to this, but it wasn't like that - he literally doused it in gasoline and threw it in the fire. and he was 20 when it happened, not just a "stupid kid". Avery's reputation was very well-earned, he'd done significant time for assault and apparently pointed his gun at family members during arguments - I have a lot of stories about that family, some of which I probably shouldn't share here. Even despite all the oddness that came about with this case (everyone here felt like the sheriff's department was taking some improper measures to make this as frictionless as possible) very few of us ever doubted it was him. For me the nail in the coffin was Avery's weird obsession with Halbach, calling her several times (and trying to mask the call) to come out to the salvage yard even though she had already told her boss that she didn't want to go back out there.

I believe Avery is guilty and it would take a LOT to convince me he wasn't (to be fair this doc seems to be converting a lot of locals who probably had the same attitude). It was pretty common knowledge around here that the police botched the investigation, but knowing some of these county employees personally I just feel there's no chance that she was killed by police - I guess I could buy that someone ELSE did it and tried to make it look like it was Avery but that seems pretty farfetched. I've only seen a couple episodes so far but it feels like a documentary in the Michael Moore sense; there's just so much footage, so many documents, so many weird statements out there, I don't think it would be particularly difficult to find this narrative.

honestly I've come away from what I've seen so far thinking it's completely possible he did it, but the police and prosecutors were so incompetent and motivated to get him to jail that they didn't bother to do anything correctly

I haven't gotten the impression that it's plausible the police killed Halbach. But their entire operation was so incredibly incompetent that there's no credibility to their investigation when they had such high stakes. Pushing Dassey into a story, to the point of his _defense investigator_ getting him to tell a narrative they had no facts to corroborate is gross. They decided to push some barely-competent kid into jail to make their job easier! That's not an improper measure, it's criminal.

That's the indictment here, for me -- the local cops have an idea of what trouble looks like in their community, people they keep an eye on due to repeat problems, but this entire idea that it's their job to pipe these people into jail as quickly as possible, regardless of evidence or investigation, is a problem that underlies a lot of the criminal justice system.

booming post mh

The one thing that seemed queasy to me was the depiction of the Halbachs and the ex-boyfriend. I mean, it's understandable why that happens, the lawyers explain that a failing of the police was to never investigate the ones closest to Theresa, but still. Perhaps it didn't need all those clips of the brother saying stupid stuff.

All in all, though, it's such a shocking story, told so incredibly well.

i guess who knows what the police told the brother and family, and obv it's a huge life trauma, but i still feel like anyone who so unswervingly backs the police, like as if all that matters is a certain conviction, of anyone, doesn't really come across very well. like there are some people who would never believe the police got anything wrong, ever. even after an exoneration. these people are a real problem in society.

Looks like Brendan didn't get out: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/brendan-dassey-making-a-murderer-release-blocked-appeals-court

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this thread seemed like the best for people who are interested in true crime stuff on Netflix. The post below was from a year ago on the law &order svu thread. The documentary is coming to Netflix on May 19.

http://people.com/crime/sister-cathy-cesnik-murder-netflix-documentary/

A member of my family is a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest in Baltimore in the late 60s/early 70s. She's gone through a lot, met with other survivors, and become an activist. I'm pretty impressed by how far she's come. Last fall I got to attend a meeting with her and the other survivors while they were being interviewed for a documentary. I'm not sure of the status of that project, but I just found out that last week's SVU was loosely based on the case. She's a longtime L&O fan and while I haven't asked her about it directly, I hear she's very stoked.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/cesnik-nun-murder-maskell_n_7267532.html

http://www.nbc.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/video/unholiest-alliance/2998226

― how's life, Monday, March 28, 2016 2:35 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khr7dbuBjuE

Awesome!

Yeah, we're excited that the story is getting out there these days, because a couple of decades ago I remember the general response to this was "these women are just making this up to get money out of the catholic church." I'm sure some people will still feel that way, but in the past few years there's been a real community that's developed among the women who attended this high school and/or suffered the abuse.

That said, I'm kinda anxious about how much attention it's going to get and what kind of nuts are going to come out of the woodwork about this.

If you get a chance listen to the CASEFILE podcast episode 'The Catholic Mafia'. No one dies but its pretty shocking.

Oh shit! Will check it out for sure.

man fuck your shitty corrupt country

but first make zellner president

tbh the whole series was utterly frustrating (if compelling) - here's yet another brilliant refutation of the case! oh wait it doesn't matter though because you are fighting an enemy that will not let you win

i could listen to taped phone calls of steve & his mom all day, something abt their exchanging like single words or fragments of phrases i really love and id w/ on some level idk

zellner is v good

bobby dasseys search history is a trip - http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Exhibits-Part-1-of-2.pdf

https://nypost.com/2019/09/23/wisconsin-inmate-confesses-to-infamous-making-a-murderer-slay-report/

so there's a new documentary-style show in post-production that seems to take the prosecution's side? if the confession by someone completely unrelated pans out, they're going to look... not good

is it supposed to be taking their side? Or merely focuing on them?

the title seems to imply a conclusion

"sadly, the inmate who confessed to the murder later flung himself down six flights of stairs and died"

this song will singlehandedly get Dassey out of prison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlXzoIZ0hk

classic for "everyone loves my brother like they love bbq ribs".